Gracenote, Next Big Sound Creating New Net Radio Platform

New Rhythm

TRIBUNE-owned GRACENOTE is working on a customizable Internet radio program, dubbed RHYTHM, that would let consumer brands, car companies and anyone else have their own music app, the NEW YORK TIMES reports. GRACENOTE, which can identify and organize 180 million digital music tracks, is working with NEXT BIG SOUND, which identifies what songs fans are paying the most attention to, in order to analyze listeners’ habits and make recommendations about what to listen to.

“This is all about understanding what consumers are doing,” GRACENOTE Pres. STEPHEN WHITE said. “We’ve got good information about parts of that, but with streaming becoming more popular, and the rise of social networks, NEXT BIG SOUND will pull together additional types of signals to help understand what’s trending.”

By culling social-media data, NEXT BIG SOUND could be used to improve the music recommendations on GRACENOTE. “What was popular in 2013 might be wildly unpopular in 2015,” NEXT BIG SOUND CEO ALEX WHITE said. “When a user is interested in hearing an emerging artist, if they’ve broken already, then it’s out of date.”

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