Decibel (company)
| Founded | January 2010 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London, UK |
| Products | Music Intelligence Platform |
Number of employees | 20 (2011) |
| Website | www.decibel.net |
Decibel Music Systems Limited (Decibel) is a London-based music intelligence software company that provides rich, semantic music metadata to developers and media companies. Decibel uses technology derived from intelligence gathering services to allow for deeply connected data, storing information on not only artists and their recorded works, but also the relationships between them. In addition to album title, track titles, and the length of each track, Decibel compiles the producers, engineers, session musicians, copyright information, and more. Decibel also addresses special issues, such as multiple names and languages, as well as sympathetic treatment of classical music, world music and jazz.
History
Decibel Music Systems was founded in 2010 by Gregory Kris, Adrian Corbett, and Evan Stein. A musicologist by training, Stein worked as a programmer for the New York County District Attorney’s office, designing intelligence-gathering systems for law enforcement. He then served as the Director of Application Development at Standard & Poor’s, developing large-scale databases for cross-functional use. In 2005, he combined his passion for music with his technical skills and began developing the preliminary architecture of Decibel. Decibel Music Systems Ltd was then incorporated in 2010 alongside partners Adrian Corbett and Gregory Kris. Kris resigned as CEO in 2013.[1]
In 2011, it was one of MidemNet Lab's finalists.[2] In 2014, they were a Top 20 finalist at the Webit Congress - Founders Games in Istanbul.[3]
Product and Clients
Decibel gathers music data through data-mining, web crawling, and manual input to produce a total of 150 fields of metadata for any given track.[4] This database serves as the main product line for the company.
Customers include music sites, record labels and independent music applications, such as Jugglit [5] and EMI’s BlueNote App.[6]
Decibel released version 3 of their API in late 2014.
Decibel is in part funded by the Technology Strategy Board and professional investors and is in private ownership.
Notes and references
- ↑ http://4pt5.com/gregory-kris-resigns-as-ceo/
- ↑ http://www.midem.com/RM/RM_Midem_v2/pdf/conferences-matchmaking/midem2011-midemnetlab-finalists.pdf
- ↑ http://games.webitcongress.com/founders-games/
- ↑ http://readwrite.com/2010/06/09/the-ultimate-liner-notes-uk-st#awesm=~obYLKFLCZb0Xiv
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2013/may/31/introduction-to-jugglit
- ↑ http://www.decibel.net/news/decibel-blue-note-app/