Music, sweet music, I wish I could caress and kiss and find ...

December 15, 2006 5:18 AM

Help me find industrial-strength software to catalog an extremely large CD collection.

We really, really need to index our music library - we have thousands upon thousands of CDs, many of them compilations and soundtracks, and currently we're relying on memory to find anything on them.

I know there are programs that allow you to feed discs one at a time into the drive, it queries CDDB (or another source), and writes the results to a searchable local database. But are there any that are (a) free, (b) adequate for such a large volume of music, and (c) network-friendly? (Ideally we'd do the work on the computer in the music library; an added bonus would be the ability to run queries on the computer in the on-air booth.)

posted by jbickers to computers & internet (6 comments total)

You use physical CD's in a radio station?

Time to buy a SATA raid card, and 750gb harddrives.
posted by SirStan at 5:44 AM on December 15, 2006

No, we intentionally resist that - trying to keep it real, as it were. We actually have all the tools needed for automation, but choose not to use it. (Still use vinyl, too.)
posted by jbickers at 5:47 AM on December 15, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

CDEX will allow you to use a local "cddb cache" directory. When it sees a disc, it checks the cache, and if the disc isn't there, it hits the internet servers and pulls down the data, optionally allowing you to verify / fix it up before writing to the cache.

I see no reason why you couldn't put the local cache on a network drive, and hit it from both the library and studio machines. IIRC, each album gets its own file, so you won't have locking conflicts unless you've got the same disc in both machines at once. Heh.

I'm not sure what sort of searching you want to do, but writing a little front-end to hit the local CDDB cache sounds like a two-banana problem for your local programming student.
posted by Myself at 6:29 AM on December 15, 2006

I've PD'd a college radio station, and cataloging our disc collection was always a monkey on my back. It's a real bitch. I'd recommend acquiring a used retail inventory system such as this, using it to scan SKUs from the backs of CDs, and then having whichever DB program you use access CDDB for the matching information.

However, since you say that you've already got all the tools for digitization, why not just go ahead and digitize? You don't have to tell anyone about it—your DJs don't have to be any the wiser, and you'll be killing two birds with one stone.

As for software, a friend of mine is (was?) developing station management software...I'll write him and ask if he has any suggestions. He's a MeFite, though, so maybe he'll see this first. Good luck!
posted by carsonb at 7:06 AM on December 15, 2006

I work at the National Association of Broadcasters, of which your station is a member. If you want a professional (probably not free) solution, I can put a request for information into our library.

You can also check R&R.

I am obsessive about cataloging my belongings. I bought a modded CueCat on eBay and paid $40 for Collectorz.com Music.

All you have to do is scan the bar code on the CD. Much quicker than popping them in and out of a CD drive. The CueCat is a nice $10 solution for something that normally costs upwards of $150.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 7:19 AM on December 15, 2006

Note: the request for information is free, but the companies found may not be.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 7:19 AM on December 15, 2006