MediaVOCS(TM)

Say it, then play it.
Gracenote MediaVOCS™ makes controlling your music collection simple, intuitive, and as easy as the spoken word. Gracenote has combined its expertise in music information, navigation and playlisting solutions with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology, creating a breakthrough in digital music system ease-of-use. This combination of market-leading technologies enables device manufacturers to quickly deploy advanced speech-based media control features in all types of digital entertainment devices - and to pass on a superior user experience to their customers. MediaVOCS-enabled products provide music fans with hands-free access to their entire music collections in the car, at home or on the go.

THE RIGHT MUSIC AT THE RIGHT TIME

Identification Lets You Find and Organize Music
When integrated with the Gracenote Media Management System, MediaVOCS provides voice command-and-control functionality and unlocks the potential of devices that can store large digital music collections. With today's music fans amassing large collections, it is nearly impossible to easily access the right music at the right time. Traditional graphic user interfaces, with their small screens and limited controls, are just not practical when trying to find a specific song in a 5,000-song collection while driving in traffic or in the middle of a workout. Listeners need a simpler way to access and enjoy their music. MediaVOCS enables music consumers to use voice commands to:
  • Instantly Navigate to Any Song, Album, Artist or Genre;
    • Play any individual song, album, artist or genre in a collection, just by saying its name
  • Create New Instant Mixes On-The-Fly;
    • Create More Like This™ instant playlists to stay in the mood of the song currently playing
    • Describe any combination of qualities of the music they want to hear in natural language - such as "60's Detroit Soul" to generate new "On-The-Fly" Mixes
  • Get Information on Artists and Songs;
    • Get more information on a favorite song currently playing by simply asking, "What is this?"

Gracenote's Unique Offering: More Than Just Words

While ASR and TTS technologies are not new to the digital landscape, none are designed to address the complexities of typical music-related proper names and terms. Standard speech technologies cannot consistently recognize or pronounce common artists, track, album and genre names. These often contain a variety of non-standard terms, including multi-ethnic names, abbreviations, nicknames and invented words that defy the default pronunciation and language rules built into these systems. MediaVOCS addresses these limitations by employing Gracenote's exclusive database of alternate names and phonetic transcriptions to recognize and correctly pronounce common problematic names.

Phonetic Transcription Data

MediaVOCS provides the essential and critical phonetic transcription data required to not only recognize and pronounce music names and terms correctly, but also to recognize common user mispronunciations:
  • Artist names: "Sade" (pronounced "shah-DAY"), "Björk" (pronounced "bee-YORK"),
    • 311 (pronounced "three-eleven", not "three-one-one"); "Aaliyah" (pronounced "Uh-LEE-uh"); "Chic" (pronounced "sheek")
  • Album and song titles: "Aja" (pronounced "A-zjyah"), "808 State" (pronounced "eight-oh-eight state"), "The Girl from Ipanema" (the last word pronounced "ee-puh-NEE-muh").
  • Genre names: Merengue (pronounced "muh-RANG-gay")
Phonetic Variants
Music fans from around the world have their own way of pronouncing a band or artist's name. Phonetic variants enable recognition of a wide range of pronunciations.
  • Artist names: Gloria Estefan (alternate pronunciations "eh-STAY-fan" or "EH-stah-fan")
  • Album and song titles: D'yer Mak'er ("dja-MAY-ka" or "DI-yer-MAK-er");
  • Genre names: Quebecois ("ke-be-KWAH" or "KWE-be-koy").
Additional Artist, Album and Track Alternate Names
Elvis Presley isn't just Elvis Presley. He's also "The King". MediaVOCS accounts for many nicknames and aliases coined for iconic artists and bands.
  • Artist Nicknames: "The Fab Four" (The Beatles), "The King" (Elvis Presley), "Ol' Blue Eyes" (Frank Sinatra), "The Stones" (The Rolling Stones)
  • Artist Short Names: "Dylan" (Bob Dylan), "Aretha" (Aretha Franklin), "Mozart" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
  • Artist Name Acronyms: "CCR" (Creedence Clearwater Revival), "BTO" (Bachman Turner Overdrive)
  • Album Title Nicknames: "Zep Four", "Zoso", "Black Dog", and "Runes" (for the untitled fourth Led Zeppelin album), "The White Album" (The Beatles self-titled album).
  • Track Title Nicknames: "Chestnuts Roasting Over an Open Fire" (for "The Christmas Song", "N.I.B." (for the Black Sabbath song "Nativity in Black")

Enhanced Voice Commands to Manage, Enjoy, and Discover Music
In just a few words you can, play your favorite song, play your favorite album, or even create an entire automatic playlist to fit your mood. MediaVOCS is used in conjunction with Gracenote MusicID™, Playlist™, Playlist Plus™, and Link™ to enable voice control of all of the most popular Gracenote functions. For example:
  • MusicID
    • Identification: "What is This?", "Artist Name?", "Song Name?", "What Year Is This From?"
    • Playback: "Play Artist 'Bowie'", "Play Song 'Fame'", "Pause", "Repeat"
  • Playlist and Playlist Plus
    • Automatic Playlist: "More Like This", "More Like This Artist", "More From This Place", "More From This Year", "Play 50's Jazz" "Play Female Duos"
  • Link
    • Link Services: "Buy Ringtone", "Read Review", "Download Album", "Buy Ticket"
  • Navigation:
    • "Browse Songs From 1982", "Browse French Artists", "Browse Blues Artists"


For more information please contact GracenoteLicensing@gracenote.com

 What's Included in Device Development Kit::

  • Sample application and source code
  • Source code for operating system abstraction layer
  • Reference ports for Windows, Linux, or Darwin platforms
  • Embedded database and decryption key
  • Object code for full database lookup layer, cross-compiled to device
  • Documentation

Consumer Electronics Device System Requirements:
  • Prototyping and Development
    The minimum requirements for device code development are as follows:
    • Operating Systems Supported: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Suse Linux 9, or Macintosh OSX.
    • System Requirements: 256 MB RAM to build sample code; 2 GB hard disk space for tool kit files, database, and documentation.
    • CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive (or another mechanism for playback of digital music that can pass raw TOC data, if CD recognition is a desired feature): Accuracy to 1/75 of a second.
    • Developer Environment: The Windows sample application and supplied source code use Visual Studio 6.0. The Linux and Macintosh OSX sample application and supplied source code use GCC with GNU Make-compatible Make files. The source files are written in standard ANSI C and are designed for easy porting and compiling on various target operating systems and environments.
    • Code: C source code / Visual C++ 6.0 or GNU development tools (GCC, Make, etc).
    • Internet connection: An Internet connection is required for online database lookups and updates.

  • Target Device
      The device code is designed to have a small footprint, to easily integrate to the application and to be portable to many architectures. Gracenote MediaVOCS for devices is compiled into object code for the target microprocessor and operating system. The minimum requirements to run on a device on most platforms are as follows:
    • Processor: 64 and 32-bit microprocessor and operating system (other designs by Gracenote approval).
    • Operating Systems Supported: Most commercial 32 bit Operating Systems, including Linux, VxWorks, QNX, and others. Other operating systems may be supported upon customer request.
    • Disk Space (for Gracenote Embedded Media Databases): Varies based on specific product configurations and target regions, please contact for more details.
    • ROM: 256 bytes for the decryption key
    • CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive (or another mechanism for playback of digital music that can pass raw TOC data, if CD recognition is a desired feature): Accuracy to 1/75 of a second
    • Code: C source code / Visual C++ 6.0 or GNU development tools (GCC, Make, etc).
    • Internet connection: An Internet connection is required for online database lookups and updates.
    • Memory: MediaVOCS does not require significant incremental memory above that required for the other Gracenote SDKs used in a particular implementation (MusicID, Playlist, Playlist Plus, and/or Link).

Note: System requirements for the underlying 3rd party ASR/TTS solution will vary depending on vendor and product configuration.