CD import: freedb.org going away soon [now gone!]

I just saw this on the freedb.org website: “freedb.org and its services will be shut down on March 31st of 2020”.
This will affect the CD import function in that it will no longer be possible to get track names automatically.
freedb-org-2020-03-28-002015.jpg
Probably an increasingly rarely-used function, but just curious whether an alternative service can be used?

I did not know. This does not tell if this is a temporary shutdown or a definitive one.

I think it’s going to be permanent, but perhaps someone in Steinberg can ask MAGIX, who apparently run the freedb.org servers now (something I also did not know). As a possible alternative, MusicBrainz appear to have a public domain API.

So it seems freedb.org has been finally shutdown.

Will there be any alternative to retrieve the tracknames from internet in the future?

gnudb.org has been around a while, perhaps this could be included in the next patch?

+1 for the gnudb.org in to WaveLab!

Thanks

regards S-EH

Anyone knows if there has been any update regarding moving to another database? It is quite important for my workflow.

Thanks

+1

+1

++1

Hi all

I have a client who took away a CD album from the studio last week calling to tell me it came up as ‘boost your sex drive’ ‘new age’ CD - def not what is on his CD!!
I was aware of CDDB and FREEDB but where are we with this right now is it only gnudb.org and if it is how do you reliably submit and does the likes of iTunes or WindowsMediaPlayer actually reference gnudb.org

iTunes uses Gracenote database to identify inserted physical CDs, and last I checked, WMP uses All Music.

You can submit the CD info to Gracenote directly inside the iTunes app, but it takes a few days to go live for other users. Since this concept uses a “CD fingerprint” based on the number of CD tracks and their respective times, it’s not uncommon for something like this to happen in iTunes. Especially with CDs with fewer songs as there is more likely to be a match as opposed to a CD with more tracks.

Step 1 would be to learn which media player your client is using so you can put that fire out first and then the rest later.

It’s debatable whether this is the job of the mastering engineer or the record label/management which with independent artists is not really a thing anymore.

I offer submission to Gracenote Database to my clients for a nominal fee.

Thanks for this !!

While updating the excellent AWave Studio today, I noticed that FMJ Software are offering ACDR as donationware, a CD ripper that uses gnudb.org and is dedicated to that one task. It seems to work fine, does tagging and even finds album art for commercial releases, and while it might be convenient to have such a function in WaveLab, I wonder just how much it’s really used, especially when there are such good and inexpensive alternatives.

As a workaround, you could configure your local network’s DNS so that the name freedb.freedb.org resolves to the IP address of gnudb.gnudb.org.

On Windows for example, look up the current IP address of gnudb.gnudb.org:
C:> nslookup gnudb.gnudb.org
[…]
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: gnudb.gnudb.org
Address: 92.246.24.225

… then add the following line to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts:
92.246.24.225 freedb.freedb.org