Freeware cd music cataloger?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Frank D
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Frank D

Is there a music cataloger that will automatically pick up and catalog the human-readable information from the music tracks (not mp3 file names) on the CD, assuming the CD text and ID tag information were burned along with the tracks? The programs I'm familiar with will only catalog the file names on the CD if they're MP3's or similar files, or "Track 1", "Track 2", and so on.
 
I have never seen a commercial music CD with the names of the tracks on
it although there may be a few that I don't know about. There are
programs that look up the track names on the internet after you put the
CD in your CD ROM drive.
 
Frank said:
Is there a music cataloger that will automatically pick up and catalog the human-readable information from the music tracks (not mp3 file names) on the CD, assuming the CD text and ID tag information were burned along with the tracks? The programs I'm familiar with will only catalog the file names on the CD if they're MP3's or similar files, or "Track 1", "Track 2", and so on.
Click to expand...
Found Audiograbber best for me http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/
Also Disk explorer http://www.tjelinek.com/main.php?section=d&setLng=EN
 
| Frank D wrote:
|| Is there a music cataloger that will automatically pick up and catalog
|| the human-readable information from the music tracks (not mp3 file names)
|| on the CD, assuming the CD text and ID tag information were burned along
|| with the tracks?

NOTE: The assumption above is probably wrong.

|| The programs I'm familiar with will only catalog the
|| file names on the CD if they're MP3's or similar files, or "Track 1",
|| "Track 2", and so on.

George wrote:
| I have never seen a commercial music CD with the names of the tracks on
| it although there may be a few that I don't know about. There are
| programs that look up the track names on the internet after you put the
| CD in your CD ROM drive.

KeithS wrote:
| Found Audiograbber best for me http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/
| Also Disk explorer http://www.tjelinek.com/main.php?section=d&setLng=EN

Thank you, George and Keith.

George, you are probably right that what I'm looking for does not exist. In other words, once a music track is laid down on a CD, there is no human-readable info in it -- you have to get that from an external database, either online or your own hand-typed.

Keith, it appears that AudioGrabber does not *catalog* in a searchable database the human-readable info of the tracks on the CD (like title, artist and year, from the tracks), and while Disk Explorer seems to do what I want (I can't see how, but it says it does), it is not freeware ($29 to buy).

Does anyone have a workaround for this situation: i.e., to automatically (or with the least amount of effort) create a searchable artist-title-year-etc. database of all the music on a PC hard drive? Thanks to all.

Frank D
 
Frank said:
Keith, it appears that AudioGrabber does not *catalog* in a searchable database the human-readable info of the tracks on the CD
Click to expand...
(like title, artist and year, from the tracks), and while Disk
Explorer seems to do what I want (I can't see how, but it says it
does), it is not freeware ($29 to buy).
Frank, yes, sorry you're right about not cataloging directly in
Audiograbber. Basically I just copied the listing produced by
Audiograbber and pasted it into a suitable Excel workbook template. I
sorted the pages according to the CD number, and also sorted them
accoding to composer (classical music).
But we're not allowed to mention Excel as its not Freeware :))

According to their licence terms, Disk Explorer is free for
non-commercial use, so go ahead and try it.
 
KeithS wrote:
| Frank D wrote:
||
|| Keith, it appears that AudioGrabber does not *catalog* in a searchable
|| database the human-readable info of the tracks on the CD
| (like title, artist and year, from the tracks), and while Disk
| Explorer seems to do what I want (I can't see how, but it says it
| does), it is not freeware ($29 to buy).
||
|
| Frank, yes, sorry you're right about not cataloging directly in
| Audiograbber. Basically I just copied the listing produced by
| Audiograbber and pasted it into a suitable Excel workbook template. I
| sorted the pages according to the CD number, and also sorted them
| accoding to composer (classical music).
| But we're not allowed to mention Excel as its not Freeware :))
|
| According to their licence terms, Disk Explorer is free for
| non-commercial use, so go ahead and try it.

Keith, thank you for your reply.

I did try Disk Explorer. It's hard to understand right out of the box and its help is sparse, but I did manage to muddle through creating a sample database of MP3s and trying it out. It seems to do what I want, but even that small sample database is very large (which is hard to understand, because the information I'm looking for doesn't amount to more than 1K per MP3) and the freeware version will not allow a database to be updated once it has been created. This would be a major problem for me, since I will be updating, adding/deleting, and editing my collection daily. So I think I will not be using Disk Explorer. I also tried AudioGrabber, but from what I could see, there is no listing generated from MP3 CDs that have already been created. In sum, no joy for me with these two programs.

What I ideally need is a program that, when I insert a CD with MP3s on it, will show all the ID tag information, along with the file names, and allow me to add that information incrementally to a database (Excel would be fine for that), then allow me to repeat that with other CDs and my hard drive. With that, I could compare any MP3 song title, artist, year, etc., that I already have on disc to the MP3s I want to download or create, so I would be able to detect and avoid duplicates, multiples, and missing titles in a group or series.

Thanks again, Keith, and all who may have suggestions.

Frank D
 
| Frank D wrote:
||
|| Keith, it appears that AudioGrabber does not *catalog* in a searchable
|| database the human-readable info of the tracks on the CD
| (like title, artist and year, from the tracks), and while Disk
| Explorer seems to do what I want (I can't see how, but it says it
| does), it is not freeware ($29 to buy).
||
|
| Frank, yes, sorry you're right about not cataloging directly in
| Audiograbber. Basically I just copied the listing produced by
| Audiograbber and pasted it into a suitable Excel workbook template. I
| sorted the pages according to the CD number, and also sorted them
| accoding to composer (classical music).
| But we're not allowed to mention Excel as its not Freeware :))
|
| According to their licence terms, Disk Explorer is free for
| non-commercial use, so go ahead and try it.

Keith, thank you for your reply.

I did try Disk Explorer. It's hard to understand right out of the box and
its help is sparse, but I did manage to muddle through creating a sample
database of MP3s and trying it out. It seems to do what I want, but even
that small sample database is very large (which is hard to understand,
because the information I'm looking for doesn't amount to more than 1K per
MP3) and the freeware version will not allow a database to be updated once
it has been created. This would be a major problem for me, since I will be
updating, adding/deleting, and editing my collection daily. So I think I
will not be using Disk Explorer. I also tried AudioGrabber, but from what I
could see, there is no listing generated from MP3 CDs that have already been
created. In sum, no joy for me with these two programs.

What I ideally need is a program that, when I insert a CD with MP3s on it,
will show all the ID tag information, along with the file names, and allow
me to add that information incrementally to a database (Excel would be fine
for that), then allow me to repeat that with other CDs and my hard drive.
With that, I could compare any MP3 song title, artist, year, etc., that I
already have on disc to the MP3s I want to download or create, so I would be
able to detect and avoid duplicates, multiples, and missing titles in a
group or series.

Thanks again, Keith, and all who may have suggestions.

Frank D

----------------------------------------------------
You might try MediaMonkey at http://www.mediamonkey.com/. It catalogs music
CDs and offers a lot of control and other features (including built-in
player, etc). You can ever enter your own field to the internal database.
I use and extra field to store a cd number to simplify lookup of the cd in
my cd storage racks.

HTH,
Ray
 
aafuss wrote:
| Babya Logic has one:
| http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?26000000037648

aafuss:

This is an impressive freeware program, but it's a music production suite and doesn't seem to have a cataloging function or capability, at least not one that I can discover. I don't know anything about music production, I just want to be able to catalog the readable information contained in MP3s. Thanks for the suggestion, however.

Frank D
 
Duddits wrote:
| On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:04:14 GMT, "Frank D" wrote:
|
||
|| What I ideally need is a program that, when I insert a CD with MP3s on
|| it, will show all the ID tag information, along with the file names
|
| Disk Explorer Pro will do this.
| http://www.tjelinek.com/main.php?section=d&setLng=EN
|
| regards
|
| Dud

Dud,

Below is what I replied to Keith, who responded previously (BTW, "Disk Explorer" is the same as
"Disk Explorer Pro," just the free vs. the pay version.)

"I did try Disk Explorer. It's hard to understand right out of the box and
its help is sparse, but I did manage to muddle through creating a sample
database of MP3s and trying it out. It seems to do what I want, but even
that small sample database is very large (which is hard to understand,
because the information I'm looking for doesn't amount to more than 1K per
MP3) and the freeware version will not allow a database to be updated once
it has been created. This would be a major problem for me, since I will be
updating, adding/deleting, and editing my collection daily. So I think I
will not be using Disk Explorer. "

Thanks!

Frank D
 
Ray wrote:
|| Frank D wrote:
|
<snip>
|
| What I ideally need is a program that, when I insert a CD with MP3s on it,
| will show all the ID tag information, along with the file names, and allow
| me to add that information incrementally to a database (Excel would be fine
| for that), then allow me to repeat that with other CDs and my hard drive.
| With that, I could compare any MP3 song title, artist, year, etc., that I
| already have on disc to the MP3s I want to download or create, so I would
| be able to detect and avoid duplicates, multiples, and missing titles in a
| group or series.
|
<snip>
|
| Frank D
|
| ----------------------------------------------------

Then Ray wrote:
| You might try MediaMonkey at http://www.mediamonkey.com/. It catalogs
| music CDs and offers a lot of control and other features (including
| built-in player, etc). You can ever enter your own field to the internal
| database. I use and extra field to store a cd number to simplify lookup of
| the cd in my cd storage racks.
|
| HTH,
| Ray

Ray, a big thank you for this!

MediaMonkey is *exactly* what I've been looking for. I've tried the freeware version and am so impressed by what it can do that I intend to "go for the Gold" version ($19.95).

Now I realize that this is a *freeware* list and I've just been motivated to *buy* a non-freeware version. I apologize for that, but I want to say that if it weren't for this freeware list and the freeware version of the software I probably wouldn't have found what I was looking for. So I hope you will excuse it.

Just for the record, here are the features that prompted me to upgrade:

Their website says that MediaMonkey Gold (the pay version) gives you these extras:
* File Monitor
* Advanced automated mixes
* Advanced device synchronization
* Sleep Timer
* Virtual CD <---This is mainly what I'm looking for (explained below).
* Previews
* Faster CD Burning
* Unlimited MP3 Encoding

I'm paraphrasing and condensing from their Help file here:

"With the Virtual CD functionality, you can easily ascertain the relationship between physical CDs in a collection and the subset of tracks from those CDs that have been ripped. If you want to rip Tracks from CDs and also catalog your Audio CD collection [which is what I want to do], simply ripping your Audio CDs will result in duplicate entries for any Tracks that you rip. The Track will appear once for the CD version of the Track and a second time for the ripped version. Using the Virtual CD will avoid this. Once you remove the CD, you'll notice that in the Library, the Locations View has an entry for the CD, and all of the Tracks on the CD are part of the Library. The Tracks that are accessible (i.e. those that were ripped to the Virtual CD) appear in black, while the songs that are inaccessible (because they weren't ripped and the CD isn't inserted) appear greyed out."

What more could I ask? Whatever it is, it's probably in there.

Thanks again to all!

Frank D
 
I have found an app called The GodFather at here:
http://downloads.vnunet.com/download/file+management/the+godfather/_32820.html

It does ID3 tags as well as lyrics of songs.
Click to expand...

home page etc. etc. . . .

Program: The GodFather
Author: Touzozoglou Dimitris
Ware: Freeware
http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/

Tutorials:
http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/tutorial.htm
http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/tutorials/01/index.html

Susan
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Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)
 
FYI, authors home page has version .70 listed and MajorGeeks has
version .71 beta. The link the OP gave has version .65. Strange.
 
(e-mail address removed) wrote:
| I have found an app called The GodFather at here:
| http://downloads.vnunet.com/download/file+management/the+godfather/_32820..html
|
| It does ID3 tags as well as lyrics of songs.

Thank you. I tried The GodFather. I had used an older version about 2 years ago but didn't remember it, and I downloaded and tried the latest to be sure I wasn't missing out on anything new. Unfortunately, TGF's interface is much harder to learn that MediaMonkey's and it doesn't have many of MM's features and functions. I believe I'll go with MM.

Frank D
 
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