Sony to Buy Gracenote 146
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.'"
The CDDB I contributed to?!!?!? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:freedb (Score:2, Interesting)
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 if you fork. In other words, if you fork you have a backwards commitment to the established collective.
2) Have a poisoning proof distributed database synchronisation network that makes sure the actual data has *multiple* owners and a licence that allows any of the multiple owners to fork. With enough active maintainers a cohesive effect will keep them all working to expand a common data set.
Any monolithic data set maintained by one body/org is prone to weasels selling it out.
Re:Musicbrainz (Score:3, Interesting)
I already have tens of GB of MP3s in iTunes that I burned from CDs myself -- and iTunes automatically looks up the tags in CDDB. I see that I can short-circuit that lookup and manually tag all the files myself via unchecking the "Look up CD names from the Internet?" option in the Advanced pane of the preferences, but is there a tool (e.g., an AppleScript) that'll update my Library from Musicbrainz or FreeDB or whatever?