Reid McLean wrote:

>There is a commercial program for cataloguing recordings called Audiofile.
>I have not used it, but have looked at the demo, and it looks very good.
>It uses the "automatic" internet cataloguing function of the CDDB, which
>as another poster noted, saves data entry time.

CDDB is wonderful for what it does, but that doesn't go very far when
you want to import its information into a relational database, especially
one for classical music recordings.  The standard fields are few...with
Audiofile you can download artist, album title, track names and track
times.  Plus with my experience with CDDB there isn't any guarantee that
an artist is entered consistently across various recordings:  you might
find the same artist listed as, say, "Pavarotti, Luciano" on one recording,
"Luciano Pavarotti" on another, and "L.  Pavarotti" on the next.  When
you import this into your database program they will then appear as
three separate artists.  Finally, with only a single artist field CDDB
is severely limited in capturing this information for many classical
recordings:  how do you combine orchestra + conductor + soloists? It
becomes necessary to use creative abbreviations which compound the problems
of inconsistency.

It should be noted that Audiofile, like CDDB and most cataloging programs,
isn't designed specifically for classical music.  Therefore it would
probably be best suited for more casual classical catalogers i.e those
that are interested in cataloging only the very basic information for
their recordings.

As many people on this list know, I am the author of a Windows-only program
for cataloging classical music selections, ClassiCat <shameless plug alert>
(which can be found at http://www.tdware.com/) </shameless plug>.  My
program isn't an option for the original poster, who IIRC was interested
in a Mac solution.  I don't know of any Mac programs designed specifically
for classical music.  The closest that I've come across are some template
databases provided for the relational database program Filemaker.  I'd also
like to know of any such programs that may exist for referring my
occasional queries from Mac users to.

David Runnion wrote:

>Jeff Harris wrote:
>
>>Some future enhancements I've been thinking about include making it
>>multi-user.  This would allow for a global list of CDs as well as a per
>>user list.  That way when you purchased a new disc, you could just click a
>>button to add it to your collection if someone else had previously entered
>>the information.  This would also entail making it permanently available on
>>the web.
>
>This very idea, of course, set mp3.com back some $200 million for "copyright
>violations". The Fair Use law doesn't have much going for it on line.

It's illegal to share information on recordings (as opposed to the audio
performances themselves)? I don't think so.

(Yes, this is off topic but - if this makes it to the list - perhaps this
one correction would be appropriate with any further discussion taken off
line.)

Tim Dickinson
[log in to unmask]