Gracenote Standardizes ID Structure of Music, Sports, Video Databases
Gracenote standardizing the ID structure of its music, sports and video databases is a big step toward the company’s goal of physically linking the trio to create a database, Simon Adams, general manager-video, told us. Gracenote, which Nielsen bought in December for $560 million (see 1612200022), set out three years ago to become a single-source provider of entertainment across its three core verticals, said a spokeswoman. “We’re in the first phase of single-point access of this phase with the persistent IDs.”
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Gracenote's music, sports and video databases are populated individually, said Adams. A normalized ID structure allows its customers -- multichannel video programming distributors, CE makers and streaming media companies -- to interlink between assets. A consumer who wanted to search for Justin Timberlake content, for instance, could link from the music database to the movie database to find movies the actor is in or find out if he’ll be on an upcoming talk show. “If he’s on Jimmy Kimmel, using the Justin Timberlake ID attached to that show, you could link back into music, or into Spotify, which uses our IDs, and launch a Justin Timberlake playlist,” Adams said.
Historically, Gracenote customers have had to accommodate different sets of IDs for their product offerings from different data suppliers, “which makes integration pretty difficult,” said Adams. Buying Baseline’s The Studio System platform, What’s-ON and HWW broadened its database, giving the company additional coverage in North America, India and Australia. With Gracenote moving to a single, normalized ID structure, over-the-top suppliers, CE manufacturers and MVPDs with operations in different countries can “harmonize” their electronic program guides (EPGs) and deploy them once, rather than having different implementations for each country, he said.
“If you look at our relationships with the Samsungs and the Comcasts of the world, it’s no longer about just video,” said the spokeswoman. Companies are integrating video and sports content as well as music, she said, and being able to provide persistent IDs with structured data throughout all three verticals is where the industry is headed.
The end consumer is “wanting everything and wanting it now,” said Adams. Previously, Gracenote delivered data updates four times a day. Now, with an application program interface, Gracenote can make a change and make it available immediately in the cloud for its customers to access, he said, citing program changes. “If we know an event is running long for a DVR extend,” it’s now easier for Gracenote customers to integrate those changes and provide “a much better service to their consumers,” he said.
On whether there’s the potential for information overload, Adams said Gracenote is providing options for its customers “to build the right experience. We’re not saying they have to use it all.” It’s up to customers how they populate the data, he said.
New experiences are demanding new data solutions, said Adams. “We’re being forever asked for more and different types of images,” he said. That includes images for 4:3, 16:9 and even 1:1 aspect ratios, along with standard definition, HD and 4K resolution. Increasingly, customers are requesting episodic images for binge watchers. Citing the 50-plus year-old Star Trek series, Adams said, “There was no such thing as an episodic image if you wanted to binge-watch that series,” so Gracenote created episodic images for program guides “because of the way people consume data from OTT sites.” Viewers want to see a different image on an episode-by-episode basis to decide which one they want to watch, he said. “The number of images we have to create now is going up significantly and that’s a major part of how we’re differentiating vs. our competitors.”