Gracenote gets nod of recognition

Japan's KDDI mobile phone service is launching a new subscription music service, using Gracenote's automatic music-recognition technology as a front end. Subscribers can hold up a phone and let it recognize a song being played on the radio or bar jukebox, and then download that song to the phone.

This kind of music recognition tool is becoming more common on phones around the world, but this may be the first time it's been integrated so deeply into a major carrier's music subscription service.