CDDB problems (Gracenote Services No Longer Work In Winamp: Reason Why Explained)

[Alain Gheysens]

I'm using Winamp since many years and work today with latest release 5.666 Build 3516.
Everything always worked whithout problems since a few months except starting from yesterday afternoon may 14th.
It became impossible to submit a song for tags and that even for those who were already checked and filled some weeks ago. Each time I get the same reply : no file matching.
As I have a few Pc's, I tried the same on all the others but each gives me the same reply.
I'm also using "MusicBrainz Picard" and there I get positive results.
Is there some problem with the Gracenote plugins?
On one machine, I used regsvr32 to register the "dll" files but to no avail.
This looks very strange and I really need some help or explanation regarding this problem.
Thank you for some reply concerning this problem.

[DrO]

it looks like the access Winamp had to Gracenote's services has been terminated and is the reason why things have stopped working.

this was going to happen anyway as a result of the sale of Winamp and SHOUTcast in January where the deal with them was not going to be renewed (and if Winamp and SHOUTcast hadn't been bought, what you're now seeing would have happened anyway), but we weren't at all sure when things were going to stop working (as all that was known is it might be sometime between the start of 2014 and early 2015).

as such until a new Winamp client is released with a Musicbrainz based solution (as we're not aiming to have a new client out until the end of the year due to the mass of work required to remove / replace the AOL / Gracenote specific parts), there's not much i can really suggest at the time on what can be done as an alternative for the Gracenote powered features.

[olynth]

I saw this too yesterday. Does anyone have another method/software that does the same thing? With iTunes for example when trying to update the file info it says that I have to import the songs with iTunes in order to do that (I guess from the original CD or something...?). So it can't be done when dragging a song into the file library.
I guess there's plenty of people here that used to update the file infos for the mp3's with the auto-tag option. So if anyone can suggest another program, please let me know.
Sadly that this happened...

[Aminifu]

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

[whitesocks]

Thanks DrO - I was pulling my hair out trying to fix this yesterday - I guess the clue was it no longer shows 'powered by gracenote' during the look-up.

I found the auto tagging exceeding accurate - somehow identifying the correct album tag with seemingly identical tracks (eg it would know which track was from the greatest hits) and with a few tagging clues, it would have a good guess at identifying home ripped albums and tapes.

Its power derived from audio finger printing, and this is not a common feature available for home use. Other tagging apps rely on all the tracks from the CD being present and in the correct order and often that you know the precise album name - if you mistag in the first place, then having lost the original track order, I find it difficult to recover, other than manually tagging them.

Picard (musicbrainz) is a popular app and does fingerprint, but I found the version for PC hopeless, and it is unclear what is going on at all. No thanks.
MegaTogger 5.1 also uses the musicbrainz finngerprint db, presumably as you intend to implement, and its interface is much much better, but it will only correct the title and artist tags.
Better than nothing. It gets a lot right, but incorrectly identifies classic chart number 1's so either the database is pretty basic, the fingerprinting ambiguous, or it lacks the fuzzy logic of the gracenote processing. Maybe the db will have improved by the time of the winamp release.

If there are some better audio finger printers available, then my initial search has not discovered them.
I am surprised google or someone has not offered to pay for the winamp tagging function in return for profile information - if it knows exactly what we are listening to, it can sell us more.
Not ideal, but everything has a price, as we have just found out.

[DrO]

whatever the system used, it's only as good as the information which people put into it and personally i found Gracenote's CDDB lookups very hit and miss (or just people don't care about getting things correct compared to the actual titling on the CD case itself!).

how Winamp's version will be is still something i'm planning (since we'd been working on a 2015 termination of the Gracenote access, although it's one of the top features we've got to get replaced before a new release is provided anyway).

Picard isn't too bad i find, though it really depends on what has been put in previously (or rather not as seems to be your case).

[DJ-Garybaldy]

Bugger looks like I'm going to have to re-install Nero for Gracenote CD lookups.

I never had a problem with the Gracenote CDDB It helped me greatly with my tagging.

[DrO]

manually updating of information in Winamp should still work, but yes it's a pain (especially as i've had to buy some new CDs so i'm going to be able to check out things during testing).

considering the poor communication which came from Gracenote when under the prior ownership (not being informed the buggy SDK we had to use was EOL'd for example - which to support their new SDK meant a re-write of the functionality anyway), i'm somewhat anti-Gracenote. especially with the sort of financial numbers that they're expecting to keep using their service which is just exorbitant (and not viable for a free player like we are).

hence why we're changing to more open / free solutions. which is no more different than having to re-write things to use their newer SDK and more importantly by not using Gracenote, we're able to consider making use of a wider range of services instead of being dependent upon a single one which has its issues as we're clearly seeing now. since the Gracenote terms prevented using alternative sources for tag lookup, etc.

so it's going to be painful for those who need such functionality, but in the long run we should have a better solution available than what went before (as well as hopefully re-instating the ability to do cover art lookup which hasn't been enabled for 2yrs due to licensing "crap").

[TheGueu]

is there any pugin you can recommend i can use to get albumart+IDTag info for winamp? i really love winamp and hate using a different media player, just so i can arrange my entire song collection. i have to tag 5K+ songs, and i need something to help me do it...

[sireast]

how to incorporate mp3tag to winamp since cddb is no longer working?

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

[DrO]

you have to use it externally of Winamp since it's an external program. or just manually input the CD details via the 'edit info' option present on the CD views (which should still work without issue).

[Gravyboy]

Gracenote

Thanks, dolts at Winamp! No notice this was happening, nothing. Meantime I use WMP to rip and automatically tag and wait for winamp to scan local libraries to add the complete info. Settings at options>preferences.

[DrO]

have you read my first reply in this thread? as under the new ownership (since Winamp was sold in January instead of being completely killed off as was the alternative), we didn't know when the Gracenote access was going to be stopped (as we're not parle of any contractual agreements AOL and Gracenote had and has been reinforced, Gracenote didn't particularly care about Winamp now that the massive payments they took have ended!) so it would not be possible to provide any notice of it (especially as it wasn't clear if it was going to happen in 2014 or 2015).

so i can only apologise for the issues this is causing though i know that's not enough for a lot of people, but it's sadly how things have had to play out. and i realise with the time scale we're working on to have a new Winamp client sans AOL / Gracenote aspects will not come soon enough for many (as we're targeting the end of the year for a new release) and is why on a gloriously sunny Saturday i'm stuck inside and working on the Gracenote replacement parts.

[olynth]

I've tried the Mp3tag and the MusicBrainz Picard softwares but they're so sinuous. So far from the simple one-click method on the Auto-tag, that Winamp had. I have a various selection of many songs and for example I was dragging a song and tried to update its file info. The file was totally renamed (info + its name) like this: " - - 00 - " and so many options there on the panel that seem to be useless for what I need. Can someone explain how they work or if they're doing the job well? I don't need a software with a ton of options, just one that updates the mp3's file info from the Gracenote database.

[Aminifu]

I agree it is no fun having to learn a new program just to have files tagged automatically, but for now there is no alternative.

Have you tried asking Gracenote since they're the ones who pulled the plug without notice?

You can also post on the Mp3tag site, explain exactly what you want to do and ask for help.