Emeryville, California (November 22, 12 AM , EDT) — Gracenote®, the global leader in digital entertainment technology, today announced two new services to its Gracenote Mobile Music Service suite that significantly extend mobile music capabilities for wireless operators, service providers and handset manufacturers. Building on Gracenote's award-winning music recognition technology, wireless integrators can now seamlessly integrate related content and commerce offerings directly onto the handset using Gracenote Link^SM, enabling their customers to automatically purchase ringtones, ringsongs and more. Additionally, Gracenote announced the availability of an integrated PC media manager, The Gracenote Media Manager, which enables handset manufacturers, wireless operators and service providers to offer consumers a seamless, end-to-end content music experience that integrates organized content on the PC to be delivered to the handset, through a branded mobile experience. Relating to this announcement, early adopters of Gracenote's mobile services in Asia and Europe have recorded rates of 18 percent for customer purchases directly from the service.

"Music is a crucial element to the next era of mobile handsets and services. We're already seeing the tremendously addictive qualities of these services blow-away typical customer adoption and purchase rates for mobile services - and these offerings are only in their earliest stages," stated Craig Palmer, president and CEO for Gracenote. "Gracenote's Mobile Music Services are designed to make it easy for consumers to get the mobile content they want, whether it's a ringtone, ringsong, karaoke or download --putting customer buying power directly into the hands of wireless operators, service providers and handset manufacturers."

The Gracenote Mobile Music Service provides technology targeted towards helping wireless operators, service providers and handset manufacturers to have the ability to take advantage of higher bandwidth networks, new music phones offering increased storage capacity and better sound, as well as the willingness of consumers to purchase targeted goods through their mobile phone.

The Gracenote Mobile Music Service links its global music recognition technology with any content or commerce platform. The service offers the following components:

1. Gracenote Mobile MusicID^SM Just as carriers and service providers must tailor their offerings to each market, music recognition services need to reflect local tastes and content. Gracenote's mobile solution provides the industry's fastest music identification & discovery service, helping to minimize network infrastructure costs and create a quick and satisfying customer experience. Using its global database of over 7 million waveform fingerprints, Gracenote builds specifically tailored databases for each region and market. This ensures a high level of accuracy, while guaranteeing capacity and reducing scalability costs for carriers and integrators.
   
   The service offers a combination of Gracenote's global database of music information and digital fingerprints paired with powerful waveform recognition technology from Philips Research to provide an accurate, scalable, and truly global solution.



2. Gracenote Link^SM enables wireless operators and service providers to easily and cost-effectively integrate content and commerce services such as ring-tones, ringbacks, ringsongs, full-song downloads, and dedications with Gracenote's Mobile MusicID^SM service. Gracenote Link^SM enables carriers to offer consumers a full, seamless and immediate purchase experience, by offering commerce choices at the moment they are most appropriate.



3. Gracenote Media Manager enables handset manufacturers, wireless providers and service providers to offer consumers a simple and rich music application that extends from the PC to the mobile handset. This fully brand-able PC application offers a complete environment to manage and play digital music on the PC and rapidly transfer it to a music-enabled handset with clean and standardized music metadata. The Gracenote Media Manager includes advanced features such as:
   
   
   • Automatic media organization & retagging that cleans music libraries to complete & consistent metadata standards
   • Synchronization of music files with the handset
   • One-touch playlisting - music mix selections based on artist, genre, random, user behavior, most played, or gender, similar song or artist
   • Media browser to enable display of integrated, third-party content and commerce
   • Customizable interface, enabling brand building for wireless operator, service provider or handset manufacturer

In addition, Gracenote is also introducing an embedded version of its technology for the handset, bringing advanced playlist and content integration capabilities to the handset.

"Gracenote's services make it possible for carriers and handset manufacturers to change what people can do with their phones - opening up a new world of possibilities for an all-in-one device for communications and entertainment," stated Phil Leigh, Inside Digital Media. "Gracenote Link also substantially reduces the amount of work carriers or service providers have to accomplish to provide a rich commerce offering."

Success in Asia and Europe

Early adopters in Asia and Europe credit Gracenote's technology and speed of service with their success. KTF, Korea's largest mobile carrier, launched Gracenote MusicID and Gracenote Link in September 2004. Gracenote has an agreement with Paris-based Musiwave, a leading provider of mobile entertainment applications, to provide Gracenote's mobile service to European markets. Musiwave is currently providing mobile music recognition for Spanish carrier, Amena.

"The success of our mobile music portal is based on offering more choices to our customers, whether they want to buy ringtones, ringback, dedications, karaoke, music recommendations, or buy the entire album - we want to cater to all their needs at the exact point of purchase - and Gracenote's service makes this integration possible. We're already seeing conversion rates of as much as 20 percent for these services - which are truly addictive to young mobile users," stated Hee Oong Suh, New Business Group, Music Business Team, Senior Manager from KTF. "We're also tremendously pleased by the speed and accuracy of Gracenote's service, which can be more than twice as fast as others."

"We're seeing tremendous success from our newly launched Music Wizard™ service," stated Guillaume Decugis, COO of Musiwave. "Within six months of our commercial launch with Spanish mobile operator Amena last year, Music Wizard™ was generating 500,000 calls per month. This level of traffic, combined with an outstanding 18 percent conversion rate of additional mobile content downloaded, such as ringtones, dedications, by Amena's customers, proves there is significant commercial and marketing appeal for this type of service."

In addition, Gracenote is working with several partners to extend the reach of Gracenote's Mobile Music Service on a global level. Other newly launching international agreements include:

• Japan-based Media Socket, a leading BREW application provider and partner to several large mobile carriers in Japan, plans to launch a service this year
• Optimus, a carrier in Portugal, recently launched a music recognition service in partnership with Musiwave
• Golden Bytes Music, a "mobile gateway" provider based in the Netherlands, plans to launch a carrier independent music recognition service to provide integrated digital music downloads in the Benelux region this month
• Ericsson has an agreement to implement Gracenote's services in Mexico

About Gracenote
Gracenote® is the worldwide leader in digital entertainment technology. 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. Gracenote's solutions are embedded in leading media players such as Apple's iTunes, RealNetworks RealPlayer, AOL's Winamp and CD/DVD PC applications from Roxio and Sonic Solutions. Gracenote is embedded in leading portable, home and automobile consumer electronics brands such as Alpine, Clarion, Denon, Fujitsu Ten, JVC, Gibson Audio, Kenwood, Matsushita, Onkyo, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, RCA, Rockford Fosgate, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Yamaha.
For more information about Gracenote: www.gracenote.com/corporate/.