Did not see it coming …

Sony announced today that it has signed a merger agreement with Gracenote (formerly CDDB) to buy the company for $ 260 and other “consideration”.

“Gracenote is a global leader in technology and services for digital media identification, enrichment and recommendation, and these capabilities will be essential for the next wave of innovation in content, services and electronics , “Said Tim Schaaff, SCA senior vice-president, software. “Sony sees tremendous growth potential in the development of Gracenote separately as a term business unit, and by Gracenote, which includes large platform, Sony is expected to significantly improve and accelerate its own digital content, services and device initiatives. ”

“We are very pleased to join Sony as its strategic vision is entirely consistent with our own,” said Craig Palmer, CEO of Gracenote. “Having a closer link with the digital content and services community accelerate adoption of technologies Gracenote, and the relationship also give us the resources to expand rapidly developing the next generation of products for the industry.”

Given Gracenote is famous for its open approach to users and its broad range of partnerships with customers like Amazon, iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, Winamp, Alpine, Panasonic and Philips not talk about Sony, Sony Ericsson and many more it will be interesting to see what Sony has in store for the company. After all, Sony is not known for a willingness to share its technology, this could mean a) bad news for existing partners or b) see them face a significant increase in prices of licenses.

Expect the fallout from this filtering starting with a short time. Can not say we’re very happy …