Music DB turns 10

If you’ve ever ripped a CD, you may have noticed the “Accessing Gracenote CDDB” dialog box that pops up when you first slide the disc into your machine. For most of us, that’s all we know about the music recognition software, which IDs the disc, artist and tracks you’re converting.

Well, now you’ll now a little more. The global music database – used by 1.5 million people every day – just passed two milestones – it turned 10 and ID’d its 2 billionth CD (“When I Woke” by Rusted Root).

To celebrate, Gracenote released some fun facts, including:

• Most popular album: Linkin Park’s “Hybrid Theory”: Released Oct. 24, 2000, it had 1.25 million lookups by Dec. 31, 2001 and still gets more than 100,000 lookups each month for the past 16 months.
• Farthest globally reaching bands: Norah Jones, whose 2002 CD “Come Away With Me” has been looked up in over 213 countries/territories.
• Nirvana’s “Nevermind” has been looked up in 184 countries, including the Vatican and Palau (location of the current Survivor).”

• Top Western artists in: China (Avril Lavigne, Pink Floyd); India (Pink Floyd, U2); Russia (The Beatles, Pink Floyd); and Japan (Queen, The Beatles).