How Can I Find the Album for a Particular Song?

April 17, 2007 9:11 PM

Music Search Techniques: Is there an easier/more effective way to find the title of a CD/album when you only know the artist and the song title?

I wanted to buy Frank Sinatra's song, "It Was A Very Good Year." I searched iTunes. No luck. (Well, karaoke only.) So I searched Amazon. No luck. So I tried Amazon's advanced search. No luck. Then, I searched Amazon's music category for ALL of Frank Sinatra's works. Looked inside each album (yes, I still call them albums.) Finally found the song. It's on "Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years."

There has to be a better way.

And I really don't want to buy the entire album, just the one song. Does anyone have a better idea?

Also, ten points if you tell me where i can buy the opening theme to Bill Maher's show,"Real Time".

Thanks!

posted by davidinmanhattan to Technology (12 answers total)

Couldn't tell you where to buy individual tracks, but you can search by song on the Gracenote (formerly CDDB) database.
posted by Partial Law at 9:27 PM on April 17, 2007

I just googled:

"frank sinatra" "it was a very good year" album

The first link gives the album it was originally released on ("September of My Years", 1965), and the second link gives the Amazon page you found.
posted by robcorr at 9:32 PM on April 17, 2007

An easy, generic way to search for albums on which your desired song(s) appear is to do a Google search like this:

(song name) + (artist name) + "album"...

i.e. Just type the word "album" alongside your known artist and your known song name... And Google will tell you what album(s) the song appears on...

Sorry, I don't have an answer to the second part of your question (about buying).
posted by amyms at 9:33 PM on April 17, 2007

It's on over 10 of his albums. Search for the song at allmusic.com then go to page two of the results and scroll down to Sinatra to see the album titles.
posted by dobbs at 9:33 PM on April 17, 2007

Arrgh. Just read the rest of your multipart question. I don't think Frank's albums are available by song, digitally.
posted by dobbs at 9:35 PM on April 17, 2007

There's a public-licenced version of CDDB called freedb . You can search it here.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:35 PM on April 17, 2007

discogs.com?
posted by juv3nal at 9:44 PM on April 17, 2007

I use allmusic.com for tracking down music data, seldom fails me.
posted by bizwank at 11:59 PM on April 17, 2007

dobbs, iTunes seems to have a lot of Sinatra available by the song (not the song the poster were looking for in particular, though).
posted by bluebird at 4:01 AM on April 18, 2007

Another plug for allmusic.com; it's pretty handy (when the server is being responsive).
posted by kimota at 6:30 AM on April 18, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. You guys rock!
(Oh, bad pun. Sorry. But thanks!)
posted by davidinmanhattan at 8:56 AM on April 18, 2007

I probably would Google sinatra "very good year" discography, but that's just my steez. It looks like it's on about 543789 records of his.
posted by loiseau at 12:51 PM on April 18, 2007