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Sony to Buy Gracenote

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Apr 23, 2008 08:23 AM
from the taking-from-the-community dept.
Media Music Businesses The Almighty Buck
Ian Lamont writes "Sony is buying Gracenote for $260 million. Sony will use Gracenote's online music database in its own digital content and devices, but Gracenote will operate separately and keep its own management. It's an interesting move, because many other entertainment companies and services depend on the Gracenote database, including iTunes, Yahoo, Winamp, and even the onboard stereo system used in some new Cadillacs. Gracenote has been criticized for turning the once-open CDDB project into a 'quagmire of heavy contracts, licensing fees, forced user registration and anti-competition clauses.'"
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[+] Your Rights Online: CDDB Joins The Bad Patent Club 152 comments
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Today I received a very ominous package from GraceNote, owners of CDDB. Already infamous for turning a wonderful open project into a quagmire of heavy contracts, licensing fees, forced user registration and anti-competition clauses, the package from GraceNote contained one thing: copies of their patents, freshly awarded. "Don't even think about using FreeDB", the packaged seemed to silently imply, "because we own the patents, period." That patent? "Method and system for finding approximate matches in a database." Ouch. Thanks, USPTO." Scary: I use freedb constantly. I'd hate to lose it.
Submission: Sony to buy Gracenote music data company by Ian Lamont (1116549)
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  • Gracenote has been criticized for turning the once open CDDB project into a 'quagmire of heavy contracts, licensing fees, forced user registration and anti-competition clauses.'
    No no, you've got it all wrong! Sony's changing all that! I just installed a client that they started hosting that allows me to access the compact disc database. No contract, no licensing, no registration, just had to run a simple file called 'sony-mp3-finder-RIAA-notifying-kernel-rootkit.exe.'

    Seriously, where does all this distrust and hate for Sony come from?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by allcar (1111567)
      Show me a technology where they did not try to seek to tie people into their proprietary solution - Betamax, Memory Stick, MiniDisc, UMD, BlueRay, to name just a few.

      • Re:You've Got It All Wrong! (Score:5, Informative)

        by dakameleon (1126377) on Wednesday April 23 2008, @08:54AM (#23170928)
        Walkman. Discman. Arguably both Sony's most successful consumer electronics products.

        • Walkman. Discman. Arguably both Sony's most successful consumer electronics products.
          You forget Trinitron.
          • IIRC, Trinitron wasn't a product, it was a tech tradename... Sony TV's featured Trinitron...

      • Re:You've Got It All Wrong! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Arivia (783328) <arivia@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 23 2008, @09:32AM (#23171444) Journal
        The PS3 (with the exception of Blu-Ray) is pretty open. It's all Bluetooth/USB (including support for the plug and play standard for keyboards, mice, USB keys, external hard disks, and so on). The ones with MemoryStick slots don't care if you use it or not - you are free to do things that you would do with external storage (backing up game saves, copying media, and copying firmware updates) on USB keys, MemorySticks, SD cards, or whatever, depending upon your fancy. The only case in which it overtly favors something proprietary is that certain features (DVD upscaling, for example) are limited or not available unless you're using the HDMI port for video. However, it doesn't complain if you simply switch out for a HDMI to DVI cable and run audio on RCA cables.

        In fact, it's downright weird to find proprietary things on the PS3 - GHIII's proprietary wireless dongles just make no sense in the context of how the system operates.
      • 3.5" floppy
        CD

        And the PS2 had a Linux distro made for it - by Sony.
      • PS2 DVD player. PS1 CD player. Any Sony TV with a build in VCR.
    • The best thing about these new bits of Sony software is that you don't even need to type in your name, DoB, SSN or any of the rest of it - it finds it all out for you! Nonsensical Bullshit Paradigm Shift 2.0 is SO cool!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sm62704 (957197)
        Sure they apologized

        So did Kevin Mitnick, but he still went to prison. Why didn't anybody go to prison for XCP [wikipedia.org] (alternate less serious link [uncyclopedia.org])?
      • They, and most other labels have done it before. Sony just got caught because their rootkit broke computers. The autorun DRM schemes used by other companies work (if you don't hold down shift), and thus, are not complained about.
        • People still buy Sony, even after they do all these things.
          I don't. The only music I buy online is from Wal-Mart where they sell me unlocked MP3 files and never from Sony or EMI.
          • Because the part of Sony that makes the PS3 has nothing to do with the part of Sony that sues people for making mp3 files?

            This line of reasoning cracks me up. The legal papers say "Sony" on them, don't they -- or at least RIAA, of which Sony's a member. The rootkit was distributed with CDs that said "Sony BMG," correct? The PS3 says "Sony" on it, doesn't it?

            That means they are using the same corporate goodwill to sell you all three products -- lawsuits, rootkits, and shiny baubles. The name "Sony" carri
  • I'm sure this is destined to be yet another rip-roaring success in the area of online music company purchases in the same manner as, errrrm, Napster, errrrr. Hang on a minute and I'll be able to think of one.
  • ... that's the end of that then...

  • freedb (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly (148874) on Wednesday April 23 2008, @08:33AM (#23170672)
    What is this CDDB you speak of? Some crufty, proprietary version of freedb? I'm sorry, how is this relevant again?
    • For the same reason that Internet Explorer is a crufty, proprietary version of Firefox :) Try and kill off the free stuff and then charge for what they've got?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah sure, until the current administrators of FreeDB sell out as Ti Kan and Steve Scherf did, and another grubby little company tells lies about it's "open" intentions then locks out the existing users by changing formats and switching to a draconian license.

      If you want to protect something like FreeDB from sell outs you need to

      1) Ensure that the data format and service protocol is wide WIDE open (XML, standard query structures), but the license prohibits switching the service protocol to the same data set

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by yoasif (969247)
          http://musicbrainz.org/ [musicbrainz.org] The data is either public domain or covered under Creative Commons. I believe the software is GPL. Definitely a better alternative to CDDB and freedb.
    • I imagine you know this, but it's relevant because of history. CDDB came first and was free. FreeDB only appeared to fill the hole left when CDDB was commercialized. It was exactly the same as if FreeDB were purchased tomorrow and then required a $50/month registration fee.
      • One difference though. You can go right now and download the GPL2-licensed freedb data to fork the service if you wish.
    • It's where the nine-out-of-ten people in Sony, Apple, M$, and most of the big name proprietary companies's target demographics get their Freedb functionality.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by hondo77 (324058)

      What is this CDDB you speak of? Some crufty, proprietary version of freedb? I'm sorry, how is this relevant again?
      <realitycheck>It's relevant because most of us are using iTunes.</realitycheck>

    • CDDB's Missing Features (Score:4, Funny)

      by joe_n_bloe (244407) on Wednesday April 23 2008, @12:38PM (#23173864) Homepage
      Do you mean the version of FreeDB that is missing the spelling errors and the duplicates?
  • I've got a bad feeling about this.
  • Sony's Obsession with Proprietary Formats [slashdot.org] -- "Obsessed with owning proprietary formats, Sony keeps picking fights. It keeps losing. And yet it keeps coming back for more, convinced that all it needs to do is push a bigger stack of chips to the center of the table."

    • Losses like BluRay, you mean?
      • I was pointing out that SONY has a certain type of positioning. An attitude. Their posture is to choose 'closed' systems and formats when they can, so they can control.

      • Re:SONY Loves Closed, Proprietary Systems (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 23 2008, @09:20AM (#23171278)
        Blue-ray's hardly a win, yet. Sure, they beat HD-DVD. Good for them.

        Then prices on Blue-ray shot up (gee, who'd have ever expected that to happen), early adopters have discovered that their expensive players can't play new Blue-ray discs thanks to Sony continuing to muck with the spec, leaving the PS3 the only future-proof Blue-ray player.

        But thanks to Sony purposely crippling the PS3 in order to try and leverage what they viewed as their console monopoly into winning the HD format war, they lost out to Nintendo and Microsoft. Every game release that has a PS3 version and an XBox360 version is better on the XBox360, without fail. Check the reviews.

        As an added bonus to Sony, just when they were starting to get close to actually making money on the PS3, the US economy started to collapse. Since Sony is a Japanese company which is based in yen, the falling US dollar is causing them to lose even more on every US sale than they were before. The US won't be seeing a price cut until the dollar stops its nosedive. The way the US economy is going, Sony may have to actually increase prices.

        They did manage to "win" the Blue-ray war. They won by losing their strength in the console market, and they won just in time to have the US economy collapse so that they can no longer count on sales there.

        To top it all off, the war they "won" wasn't really worth winning. HDTV adoption is picking up, but it's still a trifling fraction of the viewing population. Blue-ray became more expensive. DVD is good enough: Blue-ray won a meaningless war, at a great cost for Sony.

        Blue-ray's victory is meaningless.
      • Nah, more like Beta, CRVdisc, UMD or Minidisc.

          • Beta and Minidisc were used in the professional industry...
            Remember way back when they were marketed to consumers? That's how they were failures. As far as most non-industry folk are concerned the last beta recorder was made in the mid 80s, the last minidisc was pressed toward the end of the 90s, and the letters, "UMD" stand for Univeristy of MarylanD unless said hypothetical person owns a PSP.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by R2.0 (532027)
        Yes, Sony finally won one of their format wars. Finally, after years of failing to achieve market dominance, they have a success.

        Now what?

        They have lots of experience making money with consumer electronics that leverage open formats - Walkman, Discman, and the metric assloads of VHS and DVD players they have sold. They have ZERO experience leveraging a market dominant position into profit.

        Their attitude seems to have been "We make X dollars with Y percent of the market. So we will make X*(1/Y) dollars wi
      • The purchase of Gracenote puts SONY in an excellent position to squeeze online mp3 vendors. They also now have the power to introduce their own, "standard," for which they charge ludicrous licensing fees and kill the CDDB standard. If you look at SONY's past behavior this does seem likely, and even though there are several benign reasons they'd make a move like this one has to consider all the likely options.

  • Musicbrainz (Score:5, Informative)

    by AceJohnny (253840) <jlargentaye@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday April 23 2008, @08:57AM (#23170958) Journal
    Use MusicBrainz [musicbrainz.org]. All the cool kids are doing it!

    Seriously. Musicbrainz was created after the CDDB fiasco (and FreeDB had its own share of problems). It operates under a non-profit organization to guarantee its freedom.
    And on that feature bullet-point list, they add an API to recognize what that "Unknown Artist - Unknown Title.mp3" file you have.
  • the news announcement of the purchase? Yep, it was the sound of a flushing toilet (American Standard if I heard it right). Why a flushing toilet? Because Sony just flushed another part of the Internet multimedia experience down the shitter. All we can do now is watch it slowly slide into oblivion.

    These days, even though Sony is huge and not all parts or employees are particularly evil, I don't think I'd even use their batteries as a paperweight on my desk.
  • Anybody know of a good media player, now that I can't use Winamp any more? One that's like XMMS [wikipedia.org] would be my first choice.

    Or better yet, get Winamp to not use Gracenote? [uncyclopedia.org] If it's using Gracenote to get song titles, why won't it use FreeDB? [wikipedia.org]
    • Just a guess, but trash these:

      Filenames: Plugins\Gracenote dir: CDDBControlWinamp.dll | CDDBUIWinamp.dll | CddbMusicIDWinamp.dll | CddbWOManagerWinamp.dll | Cddb*.dll (misc libraries).
      Adds support for looking up Artist/Album/Title/etc info for Audio CD's.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MadKeithV (102058)
      Can't you just redirect the gracenote CDDB URLs in your hosts file, to the FreeDB ones?
      (See Point 4 here. [freedb.org] )
  • "a 'quagmire of heavy contracts, licensing fees, forced user registration and anti-competition clauses.'"

    Wow, I can see the boner in Sony's pants all the way from here.
  • now that iTunes is reliant on Sony for it's data? Sony will surely extort their way into becoming part of the chain - forcing Apple to use something other than Gracenote.

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