:: QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ::

How do I make my song titles appear on iTunes or computer players when my disc is played?

There are two means of digitally encoding CD information ("metadata"), and they are often misunderstood and confused with one another.

CD TEXT is information encoded at the header (data portion) of an audio CD that can be used to store basic information such as artist, album title, song titles, and ISRC codes. This information is used only by the very small number of players that are cd text enabled -- generally speaking this is for car stereos and home stereo components that have an LCD display built into them. CD TEXT is not used by computers or iTunes. It is definitely not essential to include CD TEXT on your master -- if you are not 100% certain of how you want your song titles to appear, we recommend against encoding CD TEXT. It can be added at a later date if necessary

The CDDB (sometimes referred to as the Gracenote database) is an internet-based database that collects and distributes information about CD's. It can include much more information than artist / album / title data. See the following links for more information.

> Info on the Gracenote CDDB
> Applications that can submit to the Gracenote CDDB
> Mac tutorial for submitting album info with iTunes
> Windows tutorial for submitting info with iTunes
> The freedb CDDB database FAQ and applications


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