Why GraceNote??

[SndChsr]

Can someone please explain to me why Mazda (and other car companies) use Gracenote for music ID on their infotainment systems? As I understand it, (and I may be wrong here), album art and titles are pulled from the Gracenote DB. This can be an issues if you listen to some weird stuff that does not reside in the Gracenote DB. Why not just use the ID3 tags of your mp3 files to display artist/song/album art? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Thanks!

 

[bmninada]

They get a kick-back and we get kicked. I could never update it, don't know what's it for.

 

[SndChsr]

Actually I think I found out why. In order to get your album artwork and artist/song title displayed for any other music format other than MP3 (.WAV, .OGG) Gracenote is needed. While mp3's store the metadata in the ID3 tag, .WAV and .OGG don't have a uniform way of storing the data always in the same location. In order for Mazda to get rid of gracenote, the would have disable the playback of any sound file other than mp3. Then, people would complain that they don't support more file formats. Gracenote is the only way right now that displays metadata across multiple file formats. Toyota and other manufacturers do this as well. For me, I really don't care about .wav or .ogg since my music library consists of mainly .mp3 and .flac files and I only use .mp3 for my car SSD drive.
Gracenote however is the culprit in slow playlist loading times and often mismatching artist/artwork data. Best solution would be if Mazda would give us an option to disable gracenote via a menu in the MZD Connect system.

 

[gce]

Has anybody successfully updated Gracenote via USB?

 

[bmninada]

Has anybody successfully updated Gracenote via USB?

Nope - NEVER. Tried: multiple times. My trusted dealer said: forget it, we can't do it.

 

[gce]

I did a little more research on updating Gracenote and was able to update. Go to" http://infotainment.mazdahandsfree.com/vehicle_select?return_to=/gracenote " and enter Year, Model, Trim and follow instruction on the next page. I downloaded the file directly to my USB flash drive. Put it into the car and the update took about 10 min.

My update was from 000.007 to 000.008 or something like that.

 

[Jonno21]

Yes, I've never had a problem updating it. Bear in mind that there are different versions for EU and USA and possibly Asia.

 

[Anchorman]

Yes, I've never had a problem updating it. Bear in mind that there are different versions for EU and USA and possibly Asia.

Is it worth updating Jonno? I don’t even really know what it does.

 

[Jonno21]

Is it worth updating Jonno? I don’t even really know what it does.

I honestly don't know Anchorman. It makes me feel better! I'm used to updating my PC with drivers and Windows updates, plus Android updates for my phone so I think of it as good housekeeping. I assume software programmers release new versions as it fixes bugs so otherwise why bother for the effort and expense? My music details and artwork are always displayed correctly.

 

[isketerol]

I just did the update today. I used a microusb in a small usb reader. It took a good 20 minutes to complete. North American CX-5 with the 59.x firmware. Upgraded from 7 to 8 of the Gracenote database.

Why? Because I am an IT guy and I just have to.