Omnifone Extends Relationship With Gracenote, Allows for Cloud-Based Music Solutions in More Than 30 Countries in 2010

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- CES, Las Vegas Convention Centre -- Omnifone, the leading independent provider of digital music services globally, today announces that it has expanded its relationship with Gracenote®, integrating Gracenote's state-of-the-art music recognition and recommendation technology with its own suite of MusicStation APIs to provide cloud-based digital music services across over 30 territories in 2010.

"Omnifone now provides digital music services with Gracenote technology in 20 countries across the world, and will be live in over 30 markets in 2010 including the US; providing a wider global reach than iTunes," said Rob Lewis, CEO of Omnifone. "With this announcement, we believe a much wider range of device manufacturers will be able to differentiate their services by providing embedded state-of-the-art music experiences into their devices, and on a global basis."

"By utilizing Gracenote's identification and recommendation products along with its own award winning unlimited music licensing and delivery capabilities, Omnifone is able to deliver next generation music solutions to customers globally," commented Jim Hollingsworth, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Gracenote.

Omnifone provides CE vendors wishing to deliver global state-of-the-art digital music services a sophisticated suite of MusicStation APIs (application programming interfaces) enabling partners to rapidly create digital music services based on Omnifone's award winning unlimited music service, on almost any device type.

MusicStation APIs provided to partners include:

• MusicStation WARP: Omnifone's accelerated RESTful web services API, easy to use, fast to implement, utilising global CDN edge caches for cloud-based digital music solutions across multiple device platforms
• MusicStation Android API: an embedded device API enabling rapid development of both unlimited and a-la-carte music applications on Android
• MusicStation C API: targeted at the embedded device market
• MusicStation C# API: ideal for PC based client implementation
• MusicStation J2ME API: an embedded device API enabling rapid development of both unlimited and a-la-carte JAVA based mobile music applications

Omnifone's suite of APIs facilitate increased development flexibility and reduced time to market for partners, helping deliver revolutionary unlimited music streaming and download services to consumers globally. Functions include unlimited music streaming and downloads capabilities, as well as providing music discovery functionality, catalogue management, multiple file formats and delivery options, encryption support for multiple DRMs including OMA, WDRM, Marlin, and Omnifone's proprietary label approved OmniPlay, as well as state of the art real time reporting functions.

Omnifone and Gracenote are showcasing multiple cloud based unlimited music demonstrations at CES 2010 at Gracenote's Booth: South 3 31106

About Gracenote

A pioneer in the digital media industry, Gracenote combines information, technology, services and applications to create ingenious entertainment solutions for the global market. From media management, enrichment and discovery products to content identification technologies, Gracenote allows providers of digital media products and the content community to make their offerings more powerful and intuitive, enabling superior consumer experiences. The company's solutions integrate the broadest, deepest, and highest quality global metadata and enriched content with an infrastructure that services billions of searches a month from thousands of products used by hundreds of millions of consumers. Gracenote's customers include the biggest names in the consumer electronics, mobile, automotive, software and Internet industries. The company's partners in the entertainment community include major music publishers and labels, prominent independents and movie studios. Gracenote, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, is headquartered in Emeryville, California. www.gracenote.com.

Gracenote is a registered trademark of Gracenote, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

About Omnifone

Omnifone is the world's leading independent provider of cloud based unlimited music services for consumer electronics vendors, ISPs, automotive and mobile companies including the likes of BSkyB, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Hutchison Telecom and Telenor who are rolling out Omnifone's multi-award winning unlimited music services globally.

MusicStation®, Omnifone's multi-award winning cloud based unlimited music service is utilised by partners in 20 countries worldwide, enabling legitimate unlimited music access direct-to-device across a wide range of in-home, in-car, mobile and PC device platforms, tailored specifically to partner requirements.

At CES 2009 Omnifone announced a partnership with Gracenote Inc., winning a 'Best of CES' award for an in-car entertainment system with MusicStation unlimited music service. In 2008 Omnifone won Best Mobile Music Service at the GSMA Global Mobile Awards, Best Mobile Internet Service at the Mobile Industry Awards, the Juniper Research Future Mobile Award's Gold Award for Mobile Music, the Red Herring Global 100 Award and in 2007 the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) Music Service Meffy. The company is based at Island Studios, London with regional HQs in Asia Pacific. www.omnifone.com

    For more information contact:
    Veronica Skelton
    Concept Communications for Gracenote
    001.415.342.3435
    [email protected]

    Tim Hadley
    Omnifone
    +447976410001
    [email protected]

SOURCE Gracenote