iTunes won't recognise some CDs

[OldNick]

I have just found to my irritation that iTunes _will_ check CD info such as song names etc. ....however....

Every now and then it fails to find info. It almost seems as if it does not even try. Usually when I insert a CD, it tells me it's checking with Gracenote, and in short order the details pop up.

Then suddenly it will just not get details. I have read the instructions and reasons why.

What does not make sense is that in two instances, Disc 2 of a double disc set will register, but disc one will not. This has happened with Physical Graffiti, by Led Zeppelin, and a Best Of by Faith No More. Of the maybe 1/2 doz CDs that have failed so far, the others were single disc. The failures have failed in spite of repeated attempts, restarts and even a reboot. All the failures were pretty popular, and what I thought were far more obscure stuff worked fine.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks for any help

EDIT: I now have three double CD sets that have had the first disc fail, while the second gets info. So that is over-represented, but not exclusive: that is to say I have had double CD sets that worked, and single CDs that have failed to supply info from the web.

Nick

 

[Wishmaster]

Im not familiar enough with iTunes to really help there but ...

With Zune gets it right if its in thier store. For those that aren't, I use MediaMonkey and tag my rips myself, as well as adding the album art.
There are other ways to tag your music collection, but Ive always just used Media monkey for it.
It may be qa lot less headache to do it your self and then import it into iTunes once all the info is there.

 

[OldNick]

Thanks for the reply.

Do you mean you manually enter all the CD details? I can do that for the ones that have failed, but I am not about to do it for all my CDs if Media Monkey does not do it for me.

Nick

 

[Wishmaster]

Well, it can do it auto. But, its no better or no worse than any other Media program such as Nero, Zune or iTunes.

Perhaps someone will have a better suggestion for you that has more experience with iTunes. There may be a way to make it work better.
Ive just got in a habit of doing it manually. That way theres no mistake.

 

[OldNick]

hmmm...in fact it failed to find stuff that iTunes found Guess I just have to work with what's working and manually enter the rest.

Anyway, thanks for helping.

 

[bru]

Out of roughly 2000 CDs I've imported in to iTunes it hasn't found info for maybe a handful. Sometimes info is wrong but very rarely does it find nothing (I assume you mean it just says "Track 1", Track 2", etc.). My import of Physical Graffiti worked fine FWIW.

Have you tried Advanced-->Get Track Names? I doubt it will bring anything additional up but it may be worth a try.

Regarding 2 CD sets, iTunes doesn't always do it the way I prefer as I name them "Physical Graffiti [Disc 1]" and "Physical Graffiti [Disc 2]", so many time I have to manually change it. As you said somtimes I manually have to enter info, it's a way I've gotten iTunes to work for me.

 

[OldNick]

OK. Thanks for that. It's still a handful for me as well, but it started seeming worse lately. I think just coincidence. Yes it just says "track 1" etc

I don't get it that PG worked for you! I tried several times and never got any info for Disc 1.

For me it has always named the discs as you describe, when it manages to get info for both.

I tied that Advanced Get Track Names and it said "Cannot do this for tracks not imported by iTunes". I need to look at that as I am not sure if that track was one of my old versions or a new one.