Music files 101

[SKesselman]

Hi,
I am in need of a quick and simple education in music files.
I mean, quick - no CNET courses or anything like that, just either a recommendation to a website that speaks to beginners, or instructions from someone here who would want to help a complete beginner. Here's what I'm looking to do:

I've recently inherited about 300 CD's (mostly classical).

I'm thinking of recording these CD's to an external drive, then posting the files to the web. But, I want a program that can read all of the details - I don't want to type in the name of the piece, the composer, etc. but I noticed that Windows Media Player could not detect all of this information, only some.
So, I ended up recording only 1 CD & decided it was too tedious of a project.

Now, I'm thinking that it would be really nice if my other family members could access this music online.
Actually, I'd like to share it with anyone who wanted it, but I guess that's not legal (?).
I was thinking about FTP web sites - I've only seen one & it looked pretty straightforward, but I don't even know if that's used for music files or what.

If you're still reading this, you can see that I'm clueless & so I don't have to tell you I don't have a server, an iPod or any knowledge of any computer languages. Only a laptop which records CDs & an external drive. And a really big box of CDs.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Darwin]

Hi Sarah,

The legality of ripping the CDs to digital format is a grey area these days, depending on where you are... However, I'd suggest that no matter where you are, sharing them over the net with family will certainly violate copyright law, so tread carefully.

Having the CDs auto-recognized is usually pretty good in Windows Media Player. You could also try iTunes or Yahoo Music Manager (or whatever it is now called - I used MusicMatch Jukebox). The only other application I've tried is MusicIP Mixer. My experience with all of them has been that pop and rock CDs are generally recognized without fuss or fanfare while jazz and classical are far more hit and miss. Also, while it's been a while since I did this regularly, and I thus I may be out of step, I believe that all of the applications I mentioned access the same CDDatabase so you probaby won't have much luck switching from Windows Media Player. You could try seeing if you can try alternatives from within WMP (warning: I just took a quick look and couldn't find any option to do this on WMP 11 under XP Pro).

I'm sure someone here will provide a definitive answer shortly. Good luck!

[CWuestefeld]

Bearing in mind that IANAL:

Making a copy of the music for your own use is fine, although the RIAA will tell you otherwise. The DMCA doesn't apply because you're not defeating any copy protection in ripping a standard CD.

But, as Darwin noted, sharing the results with others is (depending on where you are) almost certainly illegal, regardless of whether you use web sites, FTP, or what-have-you. In practice, if you put the music onto a server that no one knows about, with no public links to it, and they're stored in password-protected archives so that no one outside your family can actually see the content, then you'd probably get away with it. But I'm not recommending that. 

I also agree on the metadata. AFAIK, all the various tools (WMP, iTunes, or my favorite ripper, Exact Audio Copy) rely on the same CDDB service. If WMP's query to CDDB doesn't yield results, then the same query made by EAC won't fare any better.

For commercially-produced CDs of contemporary genres this almost never happens. But it's different for classical music. For one, classical music has a smaller audience than NSync (sad as that might be). So there are fewer people entering the data.

But also, classical CDs are frequently "shovelware". Companies can produce these for next to nothing (no copyright royalties, just pay an orchestra for its time and you're done), and thus reap huge profit margins. I'd guess that there are hundreds of versions of, say, any of Beethoven's major symphonies available for purchase. The identifying characteristics of one bargain-bin copy of Beethoven's 9th are completely unrelated to a different recording of it.

The result is that any given classical CD has a much lower chance of having a music lover enter the data into CDDB.

[Shades]

On a side note:

While I'm aware that most classical music composers (Bach, Beethoven etc.) are being dead for quite some time now...longer dead than RIAA regulations, so their music is copyright free.

Now I heard something about still living descendants that can claim rights. Is this true?  

[Darwin]

Shades - can't comment on your specific question, but note that the RIAA also covers specific performances and associated media... so they'll STILL come after you!

[SKesselman]

A little late, but I finally decided to drop this idea.
CW, Thanks for taking the time to explain all of this so clearly.

[Curt]

It should also be noted that the problems you experienced with lack of informations, not are due to the media player itself, but to the place where the media player gather such informations. Gracenote CDDB has more info on old / classical music, than "the others". RealPlayer 11 and iTunes are to my understanding both using Gracenote. But I don't remember where Windows Media Player will go collecting. Maybe you could try installing RealPlayer or iTunes (!!) and record the same CDs that were causing problems the first time, just to see if there are any differences?

Gracenote Customers

• iTunes uses Gracenote’s CD track identification services.[3]

In addition, Gracenote provides its products to a number of other services including

    * Online services including Yahoo! Music Jukebox, AOL Winamp;
    * Home and Automotive products from Alpine, Bose, Panasonic, Phillips, and Sony;
    * Mobile music applications from Samsung[4], Sony Ericsson (TrackID), KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musicwave (Europe).

In which country are you situated, Sarah? The biggest telephone company in Denmark, YouSee, gives free access to several million tracks, to their customers. Music can be free, it only depends on the circumstances. In this situation the trick for YouSee is to encode the music files with a key which the user can only unlock when connecting to the telephone company's homepage. This way the music is not ours, and not really free, but freely available anyway, when we are online. I am not telling you to upload your new collection, such coding is difficult, but I am merely pointing out that it is too easy to say that it surely must be illegal to upload music.

[SKesselman]

Thank you, Curt, I knew it couldn't be so black & white-even my OS (or rather, its media player) offers to 'rip' & to 'burn' & the 'line' between what's legal and what isn't keeps getting more blurry as I read.

I am in the US. I had a look at yousee.dk.
I really like the idea behind what they're doing (I just can't navigate)  .

I wiki'd everything from CW's response and ended up at the Gracenote web site fairly quickly, but the whole thing is too tedious (with the exception of yousee.dk).

So, I've decided to just copy the Christmas CD's to my external drive & send my little sister the originals.
I hate CD's (not meant to be handled by humans, unless they're being tossed, that's always fun  ) & I won't take nearly as good care of them as she will!

Thanks for your reply  all the same.

[Hirudin]

I'm a disc hater too... I've been doing a lot of ripping lately using dbPoweramp CD Ripper. It's got a feature they're calling "PerfectMeta" which queries 4 different title databases* to get the best information for each track. It also downloads the album art. I haven't actually compared the results with many of the original CD cases but the logic behind PerfectMeta is sound, and that's enough for me...

If you're still thinking about ripping all those CDs, check out the dbPoweramp demo. You should be able to rip them all within the 21 day trial period.

*
MusicBrainz - This is what I've been using to tag all my files... Their database seems to be accurate, but I've ran into a few CDs that were not in the database.
AMG/All Music Guide - from what I've seen this database is very good and very extensive
freedb - this is user created as far as I know, the results from this are usually OK, but typos are prevalent
GD3 - I don't know what this one is, so I don't know how good it is

[Music_Guy]

On a side note:

While I'm aware that most classical music composers (Bach, Beethoven etc.) are being dead for quite some time now...longer dead than RIAA regulations, so their music is copyright free.

Now I heard something about still living descendants that can claim rights. Is this true?  

For the dead composer stuff mentioned, I know in Canada (and I think it's similar or the same for the US), copyrights to a piece of music are valid up to 50 years after the death of the last songwriter for each song example; a band of 4 musicians who write together, 3 of them are gone in a plane crash when they are young, but one lives 100 years more than when that song was written, then the copyright is valid for 150 years total from the time it was written.

Even if a writer dies, his rights to his music can be passed on to family members for the duration of the copyright.

[cmpm]

It's all getting pretty crazy with the music stuff.
Soon another can't listen to your cd itself!

I've had some youtube songs bookmarked for a long time,
to return and find it gone with a copyright infringement notice.

If they would stick to the copy for profit idea instead of just posting a friggin song for enjoyment then that would make sense.

I can record a Football Game and replay it for anyone if it's not for profit and not infringe on the copyright laws of the US. The same should apply to songs imo.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/198326/-%20Unknown%20Album%20%285232008%20122746%20PM%29%20-%2010%20-%20Track%2010.wma

[40hz]

Why does Monty Python get it?

Would that the music industry take a cue from Monty Python. The Pythons decided the best way to combat piracy was to put up their own YouTube channel and provide high quality videos directly from their archives. They also asked (in their characteristically droll style) that people stop posting Monty Python videos on YouTube since Monty Python would now do it themselves.

Brill!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGqX-tkDXEk

[attach]

[cmpm]

that sounds sensible 40hz
an artist should be glad someone is posting their work i think

btw, that's not the song they pulled off utube
it was a live 'boys of summer' by the eagles
i have it downloaded but won't post it here
don't want this site to get any static

[cranioscopical]

It's all getting pretty crazy with the music stuff.
Soon another can't listen to your cd itself!

I caught my self whistling something from the Mikado and
decided that I'd better turn myself in to the RIAA.
Now I have an appointment with the Lord High Executioner.   

[40hz]

I caught my self whistling something from the Mikado and
decided that I'd better turn myself in to the RIAA.
Now I have an appointment with the Lord High Executioner.   

Talk to Plash-go. He can probably set you up for a pardon. Especially if you have a spare Letter of Patent on you.

[cranioscopical]

I caught my self whistling something from the Mikado and
decided that I'd better turn myself in to the RIAA.
Now I have an appointment with the Lord High Executioner.   

Talk to Plash-go. He can probably set you up for a pardon. Especially if you have a spare Letter of Patent on you.

I fear that my coat has no sleeves 

[f0dder]

Curt: the music you get from TDC's yousee isn't free in any way... you already mention the DRM issue, but you should also keep in mind that you're paying for the music access through your internet subscription. It annoys me that TDC can't just offer you an internet subscription (at a decent pricetag) without all the extra fuss... but at least there's usually alternatives, like CyberCity SOLO - that's pretty good value for the money

Personally, I like physical CDs. They sound pretty good on my NAD amp+cdplayer, and I like having the jewelbox and artwork... I still do rip to lossless FLAC format for convenience, though, and I'm looking forward to getting an amplifier with digital SPDIF intput so the file versions of my music will sound as good as the CD versions.

dbPoweramp is a really nice and easy-to-use music ripper, and it's ripping algorithm is superior to EAC speed-wise (while still achieving perfect copies). Unfortunately, the version I purchased can't do single-file-per-album + cue-sheet ripping, which is the format I prefer... as far as I've been able to gather, the most recent version does, but I'm not shelling out for an upgrade unless I'm certain.

[Hirudin]

...
Unfortunately, the version I purchased can't do single-file-per-album + cue-sheet ripping, which is the format I prefer... as far as I've been able to gather, the most recent version does, but I'm not shelling out for an upgrade unless I'm certain.

It does indeed have single file ripping now. IIRC the upgrade is $12, or $17 if you buy a year of Perfectmeta access. In my opinion that's a deal, a steal, the sale of the century.

[Curt]

Why does Monty Python get it?

Would that the music industry take a cue from Monty Python. The Pythons decided the best way to combat piracy was to put up their own YouTube channel and provide high quality videos directly from their archives. ...

Just as an info: Always look at the bright side of life, www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DWlBiLNN1NhQ%26feature%3Dchannel&direct , lead me to Amazon.com where I could have a 6-discs set with 3 old movies (Holy Grail, Life of Brian, Meaning of Life) for (merely) $30

Curt: the music you get from TDC's yousee isn't free in any way... you already mention the DRM issue, but you should also keep in mind that you're paying for the music access through your internet subscription.

Of course I am paying for it, but that is really not a problem as long as I also PLAY the music, is it. Furthermore the price did not go up when they added YouSee_PLAY (on the contrary; they raised my download speed to 16 mbps). 10.000 music files I have had from their site, which actually makes it extremely CHEAP. Why even be annoyed that they are good at making money? It hardly can be a surprise since they have done so ever since the company was founded. What can (DOES) annoy me is the total lack of bit-rate quality: Even if I should happen to purchase a file, it will only be available in 320kbps MP3. That really sucks!!! Edited: Naturally the DRM protected files are even worse: 192 kbps .wma 

----

regarding http://www.youtube.com/user/MontyPython :

whats this? they're making it legit??
kind of takes the fun out of it, dont you think???

[Curt]

.. it was a live 'boys of summer' by the eagles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhqsZo__rdc is in a fair quality, from:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=alex70magic&view=videos page 3, scroll down.
- a fine channel to listen to.

[cmpm]

Yep that first one, they will catch it eventually.
The one I had had been up for a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLgUuHl2xJo&feature=related

[Carol Haynes]

On a side note:

While I'm aware that most classical music composers (Bach, Beethoven etc.) are being dead for quite some time now...longer dead than RIAA regulations, so their music is copyright free.

Now I heard something about still living descendants that can claim rights. Is this true?  

The music may be in the public domain (provided they have been dead from more than 90 years in some cases - so you are effectively 20th century composers and even some 19th century are still in copyright. Copyright may also have been passed to the publisher in which case if the publisher is still in business the music will be in copyright and many German publishers are very old.

Editions of music are also copyright so even if the music is in the public domain editions are not because the editor and publisher hold rights to the edition.

Add to that the music is not protected by copyright on a CD per se but the performance is. If an orchestra performs a Beethoven symphony the actual score they use may be in the public domain but the conductor/orchestra etc. still have copyright protection for the performance.

As an example suppose Hollywood make a film of Shakespeare's Henry V - would the film makers have no rights to the film and the actors not be entitled to any royalties etc. ? Would a DVD of the film not be subject to copyright because the play is in the public domain?

[cranioscopical]

As an example suppose Hollywood make a film of Shakespeare's Henry V - would the film makers have no rights to the film and the actors not be entitled to any royalties etc. ? Would a DVD of the film not be subject to copyright because the play is in the public domain?

This is his claim, his threatening and my message. - Exeter

[Carol Haynes]

Eh?

[Darwin]

Eh?

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/henryv/henryv.2.4.html