You've probably used Gracenote thousands of times and have been none the wiser, but for good reason: the musical metadata service lives in the background of several apps, appearing only momentarily to bring meaning to your favorite tunes. Now, Gracenote is looking to expand its reach by opening its APIs and SDKs to app developers -- effectively putting its massive database in the hands of all who seek it. Of course, ripping CDs isn't quite what it once was, and that's why Gracenote has also opened its MusicID song recognition service to developers, allowing them to harness the same functionality of apps such as Shazam and SoundHound. The free service is available now, and for extra insight, you'll find the full PR after the break.
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SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Gracenote Developer program launched today, making the company's music APIs and SDKs available for developers. This opens the world's largest and most trusted source of music metadata and music recognition technology to developers who are building the future of music.
Developers can now access Gracenote's Mobile Client featuring Gracenote MusicID®, an audio fingerprinting technology that can be integrated into mobile Apps to identify artists, albums and tracks by simply holding a phone to the music-in a cafe, on the street or whenever the moment strikes. To date, Gracenote MusicID has powered some of the world's most popular music recognition Apps and services, from Soundtracking and Sony TrackID to musiXmatch and Rhapsody SongMatch.
"Innovation comes from anywhere, not just from big, well-funded companies," said Stephen White, president of Gracenote. "There is no other open development platform for music available today that has the depth and scale that Gracenote supports. We want to discover the next great music developers by giving them a chance to dive deep into this data and technology, play around with it, and see what they can create."
The Gracenote Developer program supports a variety of development platforms, including mobile, desktop and Web APIs. These APIs enable the recognition of music from text lookups, CDs, digital files and audio captured with a mobile device, and returns descriptive metadata for more than 2,000 music genres and sub-genres, artist origins, and more than 100 music moods. Developers can also tap into the world's largest commercial source of Album Cover Art, artist biographies and other related content.
"During the early days of CDDB, developers had access to our database and service for free, and their participation was key to our success," said Steve Scherf, co-founder of Gracenote. "We created the Gracenote Developer program to not only acknowledge our roots, but also because we believe that allowing developers to access our services will benefit Gracenote and the music community as a whole."
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