Apple Music recognises songs on imported CD but not album name or artwork

Question

Apple Music recognises songs on imported CD but not album name or artwork

Hi - I'm running the latest version of Catalina on a MacBook 2017 model and using an Apple external CD drive to import some CDs into Apple Music app (what we used to call iTunes). The system took a couple of minutes to recognise the first CD, but has only recognised (correctly) all the track names. Bizarrely, it doesn't know the name of the album and has not found artwork.

How is this possible, that it knows the names of individual songs but not the album and the artist ? How can I get the remaining info into the Info fields with the least manual effort ?

Thanks in advance for your reply

MacBook

Posted on May 22, 2020 3:00 AM

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Answer 1

ed2345

Level 9

63,578 points

May 23, 2020 8:12 AM in response to Doctor Zhivago

Dr. Z,

The CD identification is done through a 3rd party database called Gracenote. Gracenote has a combination of "official" data plus user submitted data. As you probably know, any iTunes/Music user can submit data by using the Submit CD Track data command, so perhaps not surprising that inaccurate and incomplete data can slip in. For more information about how Gracenote, and therefore iTunes/Music, does its thing, see here:

https://www.gracenote.com/music/music-recognition/

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Answer 2

ed2345

Level 9

63,578 points

May 22, 2020 10:04 AM in response to Doctor Zhivago

Right-click, Get Info, Details tab, and edit in the info you want. For album level info, you can highlight the tracks and do all the tracks at once.

This can work either on the CD tracks before you import, or on the tracks in the library after the import.

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Answer 3

May 23, 2020 10:05 AM in response to ed2345

Ok thanks, I kind of knew this. I am surprised that Gracenote doesn't have the metadata (if that is the correct term) for this album, as it is quite well known and from a well known band. Moreover, the full album is available to purchase on iTunes. Also, Shazam recognises the music correctly, instantly. So I am still perplexed.

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Answer 4

May 23, 2020 1:24 AM in response to ed2345

Thanks for your reply and helpful suggestion - but I already knew that and have had to do it for many CDs I've imported over the years. However, it doesn't answer my question: how come Apple automatically knew the names of the individual tracks on the album, but didn't know the album name and artist ? It's a bit like me knowing the name of my house, but not knowing which street or country it's in !

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Apple Music recognises songs on imported CD but not album name or artwork

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