Track names when burning CDs with Windows Media Player

January 6, 2022 8:59 AM

I used to burn CDs with iTunes. Now, I use Windows Media Player (with Windows 10). When I play an old iTunes CD in my car, the track names are displayed. However, CDs made with WMP just display "Track #." Is there some setting in WMP, to enable track name display?
posted by Rash to Technology (4 answers total)

When you burn the CD in Windows Media Player, do the track names display in the application? WMP has to download the data from the CD or from the Internet, and I don't think it does the Internet lookup anymore, annoyingly. So my guess is that it's not pulling the data before you burn the CD. If that's the case, you have to set that data in WMP before you do the burn.
posted by possibilityleft at 9:45 AM on January 6, 2022

Response by poster: Yes, track names showing in Media Player. And when I rip CDs when offline, or when WMP can't find track info on the Internet, I add it to the file manually with Mp3Tag.
posted by Rash at 10:37 AM on January 6, 2022

Best answer: Do you know whether you were burning a standard audio CD (aka "redbook" if you want to be technical) with iTunes or were you burning a CD with a bunch of compressed media files?

If you're creating an actual standard audio CD that would play in any CD player from when the format was introduced, then most likely the issue is that iTunes supports burning CD TEXT metadata and WMP doesn't. Unfortunately, the only thing you can do in this case is switch to a program that supports burning CD TEXT.
posted by Aleyn at 2:06 PM on January 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I just downloaded ImgBurn to do this very thing. Make sure you're getting a 'clean' version without the adware. I got it from Major Geeks, which uses its own downloader for some reason, but it was easy enough to get rid of. Make sure you don't agree to anything extra as you install.
posted by hydrophonic at 3:49 PM on January 6, 2022