News

Gracenote Powers New Music Devices For Home Audio (20/1/2004)

Gibson Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox, PhatNoise(r) Home Digital Media Player, Yamaha's New MusicCast MCX 1000, Rockford's Omnifi(tm); Denon Home Server NS-S100; all Adopt Gracenote Music Management System

Gracenote(r), the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media, today announced that several leading home electronics manufactures have adopted the Gracenote Music Management System in industry-leading new devices. CES 2004 Innovations Award winner for software and embedded technologies, The Gracenote Music Management System is intended to improve the usability and value of all digital music playing devices and software applications. Located in Central Hall 2, Booth #8955, Gracenote will demonstrate the benefits offered by its new product suite in new home audio devices being launched at CES, including: The Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox by Gibson Audio; The PhatNoise(r) Home Digital Media Player; The Yamaha MusicCast MCX 1000; The Denon Home Server NS-S100; and the latest version of The Rockford Omnifi(tm) for Home. Additionally, two new media servers will debut at CES using Gracenote's technology, from IntelliNet Controls and Russound, respectively.

The Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox, which won "Best of" in the Audio category of the CES 2004 Innovations Awards, is a great example of the power that Gracenote brings to cutting edge digital music products. "In creating the Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox we were looking to combine a name from an earlier era with state-of-the-art technology and an elegant, simple user experience," stated Kris Carter, President of Gibson Audio. "The Gracenote Music Management System plays a key role in that experience by providing our users with instant CD information and linking to third party content such as CD cover art."

"The fast-paced evolution of home audio is forcing manufacturers to create devices that offer both cutting-edge technology and a short learning curve for users," said Ty Roberts, Chief Technology Officer for Gracenote. "Our technology was developed with two criteria in mind; ensuring that all user functions are easy to implement and use; and that they offer highly-valued features, ranging from basic music recognition, to the creation of customized playlist definitions that can be saved and used over and over again - at the touch of a button."

Gracenote Music Management System is a groundbreaking digital music platform that provides advanced functionality for all audio devices. The foundation of the suite is Gracenote's industry standard CDDB music database and CD-identification technology and Gracenote MusicID for song-level and waveform music identification; once files have been correctly identified, Gracenote Clean automatically sorts and re-tags all the digital files in a person's collection, turning them into fully-functional, digital music libraries; finally, Gracenote Playlist enables automatic and dynamic playlists at a touch of button, and Gracenote Link adds related music content and album art for an enriched listening experience. Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 is available now and is offered with a bundled pricing package.

www.gracenote.com