Developers can make use of these resources to identify music through audio fingerprinting, access additional metadata about music and even retrieve the cover art for CDs. Gracenote’s music database contains information about a total of 130 million songs, which are classified by more than 2,000 musical genres.

“The company has a history of supporting innovation,” Gracenote President Stephen White said during a phone interview Thursday. Gracenote’s original CD database used to offer developers free access for non-commercial applications, but White said that Gracenote moved away from some of these principles when the company got acquired by Sony. Now Gracenote wants to reclaim its place in the music tech developer ecosystem.

Gracenote’s developer program soft launched at the Stockholm Music Hack Day last month, and 300 developers have already signed up to make use of the company’s resources. One of them is an iOS app called Stream That Song that uses Gracenote’s music recognition to identify a song that’s playing in the background (think Shazam) and then adds it to a user’s Spotify or Deezer library.

Resources of the program are limited to non-commercial app development. White argued that this gives developers a chance to start working on their app and apply for a commercial license once it’s proven to be successful. “There’s no need to strike licenses before you start working,” he said.

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At the coming CES in Las Vegas, media data provider Gracenote is going to demonstrate a proof-of-concept of technology that puts ad-swapping power right into the TV set. Gracenote is using video recognition technology to identify ad breaks, and will be able to insert ads based on the demographic of a viewer, as well as knowledge about what kind of shows he or she has watched in the past.

Take a look at Gracenote President Stephen White demonstrating the technology in the video below:

Gracenote started to get into the video recognition game when it acquired video recognition specialist Bulldog United earlier this year. The company has been working on expanding its role in the content recognition space in recent months, venturing into the space of TV second-screen applications and powering audio recognition in apps like Path and the just-released Rhapsody SongMatch app.

With ad personalization, Gracenote would be taking on a problem that has been a tough nut to crack for the industry in the past. More than four years ago, major U.S. cable companies came together to personalize advertising with an initiative called Project Canoe. Those efforts went nowhere, and Canoe all but abandoned its efforts (and laid off 120 employees) earlier this year.

White is the first one to admit that it won’t be easy to change advertising. Not only are there technical challenges, but handing the key to the ad kingdom over to TV makers could also upset broadcasters and service providers, which is why Gracenote hopes to find solutions that benefit everyone. The company wants to do some trials in 2013, and hopes that TV sets with ad swapping capabilities will reach the market in 2013. White didn’t want to tell me who is lined up to try out this technology – but given the fact that Gracenote is owned by Sony, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see some of it find its way into Sony TV sets.

If anything, this new effort demonstrates a new role for CE manufacturers. TV makers used to provide a more or less dumb screen that was dependent on content from service providers. With a shift towards smart TVs and over-the-top services, they’re feeling momentum move towards them. Some have even tried to broker their own content deals. It’s only logical that advertising would be the next step.

Image courtesy of Flickr user gildas_f.

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Content recognition is a key component in many second screen efforts: The technology helps apps on tablets or mobile phones to serve context-relevant content by telling them what’s going on on the TV set. Early content recognition efforts mostly used a tablet’s microphone to “listen in” on a viewer’s TV consumption and then identify programming based on audio fingerprinting. Gracenote has been using this approach as well, but White told me Tuesday that the direct engagement with broadcasters has made him realize that audio recognition isn’t always enough.

Instead, Gracenote now wants to offer a combination of audio and video content recognition. White said that consumers will see this come to their TV sets early next year. The company is also targeting set-top boxes, and has already been powering apps in the second screen space. “The beauty of our platform is that we can support all of those deployments,” said White.

Of course, Gracenote isn’t the only one trying to make a splash in the second-screen space. Tuesday morning, ConnecTV announced the launch of its second screen app in 40 local markets, targeting viewers of local broadcasters with companion content on their iPads. White acknowledged that there is lively competition going on in the space, but said that Gracenote supported the use of other recognition engines in its platform as well. It made perfect sense to use some of these technologies in concert and see them evolve into a common standard, he said. “We are seeing a real desire for standardization,” explained White.

Check out my earlier video of White demonstrating Gracenote’s audio content recognition:

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