That's because it's the masses that upload the titles!
On several occasions I've had several different uploaded titles to choose from. On occasion I've even uploaded the names of tracks myself.

ah... I didn't know that Vix.... thanks for explaining that and for showing me how an artist would upload track titles to the database. Funny, I've always assumed an 'authority' would be the keyholders to the database, or at least created as exported data from the record labels.

The interesting thing is that Gracenote / CDDB have tried to take the ownership of this publicly provided data - in a sense they set up an open-source database. See this news article from News.com in 2001. No idea what happened to this story.

Thanks Richard, that made interesting reading. As ever, I uncover a hornets nest of issues for the folk at Gracenote. Someone should at least take responsibility for the accuracy of data... but don't ask me who that should be!

The Gracenote CDDB database is created by users uploading data. Although Gracenote claims to be trying to improve the database quality, there is little evidence of this happening, hence the problems you face with data quality. Alternatives to using Gracenote are FreeDB and Musicbrainz in the open source world, and the commercial Lasso service from AMG. FreeDB and Musicbrainz have been around for several years and are similar to Gracenote by virtue of letting users enter the data in the database. Lasso is quite different in that the data is entered by music experts, not users. I personally do not like the mistakes in the genres I get from Gracenote.

Why couldn't all the CD information (title, tracks, genre, composer, etc., etc,) be included on the CD itself when manufactured making a database obsolete and allowing the artist/distribution company to fact check the info. What would also be cool is to have the lyrics to the songs included -- so that you could search song lyrics.

Spot on Roy, I agree with you. Being a CD, the contents aren't going to change... and yes.. how handy would it be to have the lyrics close to hand too.

When you said about the mistake with that Paul Simon, Ive had lots of Paul's such as McCartney and Simon coming up as Poul. The best one today was Gordon Lightfoot called Gordon Light Food.

I am so glad AMG is doing recognition now. The fact that it is not user-submitted and that they have way more info then any of the other services makes a difference.

Although most replys I'm reading are of the negative, I, for one, am amazed at the depth in which this data base can reach back to. I transferred a 1973 album to CD, and to my surprise the "correct" titles of all the tracks were instantly on my screen. Thanks.

so, after everything has been said and done, is it possible to at least fix the information on gracenote that is important to me and my little world?

after having a few differant music player importing cd on to the computer,

i find that media player was best because of the albulm thumbnotes,

yet i dont think that it is that good. i am starting now to use musicmatch. because it is paid for and easier to edit the info internally.

i would like to know when some of these companys would have a high standard of uploading the information themselves, with no inaccuracies of the information.

i know that there is a mass mass load of cd`s out there.

yet they could pay some one to give the correct info from home and support them by sending the cds and software uploaders, with people who have the time.

I'm with Roy R. Why in the world doesn't every commercial CD have CD-Text? As it is, only some Sony releases have it.

There's a new database that has popped-up in the last few months called GD3 (www.getdigitaldata.com). It was built by one of the cd ripping companies, so it didn't rely on the user data. I downloaded their evaluation and the coverage was good, but the best part is their hi-res cover art. Evidently, Circuit City is using it for an in-store ripping service.

Firstly for those wishing for text on the CD - have you considered that if this were possible it would naturally have been done yonks ago? It's not rocket science. In breif: the audio CD format (CD-DA, described by Sony and Phillips in the "red book" if you want to look it up) has been around long before people were ripping them to computers and compiling databases of tracks. At that time, an audio CD was designed to be played in high quality, on an audio CD player. There was zero concern for bits and bytes (which make up text on a computer) only notes and sounds. Thus, while the audio CD format is digital, it is all sound - including text would only cause your CD player to make some odd noises.

Of course, since then the CD-ROM (and friends) format has been developed and we can store whatever we like on them. Incidentally, since the original format was never designed to be bit perfect (small read and write errors can be made and you wont really hear it) there's a fair bit of redundancy involved in getting reliable data on the CD platform.

Lately, some people have tried to squeeze things into audio CDs to do things other than make sound. Heard of DRM, KeyAudio, Cactus and Sony's "Rootkit"? These guys broke the audio CD format in an attempt to introduce copy-protection. In the process they managed to break CD drives, render CDs useless in some players, and piss a hell of a lot of people off. I like my audio CD format in original flavour, thank you.

Anyway, with that out of the road I wanted to comment on Jonathan's original post. I've just been reading up on Gracenote's peccant practices concerning their database. I was actually looking for the details on how submissions are received - I too inserted a CD the other day which was populated with erroneous names, so I made the changes and submitted back. In other globally accessible and user contributed communities, the review process is open and verifiable. Not so with Gracenotes it seems. Aside from the occasional crass vandalism, I'd expect music lovers to overwhelming tend towards an accurate database. It's a pity that the most popular database then, is so closed in its practices. Who reviews the submissions? What guidelines do they use? Why not all submissions to be verified. Admittably, this is no small task, but for such a service the community would surely support!

Here's my wish - iTunes allowed you to select your own database provider, so consumers could vote with their feet and leave Gracenote to wallow in their proprietrary, greedy mess.

That said, the service has on the whole, been immensely valuable and reliable. There's just a few cracks at the seams...

My biggest pet peave with Gracenotes is the inability to submit cd info with multiple artists, you know, a wacky thing called compilations! Huh?

But how can a person edit the information on Gracenote's files when it is incorrect?

HI there! Im new to this gracenote and find it a pain, as when i use my sony disc to phone software it sometimes works and when it doesnt it says "unable to contact gracenote check ur internet connection" when my connection is absolutely fine!Any tips out there? many thnx Robin.

Whilst the inaccuracies in Gracenote are annoying/infuriating with the Creative Media Source Organizer that came with my sound card I find it Very easy to change and submit the correct info to the Gracenote database. I am also able to submit to the Database the Track/Artist info that does not appear when I play a CD that is not in the Database. Overall I find it very good it is just down to people (as usual) inputing the wrong info that throws up the inaccuracies, also its FREE.

Hi Jonathan, it's been interesting reading all the replies to your original question. In fact, I found this site with a google search for "gracenote cddb database", and this site was second on the list!

My experience with using a CDDB service started out with MusicMatch a few years ago, then Windows Media Player (I know, I know, a temporary lapse of sanity, I assure you), and now I have settled on WinAmp. The first 2 players also accessed public CDDB's, and I remember finding that there were many errors in the titles, as well as many inconsistencies, like some with all words using uppercase, some with normal sentence case, and worse still, some with all lower case.

Since moving to WinAmp, which is hardcoded to use Gracenote, I have found a few errors, but to be honest (and potentially controversial!), far less than the other CDDB's.

Having said that, I popped in a CD for which there were no CDDB entries, so WinAmp allows the upload of information that I type in to be written back to the Gracenote CDDB. Alas, I made some serious mistakes, which I only found out after I played the ripped files. However, like mentioned a few times above, once the information has been sent to the Gracenote's database, there was no way for me to go back and correct it.

In their defence however, if they did allow that, how would they control, or quality check this activity? There are real slimebuckets out there that would delight in wrecking something that works well (albeit most times). It is often the few that spoil it for the majority, that's just life.

Bottom line is that for me, the service is free, and it saves me a heap of keystrokes and time, so I can put up with a few errors here and there?

...would be nice to be able to right my wrong though. I feel a bit stink about it actually.

Cheers, Sean

Hi Sean, just a thought: When you've uploaded track info with errors, what prevents you from correcting the error and uploading again with the correct info?

I recently decided to rip a whole pile of compilation albums mainly for use in my car (about 280) using a ripping program that has access to the database and the errors are horrendous! Some popular tracks appear more than once on different albums and, because of the inconsistency of presentation, the program thinks they are different and lists them accordingly, as separate tracks, even though they are identical. Yes, it does save an awful lot of typing but I have still had to go through the whole lot, doing corrections and deleting the duplicates. Errors are: blatant spelling mistakes, e.g. Gerry (Jerry) and (&) the Pacemakers (Peacemakers - and worse!), upper case, lower case, artist and title reversals, separated by a dash or slash, "creative spelling". i.e. words ending in "ing" spelt "in`" (Very American, that!), "&" or "and", odd gaps, first letters not capitalised, first name/last name reversals, odd apostrophes thrown in, or not where they should be - the list just goes on and on! It`s taken me months of scrutiny and, even now, sometimes an error just hits me between the eyes where I haven`t noticed it before. Probably works OK for single-artist albums, but compilations are not the strong point!

For those who find inaccuracies in Gracenote's database, it may be possible to provide the company with your corrections. All you need to do is install iTunes, insert the CD, and do File > Get Info on the tracks you want to correct. After making your corrections, do Advanced > Submit CD Track Names. This appears to send the information you entered to Gracenote, even if the CD was already in the company's database. Of course, whether Gracenote will actually put your corrections into the database or simply ignore them, I have no idea.

I have regularly found errors in the Gracenote song naming service. It names the tracks incorrectly very often and sometimes even has the completely wrong artist for the whole album. I am forced to manually rename these files. Out of a few hundred CDs that I just added to my computer I found dozens of errors which tok me hours to fix. Why is a service like this that should be error-free and provided by WinAmp, Windows Media Player and iTunes so full of errors?

"Unable to contact Gracenote - please check your network connection" - when I am on Internet! Any ideas? I am using Vista Premium with WMP11. I have reinstalled Vista a few times recently and EVERY time Gracenote worked, but after the last reinstall, it fails to get the song names due to not getting on Internet! I have checked my firewall and opened all ports, not that, i closed them after!!

Can you help?

Tony

Try another disc - that one was faulty! It would not work on WMP either!! Other discs WORK!! Took a call to Dell to figure our - idiot!

They may have fixed a BSOD issue - see.....

it seems you can re-submit CD info, esp if it is different, and then people can choose which version of data they want. at least i think so...