As Sr. Vice President of Development, M. W. Mantle (“Mickey”) oversees all engineering/development, quality assurance, operations, support, and professional services associated with Gracenote music recognition services and media management products. The Gracenote services and software are an integral part of the digital audio revolution, and provide music fans 24×7 access to a vast database of CD information (artists, albums, song titles) for media players enabled with Gracenote’s MusicID/CDDB products. Media Players such as Apple’s iTunes, WinAmp, Sony’s Sonic Stage, and thousands of other CD and media playing applications. Gracenote technology and data are also now being included in numerous consumer electronics products from companies such as Sony, Pioneer, Yamaha, Kenwood, Sanyo, Samsung, Philips, Thomson and dozens of other leading companies.
Prior to joining Gracenote, Mickey was Vice President of R&D/CTO at IMSI and Vice President of Engineering/CTO at Broderbund Software where he contributed to the development of many successful and award-winning products including “PrintShop Deluxe”, “Living Books,” “Myst,” “Riven,” and many more. Before that he was a contributor to many early 3D computer graphics products from Evans & Sutherland.
More recently, Mickey was General Manager of the 3D Graphics Division and a member of the Executive Management Committee at Pixar, where he was instrumental in developing Pixar’s RenderMan™ software. The RenderMan™ software has been used extensively to create stunning special effects for dozens of movies such as “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars Episode I and II”, as well as feature length animated movies like “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo,” among many others.
With a career spanning nearly 40 years developing hardware and software products, Mickey takes an active role in working with leading consumer products companies around the world to help develop and cutting edge products that incorporate Gracenote technology.
Gracenote was acquired by Sony Corporation of America in June, 2008 and continues to operate as an independently operating Sony subsidiary providing products and services to Sony as well as it numerous other customers.
