Registration and Requested Information. Registration to use the Gracenote Service now consists simply of reading and agreeing to Terms of Use for the Gracenote Service. Older versions of the Gracenote Service may also ask for a Nickname and Password and additional optional information, such as age, sex, country or zip code. As we no longer collect or use this information, if you provide it, we will discard it.
Identifying Information. The Gracenote Service uses a unique identifier to track queries for statistical purposes (see Data Aggregation below) and to allow personalization features (see Customized Content below). This is a number that Gracenote assigns to you at random when you register. (A numeric identifier is sometimes called a Globally Unique Identifier, or GUID. However, there are many different uses of GUIDs, some benign and some controversial, in the industry.) Gracenote does not generate this number from any hardware identifier or any other information that can be traced back to you or the computer you are using. The purpose of a randomly assigned numeric identifier is to allow Gracenote to count queries without knowing anything about who you are. Disclosure of Personal Information. We do not disclose your individual information to any other company. You should be aware, however, that it is possible that we might be required to make disclosure, for example in response to court orders or in governmental investigations.
Customized Content. When you look up an album, Gracenote may use information about the album to customize the content, advertisements, or other promotions displayed in applications that use the Gracenote Service. Gracenote does this without referring to any personal information.
Data Aggregation. Gracenote collects aggregate statistics on which music and artists are most commonly identified by users with the Gracenote Service. ("Aggregate statistics" means "group statistics" such as the Gracenote Digital Top Ten, not individual statistics about your personal use of the service.) Besides posting these statistics for you and other fans to enjoy, Gracenote may publish or share this aggregate information with other companies. This aggregate data, by its nature, will not reveal the identity of our users. We also use aggregate data to help us improve our servers and other components of the Gracenote Service.
Use of IP Addresses. As with any Internet-based service, queries to our service transmit an IP Address, as this is what allows delivery of the information you requested back to you. We also use IP addresses for security purposes and to determine the approximate geographic location (the country or metropolitan region) of the query. We use the approximate geographic location for several purposes: to create aggregate statistics about the use of the service by country or metropolitan region, to help determine the language of submitted CD data, and such administrative purposes as load balancing of servers. We do not use IP addresses for direct marketing purposes and we have neither the desire nor the technology to use IP addresses to identify an individual user by name, address or exact location. Furthermore, we delete the IP address when it is no longer needed for security or approximate geolocation purposes.
DSP Attributes. To provide music recognition and classification of digital music files, Gracenote uses a number of techniques. One technique compares a short "audio fingerprint" computed from the music itself (i.e., algorithmically derived qualities that are used to identify the audio), to a database of audio fingerprints submitted to Gracenote. If your software uses the Gracenote service, your software may automatically compute and submit audio fingerprints and DSP Attributes (i.e., algorithmically derived qualities that are used to describe various aspects of the audio such as mood and tempo) to the Gracenote database. The software can do this in such a way that any use of computer resources is negligible. Audio fingerprints and DSP Attributes do not contain any information about you or your computer, and do not violate any copyright laws. Nevertheless, if you do not wish to submit audio fingerprints or DSP Attributes, do not use Gracenote enabled software. Policy Changes. If we decide to make changes in our policies regarding consumer privacy, we will post them at this location on the Gracenote Site. If you have questions or comments about our policy, please email us at GracenotePrivacy@gracenote.com.
© 2008 Gracenote. All rights reserved.
This statement last updated on April 07, 2008.
