Hi Sam:
I never recommended PerfectMeta, never heard of it until now. I used a program for a while that
gathered Gracenote data from a CD inserted into the drive. I gave up because the Gracenote data was
so terrible. Freedb isn't much better, but that's an unrelated rant.
Anyway, in the end, I gave up trying to make a database of my music collection. Life's too short. I
know what I have and it's well organized. For my digital library, which is going to eventually
encompass most of my CDs and many LP transfers, I have to regularly clean up or totally rewrite the
garbage spewed out by Gracenote and freedb. I use Tag&Rename, which I highly recommend. This program
is brilliant because it will also search Amazon's databases -- in several different countries (.jp,
.uk, .de) plus that LP group-sourced database (as long as one has a username and password -- and
keep in mind that database is about 70% accurate, but that's better than Gracenote).
If one uses iTunes as their music library program, it's very easy to export the database as csv,
xls, etc. iTunes relies on Gracenote, and the latest versions make tag-fixing MORE difficult
(insane, typical of the "feature"-bloat that has always been the MO of iTunes).
I would say to fellow ARSC'rs, if you collect classical music, prepare to do a lot of manual labor
to correct all the stupid inconsistencies, outright errors and other flaws of "automated" database
populating programs. I will throw in one of my standard rants here -- all of this could have been
avoided if the RIAA had standardized naming conventions and required CDText from Day 1.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Brylawski" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2015 5:35 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Record cataloging tools
> Greetings,
>
> I'm taking an informal survey to see what kind of database
> applications any subscribers are using to catalog their personal
> collections. Brian? Beyond Category? An Access app? A Filemaker one?
>
> I know there are a lot of file tag utilities out there. I think Tom F.
> especially recommended PerfectMeta (correct me if I'm wrong). But what
> I'd really like to know of are tools that you use for personal
> cataloging of CDs, LPs, 78s, etc. In particular, tools you really
> like!
>
> Thanks.
>
> Sam Brylawski
>
>
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