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March 2005
How Gracenote built a global business through partnership with Japan.
The hidden revolution: sayonara, Disc 1, Track 1
| The explosive growth in popularity of digital media is opening up new opportunities for synergy and collaboration between American and Japanese technology companies. One company that’s taken advantage of opportunities in Japan is the innovative Gracenote, the world's foremost provider of digital music management technology. Gracenote has developed thriving partnerships with numerous leading Japanese companies, including household names such as Sony, Pioneer, Yamaha, Alpine, and Fujitsu.
| | Gracenote provides technology that automatically identifies track, artist, and album information for CDs and MP3s, thus saving users the trouble of having to input the information manually. Already widely used in PC software and online media services, Gracenote's solutions have become the industry standard as music recognition moves into car auto, mobile phones and consumer electronics devices. Collaboration with Japanese partners has been essential in getting this technology into the hands of consumers around the world.
| Partnership for global success
The combination of Gracenote's leading edge technology and Japan's world class product design and quality has proven unbeatable on the global market. “Gracenote has put a lot of focus into the consumer electronics and automotive industries in Japan, because these (Japanese companies) are the leaders on a worldwide basis,” says Jim Hollingsworth, Gracenote’s Vice President of Marketing.
| | "Looking at Sony, for example, a lot of their product is sold outside Japan, but it's revenue that we associate with them" Jim Hollingsworth, VP, Marketing, Gracenote | The partnerships have been symbiotic: Gracenote has provided technology to make audio devices more user-friendly, while its partner companies have provided channels to worldwide sales. “A significant portion of our revenue comes from our Japan-based business. The revenue that we derive is from (our Japanese partners’) worldwide businesses. Looking at Sony, for example, a lot of their product is sold outside Japan, but it’s revenue that we associate with them,” says Hollingsworth.
| | Partnership with Japan has also strengthened the global viability of Gracenote’s core products. As Japanese companies offer access to the global market, Gracenote must deliver solutions that work globally. Working in Japan has been invaluable in ensuring that Gracenote maintains a broad and deep collection of data, and that Asian text encoding is fully supported. Other innovations have grown directly out of collaboration with Japanese partner companies. |
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