Catalog Your Music With Music Collector

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Adding CDs

Most likely you'll spend more time entering CDs into Music Collector than doing anything else unless you add a lot of detail for your discs. This isn't to say it takes a long time to add a CD. In most cases you'll be able to use the automatic entry feature, which generally makes it completely unnecessary to enter any information manually.

Add Albums Automatically

To take advantage of Music Collector's automatic entry feature select Add Albums Automatically from the Edit menu. You can enter information manually or use a barcode scanner or CD-ROM drive with CD TEXT support to get information about your discs.

1. Barcode

The easiest way to look up CDs is by barcode. If you happen to have the Pro version you can use a barcode scanner for this. You can enter the barcode manually with either the standard or Pro version. Most of the time there will be a digit separate from the rest of the numbers. They may be even be to the left or right of the actual barcode. Normally you should include these numbers, but if you don't get any results that way you can try leaving them out.

2. Artist and Title

If you don't have the case handy you can also just enter the Artist and Title manually. This is more likely to result in multiple matches, so you're generally better off using the barcode whenever possible.

3. Scan CD Drive

If your computer's CD drive can read CD TEXT information you can simply put your disc in the drive and click the Scan and Add to Cue button. If you're going to be adding a lot of discs at once this way you can check the Auto Scan box so each one will be added to the queue automatically.

4. Add to Queue

Use the Add to Queue button to add an entry to the queue of CDs to be looked up.

5. Update in Queue

If you need to change the information being looked up for a particular CD you can select it in the list, make the desired changes in the Artist, Title, or Barcode field and click the Update in Queue button to apply your changes to the queue.

6. Search

Once you have your CDs added to the queue use the Search button to have Music Collector look them up. The results will appear in the Search Results pane.

7. Search Results

In most cases Music Collector will find more than one option for each CD in your queue. If you entered the barcode instead of the artist and title they should all match your CD exactly. Otherwise there will usually be more than one possibility listed for you to choose between. In many cases, particularly for older albums, there will be many variations with different bonus tracks. Select the one that matches your actual CD.

7a. Preview Pane

The Preview Pane shows the songs and cover images associated with the CD selected in the Search Results pane. This allows you to make sure you're selecting the right disc when there are multiple possibilities.

8. Add

Once you've selected a match from the Search Results pane for each item in your queue select the Add button to add entries for each one to your collection database.

9. Info Sources

By default Music Collector looks up CDs in your queue from the online Collectorz.com database, as well as at least one Amazon website. You can select or deselect the available sources, including Amazon websites for several different countries, by checking or unchecking them in the Info Sources list.

10. Queue Entries

You can also right-click on a CD listing in the queue and select an option from the context menu to remove it from the queue, search for just that CD, and lock or unlock the selection in the Search Results pane. You can also add individual discs to your collection this way if you highlight them together by holding down the or key while selecting.

11. Add as Multi Disc Album

If you have multiple CDs from the same album you can select them together by holding down the or key and using the Add as Multi Disc Album button to add them to your collection.

12. Close

When you have finished adding discs you can close the window using the Close button.

Continued On Page 3

Next we'll look at adding album and CD details manually.

Next: Manual Entry and Editing