Music and technology giant Sony has recently announced its intentions to acquire the media metadate engine Gracenote. Gracenote does a whole host of things related to the download and cataloguing of digital music, such as naming songs that haven been ripped with iTunes and identifying video files so that they can be used for monetary purposes online.

So why does Song plan on purchasing Gracenote? One reason is that many of Sony’s competitors actually use Gracenote’s data to power their digital music information. Sony can make an instant return on their investment simply by increasing the licence fee for using Gracenote.

The fee for Gracenote looks like being $260 million, which represents a sizable investment.

Inside rumours from Sony however say that Sony will keep Gracenote separate from their other business, and will not use it in this way.

The real advantage for Sony seems to be in the way that Gracenote can organise its data across many different media, such MP3 players, media software etc. Sony is looking to find someway to merge its separated interests, such as music, movies, electronics and computer hardware.

Gracenote should be able to do that for them.