Gracenote acquires Baseline For US$50 Million

Tribune Media’s Gracenote has acquired LA-based film and TV data firm Baseline, continuing its expansion beyond music.

Gracenote, which specialises in music metadata, closed the acquisition on August 29 and announced yesterday; the deal was inked for a reported US$50 million in cash.

Peter Liguori, President and CEO of Tribune Media, said in a statement, “The acquisition of Baseline continues our strategy to build upon our existing metadata expertise to advance Gracenote’s leadership in entertainment data and services announcing the deal.”

Baseline provides data on over 300,000 film and TV projects for nearly 1.5 million TV and film professionals, as well as box-office data for 45 territories. The acquisition marks a new direction for Gracenote; following Sony Corporation America’s decision to sell the business to media conglomerate Tribune last December, Tribune has been swiftly implementing a focus on metadata for its clients, with this latest investment seeing Gracenote compete with rivals like US entertainment metadata firm Rovi Corporation.

The buy-out was signaled last month surrounding the appointment of M-GO CEO John Batter as Gracenote’s new CEO. Batter, who officially joined the company this week, said Tribune’s deal for Baseline was in the works before he joined.

Techcrunch has reported Baseline’s staff will join Gracenote.