Gracenote Buys Baseline For $50 Million

In case you were not aware, Gracenote is the firm behind providing the metadata for your media.  The firm has just expanded their reign by buying rival Baseline for $50M to enhance their movie & TV data service presence. For those who provide the metadata for movies and TV shows (cast list, plot descriptions, etc.) is very big business as you may imagine.  It’s so good in fact, that Gracenote wants to be the leader of the pack.

Gracenote’s new purchase puts them squarely on top of the pack.

Tribune Media-owned Gracenote has just announced that it is acquiring rival movie data service company Baseline in a deal that is worth $50 million. The new acquisition should fit in rather well with Gracenote’s other metadata services, including TMS, which provide data for cable TV and satellite TV providers. This move should also help determine Gracenote as a obvious leader in the movie and TV data market.

The library of metadata from Baseline includes information on over 300,000 movies and TV series, bios on more than 1.5 million movie professionals, and box office statistics for many markets globally. The information that Baseline has, regarding movies, is not just simple data, they have delved into the core of the metadata available and pulled out such gems as production timelines, shooting locations and project financing, etc. Some of the current client base for Baseline includes Hulu and Vudu.

This new move comes a week after Gracenote recently named John Batter as CEO. “Baseline’s deep production data coupled with its existing relationships with the studio community will help us improve the depth and breadth of the data we offer to existing Gracenote customers … [and it gives] us a foundation to build products aimed squarely at serving the entertainment industry,” Batter said.  Gracenote have said that Baseline will continue to operate from its Los Angeles, Calif. Office for the time being.

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SOURCE: http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/03/gracenote-buys-rival-baseline-for-50m-to-enhance-its-movie-tv-data-services/