Table of contents for this page:
What Is Metadata Anyway?
Editing Track Metadata
Moving Tracks from One CD to Another
Editing Album Metadata
Adding Your Own Album Art
It is the data “connected” to your music. It’s everything about the music, but not the music itself. That is, it is the artist name, album name, album art (CD cover), track (song) name, track number and CD number (in the case of a multiple CD set). Many providers of digital music metadata and digital music software also consider other information about music as metadata as well. So the number of times a song is played, the date and time of the last play, similar artists, the genre and so on are also metadata.
We allow you to manage the metadata associated with your music (either at the track level or the album level). We have tried to make this a simple and intuitive process.
Metadata is inherently “dirty”; that is, inconsistent. Depending on the software used to rip the music from the CD and the settings selected in the software, the metadata for the same CD could be different (or even non-existent).
For example, the popular band known as ACDC is often listed as “AC/DC”, “AC~DC”, “AC DC”, “ACDC”, and so on. If you are searching for one of their tracks and you use the incorrect version of their name, you may not be able to find it.
Another eloquent example is the Beatles. They are often known as “The Beatles”, “Beatles”, and “Beatles, The”.
1. From the CD details view, select the track(s) for which you wish to edit metadata.
2. Select “Edit Track” option from the right-click shortcut menu:
3. A new window will pop-up with the track-oriented metadata shown.
4. You may change all the strings enabled for edit.
Note: An artist for a particular track can be different from the artist for the CD on which the track “lives”. So changing a track’s artist name does not change the album’s artist name.
5. From here you can navigate directly to Edit Album Medata window, if click on the link below the album cover.
Moving Tracks from One CD to Another
1. From the CD Details view, select the track(s) you wish to move.
2. Select “Change Album” option from the right-click shortcut menu (please see the screen shot above).
3. A new window will appear with search boxes for album and artist name to allow you to find the proper target album. If you don’t see the proper target album (CD cover), type in different information in the text boxes.
4. Once you click on the proper CD cover and save, you will notice that you have a new CD cover in your library view with the track(s) you selected in step 1 above. If you mistakenly move tracks to another album, you may either merge CDs or move the tracks back as described in this section.
1. From the “My Library” tab, select the album for which you wish to edit metadata.
2. Select “Edit Album” option from the right-click shortcut menu:
3. A new window will pop-up with the album-oriented metadata shown.
4. You may change the album name, artist name and album art (CD cover) on this screen. If you elect to change the album or artist name, the system will automatically search for the relevant album art and show you them from your collection as well as a set of CD covers from our database.
5. If you elect to change the album art, simply click on the CD cover you wish. The system will replace the existing album cover with the new cover you selected. Note that it will also replace the album and artist names, so be sure to edit those fields AFTER you select the proper CD cover.
Note: An artist for a particular track can be different from the artist for the CD on which the track “lives”. So changing the album’s artist name does not change any of the tracks’ artists’ names.
1. From the “Edit Album” window described above, you may also upload your own album art if you wish.
2. Click on the “Browse/Upload” button. You will be presented with a standard dialog box for searching the image you wish to have as your CD cover.
3. Why would you do this? Perhaps you have a favorite CD from a wedding or from a friend’s band that does not have “official” album art. (Of course, you will hardly meet a necessity to edit a creative heritage of Great The Beatles!)
4. The file you upload must be a JPEG (.JPG) or one of other supported formats and should satisfy the size limit of 5MB; otherwise the file will be rejected.
