Sony said that it will be acquiring Gracenote, a company that identifies the song names in music files via its database, for $260 million. Gracenote will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony. Sony said that it will use the technology for its own digital content, service and device offerings.

Some may remember Gracenote as CDDB, the first service that allowed users to automatically retrieve song names when playing CDs on a computer. Gracenote said its customers include iTunes, Yahoo Music Jukebox, Sony Ericsson, as well as KDDI and Musiwave.