Christian P. Pewitt Blogs: Nielsen Acquires Gracenote From Tribune For $560 Million Cash To Improve Music, Media Data Measurement

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Nielsen Acquires Gracenote From Tribune For $560 Million Cash To Improve Music, Media Data Measurement

Nielsen has acquired Gracenote from Tribune in an all cash deal. For the music industry, that leaves its main source of track metadata in familiar hands and the hope of improved tracking across new and emerging platforms globally.

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Tribune Media (NYSE: TRCO) is selling Gracenote to Nielsen Company (NYSE: NLSN) for $560 million in cash.Gracenote supplies metadata on more than 200 million songs and 12 million movies and TV episodes to Apple, Comcast, DirecTV, Sony, Amazon and others including auto manufacturers Ford, Toyota, BMW and Tesla.

Gracenote is also know for it automatic content recognition technology, which Nielsen will use to better measure consumer media consumption, particularly across new and emerging platforms.

“Gracenote’s metadata and content-recognition technology fuels the interfaces of the major video, music and in-car infotainment systems that consumers engage with every day,” Karthik Rao, president of expanded verticals for Nielsen, said in a statement. “This acquisition provides Nielsen with a significant asset in our mission of measuring and understanding consumer behavior.”

A Premium Price

Nielson's purchase comes at a premium. Tribune acquired Gracenote for $170 million in 2013, adding film data provider Baseline for $50 million in 2014, and sports data firm SportsDirect for $54 million in 2015.

Tribune Media will retain its ownership of the business-to-consumer websites, Covers.com and ProSportsDaily.com. The sale is expected to close during the first quarter of 2017.