I used RipDigital (yes, I could do it myself; no, I didn't) and while it was mostly useful, I still spent a lot of time fixing the tags. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is annoyed by the inconsistency in the Gracenote DB. Sometimes it's "J.S. Bach", sometimes it's "Johann Sebastian Bach", and sometimes it's "Bach, J.S.". Nine Inch Nails albums are variously classified as rock, alternative/punk, and electronica.
I found myself wishing that RipDigital had built a local version of the DB with consistent artist names, album titles, song titles, genres, etc., adding new CDs as customers submit them for ripping. In other words, check local DB and if absent, use Gracenote to get the initial data, scan the tags for format, make edits as necessary, and insert into local DB for future. Sure, it would have meant a little extra work at the outset, but pretty soon they would get to the point where each new customer was only requiring them to manually check the formatting on a handful of CDs, and the finished product would be so much cleaner.
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I used RipDigital (yes, I could do it myself; no, I didn't) and while it was mostly useful, I still spent a lot of time fixing the tags. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is annoyed by the inconsistency in the Gracenote DB. Sometimes it's "J.S. Bach", sometimes it's "Johann Sebastian Bach", and sometimes it's "Bach, J.S.". Nine Inch Nails albums are variously classified as rock, alternative/punk, and electronica.
I found myself wishing that RipDigital had built a local version of the DB with consistent artist names, album titles, song titles, genres, etc., adding new CDs as customers submit them for ripping. In other words, check local DB and if absent, use Gracenote to get the initial data, scan the tags for format, make edits as necessary, and insert into local DB for future. Sure, it would have meant a little extra work at the outset, but pretty soon they would get to the point where each new customer was only requiring them to manually check the formatting on a handful of CDs, and the finished product would be so much cleaner.
Save that Discovery Channel crap for cities that care. This is New York. We want a full length animation of Dr. Z's fruit acid peel.