iTunes Only Library in CDPedia

[HarryM]

Hi Guys

I'm new here and just looking at the possibilities of using CDPedia with my music collection. I've searched the forum already but I couldn't find an answer to this question although there were a couple that came close so I apologise if it's been asked and answered before and I've just missed it. Anyway, the question... I have a large music collection, over 2200 CDs and I have painstakingly added this collection to iTunes so all my music is in digital format (Apple Lossles...). All the CDs are now stored in my roofspace and it wouldn't be easy to get at them again and, at any rate, I really wouldn't want to reload all those CDs again anyhow. I do love the idea of having all that metadata that CDPedia adds so....the question (at last!!!) is:

can I use CDPedia to scan my iTunes library, currently on an external usb drive and import it so that it maintains the links with iTunes so I can play any track or album from within CDPedia and also get the metadata that would be available if I loaded a CD?

Obviously all future CDs would be okay but this is a huge legacy that I need to capture.

Thanks in anticipation for your help.

Best Regards

HarryM

[Nora]

You can import any playlist (including your Music Library) into CDpedia from iTunes using the 'Import iTunes Playlist' command found under the File menu. If your iTunes database is kept on a separate hard drive you can tell CDpedia about the location by entering the following line into the application "Terminal", found in Applications/Utilities, followed by a return:

Code: Select all

defaults write com.bruji.cdpedia "iTunes Library XML" "xxx" 

(Where xxx stands for the path to your iTunes Music XML file, for example: /Users/[User name]/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml)

[Conor]

There should be no need to explicitly tell CDpedia about the location of your library. If iTunes can see it CDpedia should be able to pick that information up directly from iTunes.

Once the import is done you can open an album and use the gear button on the bottom right to select a search site and gather all the extra metadata information from that site. Because you don't have the actual CD to calculate the disc ID the search is done on album title and artist and so might produce more than one result, but with this method you can preview the results.

Once you find a site that you like for your collection, you can use the the "CD->Update from->site name" for a larger selection that will automatically pick the first result. Doghouse in that section tends to be quite accurate, Disco GS and MusicBrainz are also quite good. In this case you would have to review the albums after the fact as with such a big collection it's likely to get a few wrong, especially really common titles and artist such as "greatest hits".

Try out the Demo version of CDpedia. It will let you do all this minus the "edit gear button" bit as you need the edit window for that and that the bit that gets locked with more than 25 CDs in demo mode. But you can try that ability out before importing your entire collection by having less than 25 albums and importing just a small sample of songs to begin with.

[HarryM]

Hi Connor and Nora

Many, many thanks for your prompt reply and information. I'm going to do as you suggest and download the demo version to try it out but it sounds like this app will do what I'm looking for. I'm at work just now but going home shortly so I'll try it out then and let you know how I get on.

Thanks again for your help.

Best Regards

HarryM