Every time you use a CD, someone knows! (1 Viewer)

[Mark Larson]

I was watching Screensavers yesterday, and found out that Eminem's new album was #2 on the digital charts last week, before it was released. Now we all know that's pirating, and pirating is bad, but let's focus on the CDDB...
What is this organisation? Who runs it and how does it earn its keep? It would seem by watching what music we play!
Every time you put in a CD, every popular media player downloads the info from CDDB. I for one don't like this, and have turned off CDDB from Winamp and CD player and WMP. Does anyone know how to use FreeDDB?

 

[Leila Dougan]

If the program allows you to specify your own server, just put in "freedb.freedb.org".

 

[BrianB]

Every time you put in a CD, every popular media player downloads the info from CDDB.

No - if the player cannot find the info in its local database or your cdplayer.ini, then it downloads & adds it to it. It will only do this once.

 

[Nigel McN]

the database knows, because it simply keep track of requests, just like this board keeps track of thread 'views'. You can turn it off underpreferences.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Do you really care if someone tracks what you're requesting from CDDB? Asuming that it's what you're listening to, wouln't that imply that positive feedback about a disc you like might motivate more being released? I just don't see what the big deal is.

 

[Anthony Hom]

What I don't care for is people uploading CD info to CDDB and getting it wrong or making spelling errors.

 

[BradyB]

real funny thing, Eminems new album reached number 1 on CDDB 4 weeks before it was scheduled for release. This was due to CD's burned illegally from the internet. That is why the release date was pushed up so much.

BTW u can turn off this feature in most players. Check the options or preferences. But if you do you won't recieve the names of the tracks on your player.

 

[Frank Anderson]

I guess this is similar to TiVo tracking what one watches. Personally I don't care if someone tracks my radio listening or TV watching. It might be useful if it helps to show what's popular.

 

[Yoshi Sugawara]

CDDB is owned by a company called Gracenote (www.gracenote.com).