Napster Partners Up

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 5, 2001 / 7:39 AM EST / CBS

In its effort to block access to unauthorized songs, Napster Inc. has signed an agreement with a company that maintains an online database with millions of song titles.

Napster announced Tuesday a partnership with Berkeley, Calif.-based Gracenote. The privately held company, which has been compiling its database since 1995, catalogs music for online information access and software applications.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Gracenote also catalogs the spelling variants that have proved troublesome for a federal court Napster as it tries to comply with order to block the trading of unauthorized content.

Gracenote's database of song titles, including misspellings, is about 12 million and is based on user submissions.

"We've been exploring a partnership with Gracenote for months and the ability to quickly enlist their support in our file-filtering efforts will greatly improve our effectiveness," Napster CEO Hank Barry said.

Read The Order

Click here to read U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's order in the Napster case.

Gracenote president David Hyman said, "Our core business is really not helping peer-to-peer networks filter. But it was just a perfect fit."

Napster will have full access to Gracenote's database of music information, he said.

Napster has received a total of 6 million filenames, including spelling variations, from the recording industry, a Napster spokeswoman said. That number represented 26,000 artist/song title pairs the company said have been effectively blocked from its service.

The Recording Industry Association of America, on behalf of its members, submitted 135,000 filenames to Napster on Friday.

Napster is continually getting more submissions from the industry and the screening technology is an "ongoing process," the spokeswomn said.

Association spokeswoman Amy Weiss said, "We are not going to debate the fine points of the order's implementation. We believe the court's intent is clear. Napster is required to stop infringing. Stall tactics are unacceptable."

The world's biggest record labels — including Vivendi Universal's Universal Music, Sony Music Warner Music, EMI Group Plc and Bertelsmann AG's BMG, first sued Napster in December 1999, claiming it was a haven for copyright piracy that would cost them billions of dollars in lost music sales.