CDDB doesn't recognize my albums... how can I tell it what the album is?

January 21, 2004 1:37 PM

I've got a question about tagging MP3s using IDx tags. (turn the page)

(I can't believe I hit post twice. pls delete!!)

I'm trying to rip all my CDs so I can pack them away forever. Trouble is, I have a fair number of audio CDs (complete albums) that I burned from downloaded tracks (Kazaa etc.) and CDDB does not generally recognize these, I guess the running times are off by a second or two, or the bytecount is off because of transcoding, sometimes I've added a track or two onto the end of the CD, who knows. Anyway, as a result I have to go look up the tracklisting on allmusic.com, and key them in by hand. Is there an application where I can tell CDDB what the album is, instead of it recognizing the album for itself? Then CDDB would simply throw the track names on there that are appropriate for the album I asked for. I obviously would still have to hand-key the titles of any "bonus" tracks I tacked onto the end of the disk. Anyone know of an application that can do this? Basically, CDDB lookup, without the lookup part.

posted by stupidsexyFlanders to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Let me get this straight: you downloaded full albums, burned them to CD and now you're asking us how to clean up the mess ? Or did you download cds you already own ?
posted by swordfishtrombones at 1:49 PM on January 21, 2004

musicbrainz
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:54 PM on January 21, 2004

Response by poster: swordfishtrombones: sometimes they're full albums. Sometimes they're mix CDs. I don't imagine I have any hope of getting track lookup on the mix CDs, though.

And I'm not asking you to clean up the mess. I'm just looking for a way to get the musical glass shards out of my MP3 collection panties. Is that so wrong?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 2:04 PM on January 21, 2004

I second musicbrainz. It is your only hope.
posted by signal at 2:56 PM on January 21, 2004

Remember that you'll be reencoding mp3s, so audio quality will be worse than the original mp3s you downloaded.
posted by fvw at 3:52 PM on January 21, 2004

Tag&Rename will let you search for an album on allmusic.com and extract song titles to id3 tags. I tried it myself but it didn't quite work (I'm using an older version) but the feature is there.
posted by bobo123 at 4:10 PM on January 21, 2004

There's an AppleScript for iTunes (Mac version only, which I don't think helps you unfortunately, but may help someone else who finds this thread) called Get CDDB Track Names that will let you apply CDDB info of your choice to selected tracks that don't-quite-match.
posted by bcwinters at 6:30 PM on January 21, 2004

Tag&Rename works very well for this.
posted by ascullion at 12:43 AM on January 22, 2004

Reencoding MP3s will always ensure that your music sounds like ass. If you're willing to put in the time to re-rip and re-encode, then I suggest putting in the time to re-download your collection in high-bitrate (preferably --aps) format.
posted by Jairus at 10:26 AM on January 22, 2004