More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, May 05, 2005

CDDB/Grancenote sucks

I love iTunes, and I do use it to rip music from CD into MP3 format. But my God. The service Apple uses to gather CD information--Gracenote, formerly known as CDDB--is an absolute waste of time. I just ripped the soundtrack of the latest Star Wars movie with iTunes, and check out the numerous errors I found almost immediately:

The Artist field was incorrectly labeled as "WilliamJohn" [sic] and not "John Williams" (or "The London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices").

The Composer field was incorrectly labeled as "Williams,John" [sic] and not "John Williams."

The album, "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)," was incorrectly identified as "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." (Curiously, the CD spine simply reads, "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith," with a curious place for the colon.)

The song "Star Wars and the Revenge of the Sith" was incorrectly labeled as "Star Wars and Revenge of the Sith."

The song "Anakin vs. Obi-Wan" was incorrectly labeled as "Anakin vs Obi-Wan."

The song "The Birth of the Twins and Padmé's Destiny" was incorrectly labeled as "The Birth of the Twins and Padme's Destiny."

Seriously, spare me. This is the type of thing I'm talking about when I complain that while iTunes is great, it's still not easy enough for the norms. You may not care as much about meta data as I do, but when you can't even find your own music because you accepted the default values iTunes supplies via Gracenote, you're going to be upset. This is pathetic.

To be fair, Windows Media Player (which uses All Music Guide/AMG) is not much better. The three tracks on this album that include two pieces, like "Star Wars and the Revenge of the Sith," are incorrectly separated with slashes (i.e. "Star Wars/The Revenge of the Sith"). And the Artist is identified as "London Voices; The London Symphony Orchestra" (the performer, technically, is "The London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices").

Update: A number of readers wrote in to tell me that Gracenote's database is populated by end users, and not by professionals. Thanks. But I actually knew this, and that's the problem with the whole scheme: When incorrect data, like that mentioned above, gets into the database, Gracenote never fixes it. That it lets the general population fill their database--often incorrectly--is the exact reason I can't stand Gracenote.

[ Posted at 11:15 AM | Permalink ]