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5. CDDB Support

The Compact Disc Data Base is a distributed network database accessible over the Internet that contains information about most audio CDs in circulation. If you have Internet access, you will likely never have to manually enter track information for your CDs if you have this set up properly. See "The CDDB Tab" subsection in "4.2 Configuring kscd" for detailed instructions on how to configure this service, and 4.3 The CD Database Editor for instructions on how to edit CDDB entries.

Use of the CDDB is free. Submissions from users are encouraged.

When preparing entries for the CDDB, please keep the following points in mind:

• Use "standard" latin characters in the entries. Some special characters are supported, but Cyrillic or Greek alphabet submissions, for example, cannot be accepted.
• Use only one "/" character in the "Disc Artist / Title" field in the "CD Database Editor". For classical CDs, it is standard practice to put the composer's name in the Artist section (before the slash) and the performer's name in the Title section (after the slash).
• If you send an entry that already exists in the database, any additional information you provide may be added to the existing entry.

By default, kscd installs the standard CDDB categories in $KDEDIR/share/apps/kscd/cddb. You can create as many category subdirectories as you like. However,when uploading only the offical CDDB categories are displayed. The default upload address is "xmcd-cddb@amb.org". For more information about CDDB visit the CDDB homepage.

The local CDDB entry for a particular CD is stored in the file <category name>/<disc ID> under the "CDDB Base Directory". These files can be edited with any text editor if you have nothing better to do with your spare time.

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