How to get song properties to "stick" on CD

[millard]

I have recordings from our band and wanted to make them behave like "real" songs. I went into the Properties for the MP3 files and set all the band and song and track information and they looked fine on my hard drive. But when I write them to CD, they just come up as Track01, Track02, ...

Anyone know how to get the song information properly encoded into the data written to CD?

Thanks...Millard

[superbassman2000]

you need to write id3 data for it...
what do you use to play mp3s?

[Tash]

How are you writing them to CD? A standard music CD has no provision for ID tags, ID info in playback software comes from CDDB entries queried over the net.

In order for you to have ID tag info on the CD the files must be saved as MP3s and played back on an MP3 compatible CD player.

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Problem is: Maybe you renamed your files with all the relevant info, but that isn't enough. As superbassman2000 said, you must write the ID tags for the songs. That is different from just renaming the files. The ID tag data is what the mp3 players actually recognize as the info to be displayed. You got that because there are no ID tags. The most popular way to put that info into an mp3 is using the popular Winamp player. Load your mp3 into Winamp, right-click on the file name that appears and click on "View file info...". You'll be presented with a box that allows you to fill all the needed information. When you click on "OK", the ID tags will be written to the file and that's what your mp3 player will show. Now, if you need more flexibility or features for this task, you'll be pleased with this great piece of freeware.

Hope this helps.

[LajoieT]

Check in your CD Burning software for a "CD-TEXT" setting.

This will save the artist, album name, and track names on the disk in a format that CD-TEXT compatable players can access.

[millard]

Hmmm...

I guess part of the problem may be conversion to CD format? As an MP3 file, I think it is okay (but I don't have an MP3 player to confirm with). I want to create an audio CD, which I'm guessing converts (burns) the MP3 file in some other format and perhaps the software that does that isn't carrying the data forward?

Here's the exact scenario I'd like to have work:

1) I put the data on the MP3 file (or, frankly, any audio format that I can write from Adobe Audition, which is a fair number of them).

2) Burn a CD of our songs

3) Rip the CD on a different computer and have it know the Band name and Song names (just like when I rip a CD I've purchased).

Does that help?

Thanks...Millard

[LajoieT]

Most of the software apps that rip CDs access an online database of CDs. They are commonly known as CDDB, but IIRC that is a term owned by Gracenote, a company that provides those services for a fee, but there are other free ones out there also. In order for the other computer to recognize it, the CD and all of it's information must be entered into the CDDB datbase. Another fan of the band in question has usually already done this by the time you get the CD, which is why your computer recognizes it. The table of contents system on an audio CD is an extreemly specific system, so while it is possible for 2 different CDs to have exactly the same table of contents (it's basically a listing of the track numbers and total number of frames of data on the CD that each track uses), it is rare and when the software finds 2 or more similar entries, often they are the same thing that was submitted by different people with some slight difference ( like on having the artist name "David Bowie" while the other has "Bowie, David" ). The more tracks on the CD, the less likely this is to happen, but the situation you describe is most likely linked to CDDB functions. I have come across several apps that do read CD-Text information, but they also will typically defer to the CDDB if available.