Gracenote Turns On the Sonic Style

Recent Nielsen acquisition Gracenote is launching a new music classification system called Sonic Style, which will assess the 'style' of musical recordings across massive catalogues to give the industry 'a powerful and scalable new dataset' at the recording level and allow 'a more perfect playlist'.

Gracenote says it uses nearly 450 Sonic Style descriptor values and a weighted system to accurately describe the rich, multi-value 'style profile' of each recording. The closest category in current use is perhaps artist 'genre' - Rock, Hip Hop, Classical etc.. as seen in the likes of iTunes - but Gracenote says these alone 'do not always tell the full story of an artist's catalog or career'. Sonic Style will look beyond this to assess each individual recording: for example, it says 'Taylor Swift is traditionally classified as simply Pop or Country. However, many of her more recent tracks have a more Pop Electronica and even R&B feel to them'. [And one assumes most tracks from 'Almost Blue' will no longer appear in the same category as those from 'Armed Forces' - Ed.]

The result will be to help streaming music providers select the most relevant and personalized tracks for each listener, based on their unique style preferences - and to provide record labels and music publishers with a deeper understanding of trends among underlying music styles. Furthermore, the firm says an instruction to a smart speaker or voice assistant to 'play me tracks with a Tropical House vibe from my favorite artists' or 'play some G-Funk style tracks' will result in a much better match.

The company will combine the news descriptor with existing labels including artist genre, era and origin, as well as other machine learning descriptors such as tempo and mood, to assist new 'playlisting and discovery experiences'.

Brian Hamilton, the firm's General Manager of Music and Auto comments: 'Now that playlists are the new albums, music curators are clamoring for deeper insights into individual recordings for better discovery and personalization... These new turbo-charged style descriptors will revolutionize how the world's music is organized and curated, ultimately delivering the freshest, most personalized playlists to keep fans listening'.

Gracenote, whose entertainment databases feature descriptions of more than 200 million tracks, TV listings for 85+ countries and statistics from 4,500 sport leagues and competitions, is headquartered in Emeryville, CA and online at www.gracenote.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.