Gracenote to Launch Discover(TM) Music Recommendation Service with Passalong Networks.

Industry's First Multi-Method Recommendation Engine Will Provide Unique Results for Each User of On-Line Music Stores

LAS VEGAS -- Gracenote[R], a global leader in technology and services that are an integral part of the digital media economy, today announced PassAlong Networks has chosen its breakthrough music recommendation engine, Gracenote Discover[TM], to create unique and proprietary recommendation results for each of its customers. PassAlong Networks currently provides white-label music store solutions to customers like Musicland and Procter & Gamble. PassAlong will use Gracenote's Discover to create a more compelling service for driving music and merchandise sales by delivering a personalized music experience for each consumer that takes into account their musical tastes, purchase history and other proprietary information.

"We have evaluated a lot of technologies and we really like what Gracenote Discover has to offer," said Dave Jaworski, co-founder and CEO of PassAlong Networks. "Music recommendation technology will play an important role in the next generation of PassAlong's digital download stores and Gracenote's Discover will be a vital feature in our suite of services for both retail and lifestyle brand partner stores."

Industry's Most Comprehensive Recommendation Engine

Gracenote Discover can be used to deliver high quality recommendations for new tracks, albums and artists from within any online music store catalog--big or small, regional or worldwide. The product can use any song, album or artist in an end user's collection as a starting point to recommend content available in the online music store service. End users can then listen to the recommended song and buy it if they choose. The open architecture design puts overall control in the hands of the music provider to target, tune, customize, and differentiate its specific offering.

In a phased roll-out, Discover will generate recommendations based on the integration of three different types of analysis: music expert editorial, audio attributes derived from digital signal processing (DSP) such as tempo, mood, and instrumentation, and community-based preferences. In conjunction with Gracenote MusicID[TM], the world's most advanced music identification service, a customer can build a personal taste profile to drive recommendations based on a full picture of a consumer's preferences - not just recent purchase history from a single store.

Gracenote Discover is launching now and will be available for implementation in PC applications and online stores, music websites and portals, mobile music services, and consumer electronic devices in Q2 2007. Powered by Gracenote's Media Database, the world's largest database of music information accessed by more than 200 million people annually, Discover is the only solution that optimally combines the best of the three most powerful methods of generating music recommendations. The result is an integrated solution which provides precise and reliable recommendations "out-of-the-box," and is easily customizable to incorporate data such as user rankings, play counts and purchase history to generate unique results tied to the business objectives of each Gracenote customer.

"Gracenote Discover integrates the key attributes of recommendation approaches to ensure the best songs are recommended to consumers, not some of the time, but every time," said Jim Hollingsworth, Gracenote SVP of sales and marketing. "Our White Label approach provides an optimal solution that can be launched quickly and globally and the open architecture design allows flexibility and easy customization to provide unique results. Gracenote's Discover opens up a whole new world of music to consumers and provides new revenue opportunities for music sellers."

A Multi-Method Solution

Music Expertise - Gracenote's global team of music experts monitor the most popular music being played in every corner of the world and associate it with one or more of over 1,700 micro-genres as well other proprietary musical attributes. Gracenote's system precisely calculates the relationships of the vast array of music styles across the globe and creates links between similar music from different roots.

Digital Signal Processing - Within specific musical styles, individual recordings display a wide range of tempo, mood, instrumentation and other attributes. Gracenote's Discover system uses DSP technology to extract specific details about each track in a retailer's catalog and uses them to identify and prioritize the recommendations.

Community Preferences - Gracenote Discover also uses feedback from more than 200 million music fans around the globe to add additional relational information that cannot be derived from editorial classification or DSP analysis alone. Gracenote has the broadest, deepest and most popular music information service in the world, with users in more than 200 countries and territories, and metadata in 80 different languages. The company has gathered information on over three billion music identification searches.

Customizable, Open-box Design

Discover is a flexible system that allows music stores and service providers to not only incorporate their own proprietary data into recommendation calculations, but also customize the criteria to their business. Music service providers can add both aggregated and personalized customer information such as purchase history, play count, ratings and additional data fields to generate optimal results. Availability

Check www.passalongnetworks.com for information about availability.

Gracenote at CES

Gracenote will demonstrate its complete line of products and services at CES in Las Vegas January 8-11, 2007, LVCC South Hall 4 Booth 31646. The new Gracenote Discover music recommendation engine, Classical Music Initiative, and Lyrics program will be shown for the first time at CES 2007. The media is welcome to join Gracenote executives for product demonstrations during its cocktail hours from 5:00-6:00 p.m. at the booth each day of the show.

About Gracenote

Gracenote is a global leader in embedded technology, enriched content, and data services for digital entertainment solutions within the Internet, consumer electronics, mobile, and automotive markets. Formerly known as CDDB[TM], Gracenote delivers a substantially improved consumer experience in digital media devices and applications, plus media monitoring and other data services to the recording industry, making it an integral part of the digital media economy. Gracenote powers leading services including Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, AOL Winamp; home and automotive products from Alpine, Panasonic, Philips and Sony; and mobile music applications from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musiwave (Europe), and others. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Gracenote has offices in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Seoul. For more information about Gracenote, please refer to www.gracenote.com/corporate/.

Gracenote, CDDB and MusicID are registered trademarks of Gracenote, Inc.