IFPI and RIAA announce search for 'audio fingerprinting' technologies

June 15, 2001

The trade associations representing the world's record labels today announced a search for technologies that can identify music based on its content. Commonly known as 'audio fingerprinting' these new technologies could play a significant role in the distribution and protection of music in the digital environment.

RIAA and IFPI, representing respectively the US and worldwide recording industries, will shortly issue a Request For Information (RFI) inviting the owners of these technologies to make them known and available for evaluation. Submissions of information regarding these technologies will be due by 13 July 2001 and the initial evaluation should be completed by the end of September.

Fingerprinting, or content-based identification, technologies have been discussed in the technology community for many years. They work by extracting the characteristics of a piece of music and storing them in a database. When the technology is presented with an unknown piece of music, the characteristics of that piece are calculated and matched against those stored in the database, hopefully finding a match.

Potential applications in the recording industry include:

• tracking the music played by broadcasters and their new internet-based counterparts so that royalties can be distributed to the correct rightsholders
• identifying unknown music recovered from illicit CD plants and distributors
• offering special promotions and other incentives to consumers playing certain recordings
• checking the identity of a music file being transmitted over a network

Bruce Block, Senior Vice President Technology at RIAA commented: "We believe many audio fingerprinting technologies have become available from many vendors. We want to ensure the RIAA, IFPI and member companies are fully informed about the potential of these technologies, their application and performance."

Paul Jessop, Chief Technology Officer of IFPI added: "These technologies clearly have the potential to be very important to the recording industry. We need to stay abreast of developments in this area and see how vendors' products are evolving."

Those wishing to receive a copy of the RFI are invited to contact the following: Carlos Garza cgarza@riaa.com or Richard Gooch richard.gooch@ifpi.org The RFI will also be posted at www.riaa.com and www.ifpi.org.

Press Enquiries:
RIAA: Amy Weiss, Jano Cabrera +1 202 775 0101 or
IFPI: Adrian Strain, Fiona Harley +44 20 7878 7900