Gracenote Rhythm lets brands create their own streaming radio platform

Gracenote, which provides musical data for a slew of top streaming services, is launching a new platform today that will enable brands to launch their own music services.

The company was just acquired by Tribune Media for $170 million, and its primary service is retrieving data about a specific song or song library (artist, genre, album title, origin/region, etc.), to add context to the music that’s being played and allow music services (Amazon, Apple’s iTunes Radio, Spotify, and more) to collect meaningful information about user behavior. Its latest platform, Gracenote Rhythm, hopes to provide a “Radio as a Service” that will give organizations that aren’t in the music business a way to create their own streaming platform.

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The Rhythm platform will allow clients to create stations that are specific to a genre or type of music, or that focus entirely on a regional area. The service will also feature some of the smart radio functionality used by other top streaming services, such as recommendation algorithms, like/dislike song buttons, the ability to skip, and more.

“We see a big opportunity to provide custom radio platforms for [specific] genres and regions,” said Gracenote president Stephen White in an interview with VentureBeat. He added that Gracenote Rhythm might be particularly attractive to automakers, who may want to offer a streaming radio solution in vehicles outside of the U.S. It’s worth noting that while popular online radio service Pandora is dominant in integrating with car dashboards in the country, its left without an option for its international markets. Gracenote Rhythm could change that.

The Gracenote Rhythm API should be available to other commercial customers and developers this coming February.