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The Compact Disc Database (CDDB) is a database
comprised of audio compact disc track information. CDDB allows
software applications to identify a compact disc and list all the information
pertaining to it such as the artist, album and other track information.
CDDB was officially renamed Gracenote in March 2001, with
the database now requiring a license to access after being initially free to
access. Compact Disc Database is now a licensed trademark of Gracenote Inc.
Techopedia Explains Compact Disc Database
The Compact Disc Database was originally created to capture information pertaining to pop/rock music. Ti Kan is the creator of the Compact Disc Database, who later sold the entire project to Escient. The Compact Disc Database made use of a client which approximately computes the unique disc ID and then queries the database. With the information retrieved from the query, the client is able to provide the details such as Compact Disc title, artist name, track list and other additional information. The Compact Disc Database was mainly used by compact disc ripper applications as well as by media players. Provisions are available to users to add the details of a CD not recognized by the CD ripper or media player to the database through either media players or CD ripper software. The Compact Disc Database was required as the audio Compact Disc format did not include disc or track related information. So the Compact Disc Database acted as supplemental database to provide such information when compact discs are used by media.
The Compact Disc Database is capable of identifying not just single tracks but also the entire compact disc contents. However, the Compact Disc Database fails to recognize playlists in which the order of tracks are modified, since identification of compact discs are based on the length and order of the tracks. The Compact Disc Database also cannot distinguish between two different compact discs containing same number and lengths of tracks.
