This F.A.Q is from Freedb.org. Click on the Image below for the latest version of this F.A.Q
1.1. What
is freedb?
freedb is a database to look up CD information using
the internet. This is done by a client (a freedb aware application) which calculates a (nearly) unique disc ID for a CD in your
CD-Rom and then queries the database. As a result, the client displays the
artist, CD-title, tracklist and some additional infos.
You can also search for CD-info in the freedb via the web-based search.
1.2. Can
I download MP3s or other music files from freedb?
freedb is not a file sharing service, we do
not offer any MP3s or other music-files for download!
1.3.
Where can I buy a CD I found in the freedb database?
freedb does not sell CDs and we have no information
if and where a CD can be bought.
1.4. Can
you provide additional information regarding a CD in the database?
Since
all information is submitted by freedb users, we have no additional information
about the CDs in our database.
1.5. How
can I access freedb?
You
should use a freedb-aware program. You can take a look at our (incomplete) list
of freedb-aware applications.
1.6. How
can I tweak my CDDB-aware program to use freedb.org instead of cddb.com?
If
there is no direct option to choose freedb instead of CDDB, take a look at our list with config-hints, where you
can find solutions for many CDDB1-aware programs. Programs supporting CDDB2 can
not be tweaked to access freedb, as CDDB2 uses a different (proprietary)
protocol. If there is no solution for the program you're trying to use and you
don't find one yourself, please ask the authors of that program to add
freedb-support.
1.7. On
which ports do the freedb-servers run?
The
servers run cddbp on port 8880 and http on port 80. The path for http-access is
/~cddb/cddb.cgi.
1.8.
Where can I find a list of freedb mirror-servers?
The
current list of freedb server mirrors can be found here.
A list of ftp mirrors for download of the database can be found in our Download/Database section.
1.9. Is
there a possibility to search in the online freedb database?
You
can use the web-based search. There is
currently no possibility to search via the server software.
1.10. The
web-based search has bugs - when will you fix them?
We
are aware of several bugs (the search e.g. only supports US-ASCII characters
for the search terms) in the web-based search. Unfortunately the web-based
search is currently unmaintained, since we have no developer(s) for improving
the search. The code for the search is available in CVS on Sourceforge, so if
someone can provide us with a fixed/improved version, we'll be happy to install
it.
1.11. How
often is the database updated?
We
update our master server as well as the mirrors with new submissions several
times a day. The web-based search is updated once a day.
1.12. How
can I run my own local freedb-server?
You
have to have a Unix- or Linux-system to run your own
local freedb-server. Download the server software, which you can find in the download-section. A very helpful
HOWTO is included in the archive.
1.13. I installed
my own local freedb-server. Can I automatically receive updates?
No,
you cannot. We provide automatic updates only for official freedb mirrors.
You'll have to wait for the offline database updates being released on
freedb.org. You can subscribe to our announcements-mailinglist to be informed about new releases
via e-mail.
2.1. How can I submit my CD's to freedb?
You
need a freedb-aware program supporting submit. For Windows you can e.g. use Feurio!,
CDex
or Audiograbber, for Linux you can e.g. use Grip.
A longer list of freedb-aware applications supporting submit can be found here.
The info can be submitted via http or via e-mail (depends on the programs,
which method is supported). When submitting via e-mail, the submissions have to
be sent to freedb-submit@freedb.org.
2.2. Are
there any naming-rules for submitting CD's to freedb?
Yes,
there are:
1.
Never submit info
completely in capitals or completely lower case, if there is no special reason
for that.
2.
For bands that have a
leading "the", simply leave out the "the" (e.g. use
"Rolling Stones" instead of "The Rolling Stones") (this
rule does not apply to "The The" ;-)
3.
Names of people should
be written "first name last name" - NOT "last name, first
name".
4.
Use the name of the
artist repeated on the "title" field if there is no title (usually
seen on an artist's first major label release, such as with the B-52's)
5.
When submitting a
CD-Extra, name the data-track "Data" or something like that - do not
leave the track-title blank.
6.
When submitting a
sampler or compilation, you should include the track-artist in the track-name,
using the syntax "artist / track-title" and set the CD-artist to
"Various"
2.3. Can I submit corrected information, or would that be
discarded as "already in the database"?
Yes,
you can. The important thing with this is the revision, which the newly
submitted entry has. It has to be higher than the revision of the existing
entry (otherwise the newly submitted entry is discarded). So you need a program
supporting revisions. Fortunately most programs support revisions in their
latest versions. If you are a Windows-User, you can e.g. try Audiograbber,
CDex
or EAC,
which support revisions and increase them automatically, when resubmitting. As
a Linux-User, you can try Emptytree Seedy or gtcd. To be
sure that this works, you should first query freedb for the entry, change it
and resubmit it. Please be careful, and select the correct category for the submit (it has to be the same as the original entry's
category).
2.4. Can
I correct database entries I found via the web-based search, if I don't have
the CD?
Yes,
you can. On the website displaying the content of the entry you want to
correct, note a disc ID on the "ids:" line and the accompanying
category and click on the disc ID. This will now show you the raw database
entry. Copy the complete entry to your e-mail program, do the changes you want
to do and increase the "Revision" by one. The subject of the e-mail
must be "cddb category discid" where category is the category of the
original entry (do not change it!) and discid is the disc ID of database entry.
Now send the e-mail with the corrected entry to freedb-submit@freedb.org. Make absolutely
sure that you send the e-mail as text-only. HTML-e-mails will be rejected
by the server software!
2.5. Can
you (freedb) add more genre categories to the database?
It's
theoretically possible, but we won't do that, as a lot of programs rely on
exactly the 11 current categories to exist. Additionally a lot of entries in
the current database would be misplaced, if we added new categories.
But there's a better solution: If you're using a program supporting protocol
level 5 (e.g. the latest versions of CDex, dMC
and Easy CD-DA Extractor), you can store any genre name
inside the database entry (additionally to the general classification)!
2.6.
Which genre categories are there and where should I e.g. put rap or pop CDs?
This
is the list of the 11 freedb categories:
blues (self explanatory)
classical (self explanatory)
country (self explanatory)
data (ISO9660 and other data CDs)
folk (self explanatory)
jazz (self explanatory)
newage (self explanatory)
reggae (self explanatory)
rock (incl. funk, soul, rap, pop,
industrial, metal, etc.)
soundtrack (movies, shows)
misc (others that do not fit in the above categories)
Additionally
to the general classification freedb supports a genre field in the database
entries, which can be filled with any genre name. To do so, you need a program
supporting protocol level 5.
2.7. My
freedb-submission was rejected with error-reason "Discid collision in
category xy". What's the problem?
The
disc ID, which is an important factor in identifying a CD, is not as good as it
could be - in fact, it is pretty bad as a unique identifier for a CD. Therefore
completely different CDs (with the same length in seconds and the same track
number) can have the same disc ID. A disc ID, however, can only exist once in
each of the 11 categories. This disc ID algorithm and the cddb protocol can
unfortunately not be changed without loosing backwards compatibility to
existing applications - and we definitely want to keep backwards-compatibility.
If you receive a rejection e-mail telling you, that there was a disc ID
collision in the category you tried to submit the entry to,
that means, that in that category the disc ID of your CD is already used
for a different CD. In order to submit your CD to freedb successfully, you will
therefore have to select a different category - even if it does not really fit
for the music style of your CD. Since a specific genre can be specified for a
database entry in addition to the category, a wrong category choice is not
really that problematic.
2.8. My
freedb-submission was rejected with error-reason "Existing entry found
with higher revision than submitted". What's the problem?
In
order to prevent correct database entries from being overwritten by new
(possibly incorrect) submissions, freedb uses revisions for it's
database entries. When reading a database entry from freedb, an application
supporting the revision system stores the revision of the existing entry. If
the user changes the entry (to correct mistakes) and re-submits it, the
application increases that revision by 1 for the re-submission. So if the
server receives an updated database entry with increased revision, it knows, that the user submitting the updated entry really saw
the original entry. If the revision is not increased, the server software has
to assume, that the user never saw the original entry and is possibly
overwriting an entry, that is already perfectly ok.
In order to ensure that a re-submission really works, you should first query
freedb for the entry and then correct and re-submit the info (without closing
the application in-between, as it might "forget" the revision of the
original entry when being closed).
2.9. My
freedb-submission was rejected with error-reason "Unsupported charset in
header". What's the problem?
Submissions
must be in the US-ASCII, the ISO-8859-1 (the 8-bit ASCII extension also known
as "Latin alphabet #1") or the UTF-8 charset. The application you
used for submit specified an unsupported charset for the submission - which is
something you should report as a bug to the application's author, if there
isn't already a new, bugfixed version available.
2.10. My
submission was rejected with error-reason "unauthorized
client/revision". Why?
We
had to block the program version you're using from submit, because it generates
erroneous submissions. Try getting a newer version of the program - the author
of the program was informed about the problems and most likely there is already
a new, bugfixed version available, which is not blocked from submit.
2.11. My
submission was rejected with error-reason "garbage character on line
xy". Why?
The
server software found a character in the submission, which is not valid in the
charset specified for the submission by the application you used. Only
applications supporting the new protocol level 6 can submit entries with
Unicode characters - older applications are limited to the ISO-8859-1 (aka Latin1)
charset. In order to find the character which caused the rejection, start
counting the lines in the rejection notice beginning with the "#
xmcd" line, until you reach the line number mentioned in the rejection
reason.
3.1. How often do you release the database archives?
We
try to release a complete archive in Win- and Unix-format and an update in
Unix-format once a month. However, there is no guaranty for this. Please do not
send e-mails, asking for updates!
3.2. Can
you inform me, when new database archives are available?
If
you want to be informed about new database archives, please subscribe to our
announcements-mailinglist.
3.3. What
is a .bz2-archive, how can I decompress it?
bzip2 is a very good compression-algorithm. If you
don't know how to decompress it, visit the
bzip2 and libbzip2 official home page
If you prefer a GUI-based program and are running
Windows, try Power Archiver (Shareware) or 7-Zip, which is Freeware. There's
also a bzip2-plugin available for the popular Windows Commander.
3.4. Why
can't I extract the Unix-format database under Win9x or WinME?
The
rock and the misc directory contain more than 38.000 files. Unfortunately the
FAT-filesystem cannot handle that many files in one directory. Since WinNT and
Win2000 use NTFS, they don't have the problem.
As a solution you should download the Windows-format database archive instead.
It consists of far fewer files, as it includes several database entries per
file.
3.5. Why
aren't there update files available for the Windows-format database, like those
for the Unix-format database?
Direct
updates for the Windows format database are not possible, but that's no problem
as you can use the freedb Updater (which is available on the ftp-servers) to update your
Windows format database using the Unix format update
files.
3.6. Why
do I get lots of 0 byte files when extracting the Unix-format archives under
WinNT/2000/XP and how can I extract them properly?
The
Unix-format archives contain several hardlinks. Extracting them under
WinNT/2000 doesn't work properly (as links are not supported by Windows) when
using common decompressors, so you will get 0 byte files instead of the links.
But there is a way to extract the files properly. Download star.exe, bzip2.exe
and the cygwin1.dll from
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/win32/
Put them somewhere in your path and run
star -x -bz -copylinks f=/cygdrive/driveletter/path_to_your_archive
in the directory, to which you want to extract the database.