Why is the list of tracks on my CD different from the list appearing in the List Pane of Windows Media Player?
Asked by
bea2345 (
6251
)
January 15th, 2010
I am a cataloguer in a Library. Currently I am attending to a collection of music CDs . Part of the process is confirming the content of each CD by playing it using the Library’s equipment, in this case Windows Media Player.
On more than one occasion, the list of tracks appearing on the disc label or container has differed substantially from the one appearing in the list pane of the Media Player. Why is this?
I also note that sometimes the duration of the CD will appear in the List Pane and sometimes it does not. Is this an option in the Player that I am missing?
Lastly, I note that these problems are rarely seen with more established publishers such as Decca. Almost always the problem CDs come from small desktop operations.
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5 Answers
Could be errors when people have sent it to the database that collated the info. Very often if you get a small indie cd or a covermount no one thinks to register the details themselves.
If you wanted I’m sure you can correct them online (I only use iTunes and gracenote can do that)
[Deleted by me.]
I’ll send you a message.
If I have understood the replies thus far: when I am using the Media Player, the information in the list pane is coming from the Web?
Microsoft licenses the information from data providers and hosts it on their own servers, which are likely to connect via the Internet. But the information, no matter where it’s coming from, is not coming from the CD itself.
A few CDs have track and title information embedded in them, but for the most part, this info gets looked up on line. It’s different for WMP than for iTunes or other media players. You can enter the information manually, but that is quite tedious.
I use an application called CDex for ripping CDs to MP3 files. It makes a query to a CDDB server like this one http://www.freedb.org/. You can use it to obtain track and title information on CDs without ripping them. Just fire up CDex, load your CD, and it will query a free CDDB server for you. It’s an open source application with a small footprint on your PC, unlike WMP or iTunes.
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