Standing out in a cloud

24 February 2011, Last updated at 00: 05 GMT by Robert Plummer Business reporter, BBC News Gracenote says that its technology helps people discover new music Marketing in the digital age is difficult, but one of the main problems is simply connecting with your audience.

In the old days, the main battle was to obtain records or CDS in stores, hoping that fans curious browsing in the racks would pick up on them.

Nowadays, modern technology makes it a breeze for artists to get their work on the internet. The trouble is that you're easily overlooked.

Most digital music services offer a wider range of songs that could offer any store of bricks and Malta. But when it comes to recommending new, unheard music, usually point you in the direction of what else has purchased the last listener.

"A music service could have 300,000 artists, but the average consumer only know 10 artists, so what about the other 299,990?" says Ty Roberts, chief technology officer for the Gracenote music database firm.

"Well we have software that analyzes what we know about music. It tracks and pulls them apart and analyze energy, time, the mood.

"You could take Black Sabbath and say this is a dark, brooding, Gothic, heavy metal. If people like that, we can therefore say that other kind of music you might like. "

Accounting for taste

Gracenote Software is in the heart of many music services "cloud based"-i.e. services that do not require you to download songs or host them on your computer.

Instead, the music is on a server and is transmitted to your PC, laptop, mobile phone or other device.

Software for recognition of the Gracenote Music is used by Apple iTunes

Services like Pandora and Spotify, MOG all employ know-how of Gracenote to some extent.

But what makes use of Gracenote is unlimited music service new Sony, available through its online platform Qriocity, a payment service for which gives full access to six million songs.

The service was launched last week in the United States, having already been made available in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada and Japan.

Sony service uses Gracenote Discover technology to analyze the taste in music, based on the collection of an existing user.

As well as human input from a team of international experts, Gracenote Music subject also works of computer-based analysis of waveforms that produces what the company calls "trace level descriptive data".

Using this information, the service is able to provide custom music recommendations for individual consumers, giving them new songs to listen to.

«All»

"That the technology is crucial to make these services cloud work," says Mr Roberts of Gracenote.

"A lot of people who use these services may be disconnected from the music for decades. They still like music, but they have not gone to the record store in a long time. "

It is not surprising that Sony is the most enthusiastic user of latest Gracenote technology, since it has purchased the company in 2008.

However, Gracenote has maintained its headquarters in Emeryville, California, and on the change of ownership has not stopped it that provides services to other businesses.

"We work with a lot of other companies that are competitors of Sony-every company we have worked with in 2008 is still with us today," says Mr. Roberts.

"Everyone gets all the data. We are part of the community of Silicon Valley and there is a cooperative spirit.

"I've been doing this for 15 years and is quite a good community. We know everyone else. "

Mr Roberts says that is a "challenge" for his company to become "a more publicly recognized brand".

If you have heard of it, chances are that it is because you saw the message "connection to the database, Gracenote" while ripping a CD into iTunes from Apple.

Most popular product of the company remain his great music database, which contains the details of eight million CD and 100 million songs, iTunes and other such programs to produce fully tagged MP3 tracks to your music player.

Growing fast

"The music industry ever thought of putting a number on CD indicating what is," says Mr. Roberts.

The Gracenote software is behind many MP3 coding systems

"Our system uses the length of the individual tracks. If you put those numbers in a sequence, create a telephone number for the CD.

"If you have six to 10 tracks, the sequence lengths is quite unique. Is down one 75th of a second. "

Gracenote MusicID product also helps Apple Genius service that analyzes your songs and build playlists based on any artist.

And a third of the company's revenue now comes from cars, thanks to the incorporation of its database products from how communication system in auto Sync us Ford.

All these activities have helped to grow quickly. Gracenote Founded in 1998, had just 2004 staff of only 20, but now have 320, with offices in Munich, Berlin and Tokyo, as well as part-time workers CD details all over the world.

"Now we have a total access 5.5 billion searches per month, so that we are closing the McDonald," says Mr. Roberts. "We are like the McDonald's music, but with less cheese".

The only problem is that all these cloud-based services are not necessarily persuade people to pay money for music.

Unlimited music service has met with a lukewarm reception from some technology analysts, who cannot see why consumers should be to pay for something that you could get for nothing from the likes of Spotify.

Unlike Spotify, Sony does not have a free option.

Mr Roberts admits that the culture of something-for-nothing remains a problem for the music industry.

"There is increased use of music," he says.

"People are playing more music everywhere, but that doesn't translate into sales, so we get this right as well. We get this right, we'll be around to make more music. "