http://slashdot.org/firehose.p.....;id=666026

Thanks! I am just trying to keep everybody honest here. Hard thing to do when Gracenote is involved.

I have never been an employee of Gracenote, CDDB, Escient, etc. I have had plenty of run-ins with them and have been closely following the space for about 10 years now. I just feel an obligation to get the truth out.

Thank you for the link to thestandard. Looks like Kevin from Rainbow partners already straightened out the author in a thorough and authoritative comment but I’ll go drop a comment as well once I get through their tedious registration process.

I gotta ask: I know why I am here spending my time writing comments, but what brings you here? This isn’t the most interesting topic, is it?

Jack,

You are incredible and knowledgeable. Were you a management guy at Escient, CDDB, or Gracenote? There is a writer from news/blog site that disagrees with you:
http://www.thestandard.com/new.....urn-screws

Your biggest fan,

Rip

I see where you are coming from but you’ve got it wrong. Alaska Miller is technically correct and seems to know the background a bit better than you do. Let me explain:

Gracenote pulled a switcheroo and that is what made the developers/contributors to the original CDDB pissed.

The entire database used to be free and downloadable to anyone who wanted it. Yes, you could download the whole fucking thing in a text file and do what you want with it.

Users contributed to the database knowing they could always grab a snapshot of it. Gracenote not only turned this off, but continued to accept user contributions with just a “fine print” change to their policy. Made for pissed off contributors.

Gracenote (CDDB at the time) used user good will and a promise of reciprocation to start a business and then once there was momentum, took away what was promised.

In those days the whole “web services” “web api” stuff wasn’t around so the idea of downloading the whole database to build things on top of was somewhat practical.

Say for example — you wanted to build a web site where users could write album reviews and you wanted to start off with a database of artists/albums/songs to build on top of — you could just download the CDDB database and get started. That is no longer the case, so the developer got fucked. Just like Alaska said.

Simply, if Sony needed meta-data it should have bought AMG (from DRM-happy Macrovision) or Muze (from Enterprise Partners). While AMG is better, Muze is the actual meta-data provider that Gracenote themselves use — (but they probably didn’t emphasize that point to Sony).

Sony did, however, get a whole bunch or litigious bullies! Maybe that was the attraction? The lawyers at Sony got asked about the deal said “hellzyah!!! m00 moniezzzzzzzz 4 me!”

You are right — but only by looking at the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lies the big dark awful story.

Gracenote does allow their database to be accessed in all sorts of ways. What Alaska is referring to is the fact that the original database was user-generated and was freely downloadable (in its entirety) by anyone who wanted it. When CDDB went commercial they continued to accept user submissions but no longer made the data available to anyone who wanted it. Many users felt betrayed and developers who expected to have access to the data (and who had previously contributed to because of said future expectation) were left in the dust.

I could probably get over that — it all happened early enough that someone else could have started another free database (e.g. FreeDB) — However, that is where the story gets so much worse.

Basically Gracenote made sure that developers and providers were stymied and deprived of alternative options because Gracenote used anticompetitive / bully tactics to weaken/destroy alternative providers (like they do to @26 Doug) and made threats to developers who wanted to use any alternative track listing DB (or pretty much any kind of music meta-data).

Here’s a super-realistic flow:

- Developer X wants to make a CDDB-style database with some special sauce on top. He wants to make it free but perhaps add some premium services on the side to make money.
- Developer X starts building the database and adding sauce. Things are looking good.
- Gracenote gets wind of this and starts with the lawsuit talk.
- Developer X checks with his lawyer and finds that Gracenotes claims are baseless. Developer X is relieved.
- Company A and Company B like the special sauce and want to work with Developer X.
- Gracenote pays a visit to Companies A & B and tells them that if they work with Developer X, they are infringing on patents and will be sued. They should work with Gracenote instead.
- Companies A & B (like most companies) are conservative and don’t like paying for lawyers so they get scared away from the deal with Developer X.
- Developer X is fucked, Companies A & B are fucked, and most of all the consumer is fucked because all this innovation is gone and the consumer is stuck with Gracenote.

Search for “gracenote lawsuit” on Google and you’ll get over 14,000 results. You’ll see Musicmatch, Roxio, and more. In all cases Gracenote lost and the other parties were able to continue to using alternative databases/services.

The most insane part of all this is that despite the fact that Gracenote has lost in court continuously, they carry on using bully/anticompetitive tactics because they work most of the time!

You might say “well then you can just fight them and win!” But who can afford/wants to do that? Deals have died and partnerships fallen apart because most people don’t want to get into a legal battle of any kind.

Gracenote é a compañía propietaria de CDDB (Compact Disc Database), unha base de datos da que moitas aplicacións (sobretodo reproductores e _rippers_) obteñen información sobre o disco e as pistas dun cd de audio….

Oh and BTW, death to Google for building a business off of *MY* links! How dare they mine our carefully constructed page relationships! I don’t care what “service” they provide. They are evil, pure and simple. Stanford jerks.

Though musicBrainz was mentioned as not being a global solution, they are partnered with and using technology provided by MusicIP which is global and has a huge database of quality metadata.

CD look-ups is old business, but that doesn’t mean metadata isn’t valuable. That is where the fingerprinting technology comes in. You know you have tracks without metadata, and you can’t do a look-up because it isn’t part of a CD. Maybe you traded a playlist with a friend, or something and the metadata went missing.

As mentioned above, the data is the value.

CD sales are trending down, and DVD sales are trending up. It’s good to be the leader in DVD metadata currently.

OK — so you are behind getdigitaldata.com and you like the CD track listing business. You expect a few more good years (btw, the trend is against you, CD sales are going down and digital up).

Of course Hyman is right about track recognition because the majority of music that will be sold in the future will include meta-data already.

Has Gracenote tried to sue you or bully your customers yet? (if not, watch your back mofucka!)

Once a CD library is digitized, consumers are more likely to become “digital” consumers and begin consuming new digital services. Until consumers are converted, digital consumption is mainly curiosity based with no commitment to any product or premium service. Forrester Research reports that only 1 in 4 digital music player owners download music, leaving a big gap in potential revenue.

FACT: As of Feb. 29, 2006, Apple reports 1 billion tracks have been downloaded through iTunes, and over 42 million iPods have been sold, which equates to only 24 songs or roughly 2 CDs per iPod.

FACT: In just 2005, the RIAA reports nearly 800 million in CD sales for the US (or nearly 10 billion songs). Over the life of the CD, RIAA data shows over 11 billion units in circulation, or about 132 billion songs.

CD lookups are absolutely required for anyone looking to develop a truly mass market solution in digital audio, and in my humble opinion, a solution which has not yet been developed. iPod/iTunes are close, but with a minimum of $500 of investment needed to get started (iPod, PC) with a monthly broadband internet fee to access content, this leaves many consumers without. Currently, there is just a 57% broadband coverage in the US, so certainly digital content is still far away from achieving a medium-less distribution model they all strive for.

The track recognition technology is useful as well, but David Hyman is correct, the algorithms are commodities right now. The true value is the quality of data which is available, and access to keep improving quality. Today, databases need not have unique matching techniques, but rather focus on the quality of data delivered including accurate UPCs, ISRCs as well as other internal consistencies that allow for future development around.

case closed

AMG http://allmediaguide.com (now owned by Macrovision, unfortunately) offers a decent competitor to CDDB called “Lasso”. It is actually used by the SONY PlayStation 3! Pity none of the media (including TC) took the time to find that out. And naturally Gracenote chased AMG (including threatening its customers) for years with patent litigation. Luckily Lasso is still around as with many of Gracenote’s other former foes.

@ 15 david hyman

Typical. You can’t help yourself. Of course iTunes would work fine without CDDB just like many others who use Musicbrainz (aka FreeDB), AMG Lasso, or even MICROSOFT with its own CD database! Don’t you think Apple could easily create a better CDDB if it felt like it? They are the #1 music retailer! Don’t you think Apple or Microsoft could bury Gracenote so deep in legal fees and that is why you picked on the smaller players instead? If you really thought you had a legit claim of course you would have gone after the big pockets. It is your nature.

Perhaps there would be other competitors if you personally hadn’t used anticompetitive tactics to try and kill them? Have you considered that? (of course, no)

Scherf himself (see Wired interview) admits he wasn’t the first to invent the (extremely simple) CD track lookups. And even if he was, it is not like Gracenote owns a patent on CD lookups that has been proven in court to stand up! Why are you claiming otherwise?

Even after leaving Gracenote you are still making absurd hyperbolic assertions to con people into thinking that Gracenote has some impenetrable technology or proprietary IP that it in fact DOES NOT. Get over it. I know they are your investor and “technology” supplier, but please.

And cars with hard drives and CDDB chips? Funny. The future is called “iPod connector” and we are already there.

@18 Hyman, again

Anticompetitive monopolistic tactics will do that to a market. You made sure Musicbrainz (or the others I mentioned) would not have a fair shot.

Anyway — who gives a shit about CD lookups? Is this 1999 again? Are you sticking to this point because you realize it is Gracenote’s only significant revenue source?

there is little value in copyright fingerprinting. not a good business imho. and the algorithms are a commodity. the value is in the database of fingerprints for other things, like music management, serving related content, etc.