Gracenote Review, Pricing & Features

Gracenote provides entertainment metadata, IDs, and content data APIs for music, video, sports, and automotive platforms worldwide. Owned by Nielsen.

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Automation
Pricing
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Last updated
July 20, 2026
Founded
1998
Headquarters
Emeryville, California, USA
Web AppAPI

What Is Gracenote?

Gracenote is an entertainment metadata company founded in 1998 in Emeryville, California, growing out of the earlier CDDB compact disc database project. It has been owned by Nielsen since 2017 and licenses structured data about music, video, sports, and TV content to companies that need to identify, describe, and organize that content at scale.

Rather than a consumer app, Gracenote functions as backend infrastructure: streaming services, pay-TV providers, consumer electronics makers, and automakers integrate Gracenote's data through APIs to power features like program guides, content recommendations, and music recognition inside their own products.

Key Features

Gracenote's core offerings span Video Data (program guide, streaming/linear availability, and sports data feeds), Audio Data for music identification and metadata, and Gracenote IDs, which let different platforms match and reconcile content records against a shared identifier system. It also offers CTV content intelligence and tools for content distribution such as FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels.

For the automotive sector, Gracenote provides Nexus Auto, supplying entertainment and content metadata used inside vehicle infotainment systems. The company states its metadata reaches over 190 countries and 70 languages across thousands of channels and catalogs.

Gracenote Pricing

Gracenote does not publish self-serve pricing on its website. As an enterprise data and API provider, pricing is arranged directly with its sales team and depends on the specific data sets, volume, and use case an organization needs.

This is typical for large-scale B2B metadata licensing businesses, where contracts are negotiated individually rather than sold through fixed public tiers.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Extremely broad, long-established metadata coverage
  • Deep integrations across media, automotive, and consumer electronics industries
  • Backed by Nielsen's data infrastructure and scale
  • Global reach across 190+ countries and 70+ languages

Cons

  • No public or self-serve pricing published
  • Enterprise-only positioning, not suited to small developers or hobbyists
  • Requires direct sales engagement just to evaluate
  • Documentation and APIs are geared toward large integration teams

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Gracenote do?

Gracenote licenses entertainment metadata and identification APIs covering music, video, sports, and TV content to media, automotive, and consumer electronics companies.

Who owns Gracenote?

Gracenote has been owned by Nielsen since 2017.

Does Gracenote offer a free API tier?

No, Gracenote does not publish self-serve or free pricing; access requires a direct enterprise licensing agreement.

What industries use Gracenote?

Streaming and pay-TV providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, and automakers commonly integrate Gracenote's data.

Is Gracenote the same as CDDB?

Gracenote grew out of the earlier CDDB (Compact Disc Database) project before becoming a commercial company in 1998.

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