Spinlet Teams With Gracenote and Civolution to Bring Groundbreaking New Music Service to Africa

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., April 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- MUSEXPO -- Gracenote® and Civolution have teamed with Spinlet to provide a music identification and monitoring platform for Spinlet's new mobile music service in Africa. By teaming with Gracenote and Civolution, Spinlet will now be able to monitor and verify the music that is uploaded to its platform. This will enable Spinlet to determine the source of the music - whether major labels, major independents, African labels and other independent African artists.

The market for digital music in Africa has been untapped by any of the major music services to date. Spinlet is changing this by offering a groundbreaking new Cloud-based service that lets artists upload albums and tracks for sale to millions of music fans throughout the region. This unique model allows independent musicians and bands in Africa to produce their own music and sell it alongside other more prominent artists in Africa and from around the world. Spinlet also provides artists with tools to better understand their fan base and interact with them through social media.

Spinlet will use the Mediahedge™ content identification and monitoring platform, a joint service by Civolution and Gracenote, to identify tracks and the origin of the music. The Gracenote and Civolution technology works by analyzing the unique "audio fingerprint" of a song to recognize and match to songs owned by copyright holders. Once a song is identified, Spinlet can use the results to determine if the proper licenses are in place to allow music fans to legally download the song.

"We are thrilled to be working with Spinlet to provide a platform that will help artists and labels thrive in Africa," said Ty Roberts, Gracenote co-founder and CTO. "By teaming with Spinlet, we are helping Africa grow its independent music community while also providing a legitimate download service for millions of African music fans."

"Gracenote is the most trusted technology firm when it comes to backing digital music. This is the first such deal of its kind relating to Africa, which reinforces our commitment to fighting piracy while building a sustainable business model. Working with Gracenote and using their functionality provides a platform for us to provide the highest quality product to our users and helps us to more effectively protect the publishing rights of content owners," said Spinlet CEO, Eric Idiahi.

Gracenote Global Media Database

Gracenote intelligently organizes digital media into a database that touches millions of people around the globe every day. This database includes descriptions of more than 130 million songs, as well as filmmaker and cast bios for movies, TV listings, and Album and Movie Cover Art. All of this information is paired with Gracenote advanced technology to help power more than a billion of the world's leading music and video products, from Apple iTunes and HTC smart phones to Ford Sync and Sony BRAVIA TVs.

About Gracenote

A pioneer in digital media, Gracenote, Inc. provides music and video content and technologies to the world's hottest entertainment products and brands. The company's partners in the entertainment community include major music publishers and labels, prominent independents and movie studios and television networks. A wholly owned, independent subsidiary of the Sony Corporation of America (SCA), Gracenote has offices in Tokyo, Munich, Berlin, Seoul, and Taipei with worldwide headquarters in Emeryville, California. For more information, follow us at @GracenoteTweets.                                      

About Civolution
Civolution (www.civolution.com) is the leading provider of technology and solutions to identify, manage and monetize media content. The company offers an extensive portfolio of cutting edge digital watermarking and fingerprinting applications for media interaction (accurate and real-time video synchronization for 2nd screen and smart TVs), media intelligence (audience measurement and media monitoring for television, radio and internet) and media protection (content filtering and forensic marking of media assets in pre-release, digital cinema, payTV and online). Follow us on Twitter: @Civolution

Gracenote is a registered trademark of Gracenote, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For More Information Contact:
Veronica Skelton
Concept PR for Gracenote
415.342.3435
[email protected]

Graham McKenna
Sr. Director, Marketing Communications, Gracenote
510.428.7288
gmckenna@gracenote.com

SOURCE Gracenote