Gracenote Global Music Database Identifies 2 Billionth CD

Market Wire, April, 2005

Gracenote®, a leader in global digital entertainment technology, today celebrated over 10 years of the Gracenote CDDB helping consumers identify and enjoy digital music around the world by surpassing two billion CDs identified. The two billionth CD was by Rusted Root, a neo-hippie band, for the album, "When I Woke." Launched in 1995 as CDDB, Gracenote's Global Music Database is part of a complete content solution that enables users to identify, manage and enjoy their digital media collections. Widely adopted by consumer electronics and PC application companies, Gracenote's technology is an "essential" ingredient in the world of digital media.

"Global data quality is a big part of the value we provide in our digital music devices, which is why we entrust this critical job to Gracenote," stated Patrick Han, Manager of Product Planning from Samsung. "Regardless of where our devices are sold, whether it's in Korea, the U.S. or Europe, we know that our customers will experience locally relevant content with the highest degree of music information accuracy and coverage. Gracenote's high standards have a tremendous impact on how well our devices perform in many markets and this is positive affirmation for our brand."

Accuracy on a Global Scale

Offering a highly reliable source of music information with a globally scaling solution, Gracenote provides the world's largest and farthest reaching database, including:

     --  Metadata on 3.6 million CDs and 46 million tracks, including:
         --  Album, track and artist name
         --  Genre and release date; enabling people to sort their
             libraries based on a broad range of music styles and eras
     --  8 million waveform fingerprints allowing identification of
         individual music files in a user's collection
     --  New content being added daily from across the globe:
         --  Data on 2,500 new CDs and 32,000 new tracks
         --  7,000 new waveform fingerprints for identifying single
             digital files
     --  Content from 213 countries and territories in 80 languages:
         --  Including character recognition of Japanese Kanji, Simplified
             and Traditional Chinese and Korean Hangul and Hanja

The Best Regional Content

Gracenote uses a multi-step approach to create a complete media database, including community submissions, content submitted directly to Gracenote by over 200 content partners and extended data added by Gracenote's in-house music experts. Gracenote's data quality processes include:

     --  Extensive rule sets for processing community submissions to create
         an accurate and complete data for each CD and Track
     --  Content Partner tools to allow labels and artists to submit and
         verify data for their own content
     --  The most popular CDs and tracks in each geographical region are
         verified and augmented with extended data by Gracenote music
         experts
         --  Professional editorial teams in place for U.S., Japan, Korea,
             China, and soon in Europe
         --  Extensive, proprietary genre and musical style classifications
             enabling users to better classify their libraries; these
             include over 1,500 genre categories covering a global range of
             music styles ranging from well-known international genres like
             Hip Hop -- to regional genres such as Basque Bertsolaritza,
             South African Kwaito and Brazilian Axê
     --  Special attention is given to Japanese music and genres:
         --  Micro genres for Japanese music, including: "J-Pop," "Game
             Music," "Visual Rock," "Enka," "Kayokyoku," "J-Indies" and
             traditional Japanese music
         --  "Betsumei" data providing Japanese music nicknames and "YOMI"
             data providing Japanese phonetic information (needed to enable
             voice control systems), is provided through Gracenote's
             partner network
         --  Extended music information for many Japanese artists (artist
             type, genre, era)

Leading Brands Using the Gracenote Database:

Spanning across home, portable, auto and mobile sectors, Gracenote's solutions are relied on to power many of the world's leading digital media applications and devices. Leading Gracenote-enabled brands include; media players such as Apple's iTunes, RealNetworks RealPlayer, AOL's Winamp, Napster's Napster 3.0, and CD/DVD PC applications from Roxio and Sonic Solutions. Leading portable, home and automobile consumer electronics brands include Alpine, Clarion, Denon, Fujitsu Ten, Kenwood, Matsushita, Onkyo, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, and Yamaha; and mobile music application customers include KTF, (Korea), Musiwave/Amena (Spain) and Goldenbytes (Netherlands).

About Gracenote

Gracenote is a leader in global digital entertainment technology. Formally known as CDDB, Gracenote provides critical embedded software and content to businesses that enable consumers to better manage, enjoy and discover digital media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Gracenote also has offices in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Seoul and Hong Kong. For more information about Gracenote: www.gracenote.com/corporate/