Gracenote Launches Platform to Link Disparate Music Sources in Connected Cars

Gracenote launched a connected music solution for the automotive market linking terrestrial radio to online music services in an effort to create a common platform for music sources within a car’s head unit. The technology will be available for 2017 model year cars, Gracenote said in a news release. The multiple choices for music content in a car -- including AM/FM, CDs, satellite radio, Internet radio, subscription music services and music stored on a smartphone -- have created a disparate audio experience in vehicles, Gracenote said. The company’s goal is to offer a consistent user interface across all sources for metadata presented on a vehicle’s display. Gracenote’s solution, Entourage Radio, adds an intelligent layer that “helps identify what songs are being played and the source,” said Gracenote Chief Strategy Officer Ty Roberts. Gracenote Entourage is the underlying technology that enables continuous audio fingerprinting of songs for real-time music recognition, the company said. Being able to identify the audio source in real time enables Gracenote to deliver the correct song, artist and album information, “driver-relevant” cover art and station logos to the automotive display, it said. After a song is recognized, listeners can direct the head unit to play songs that are similar in genre, mood and era, to play additional songs from the artist or add to an existing playlist within a streaming music service, it said. For carmakers, Entourage Radio solves the challenge of fragmentation of entertainment services by market, Gracenote said. Music streaming services have varying levels of popularity and availability by market, and Gracenote’s large catalog of song IDs for streaming services gives carmakers the ability to link drivers to regional music services, the company said. An option within the platform is to use Gracenote’s Rhythm music discovery platform to enable “automatic playlisting” within a local library, it said.