What do the Blue Notes do? And the iTunes collection?

[sandysantra@mac.com]

I can't figure them out at all. I have the latest version of CDPedia, iTunes, Lion, etc.

I rip 4 tracks from a CD, go into edit, and discover one track has no blue note.

I don't know whether the Blue Notes track songs that are still "available" from the iTunes Store or what the Blue Notes do. Their behavior is inconsistent.

Also, I would have thought that switching to the "iTunes Music Library" collection would show me my entire iTunes music collection, including albums purchased from iTunes. It does not. What is the point of this smart folder? What does it do?

Very confused about both features.

[Nora]

The blue notes show you which tracks or albums in CDpedia you also have in iTunes. A single blue note for a song and a double blue note for a complete album. This is a) a visual help for you to see which entries you have in both programs and b) allows you to play entries in iTunes directly via CDpedia's Tracks tab.
The iTunes track information is checked weekly but you can also force a refresh by going into the View menu > Refresh iTunes Tracks. If some tracks are still not marked correctly check that the spelling is the same in both programs.

You imported your entire iTunes library into CDpedia and some parts of it did not come along? What happens when you import a smaller iTunes playlist, do all the entries and cover images come along?

[sandysantra@mac.com]

I haven't worked with playlists at all.

From what I've seen, CDpedia gets confused by the extra layer that iCloud now added to the iTunes architecture.

But in any event, I've seen many instances where there is no blue note at all next to a track in the edit screen, and yes the spellings are the same. Reboot, reimport info from iTunes doesn't help. I don't know why CDpedia is getting confused. I may just go the route that many have and removed the feature entirely; it doesn't do much for me if it doesn't communicate valuable information, and in addition has an accuracy rate of approximately 75-80%.

Don't mean to overly dog the program. It's actually really great.

[Nora]

"Refresh iTunes Tracks" and "Import iTunes Playlist" are two different features. The first one will compare the albums/tracks you have in CDpedia against your entries in iTunes and mark those that are also present in iTunes with a blue note in CDpedia. The second one will import an actual playlist or your library from iTunes as a collection into CDpedia.

I may just go the route that many have and removed the feature entirely

I'm sorry but I'm confused - remove what feature? The imported iTunes playlist? You're welcome to delete that. (You'd still be able to match the iTunes tracks and refresh them regardless.)

[sandysantra@mac.com]

I'm sorry but I'm confused - remove what feature?

The column with the blue notes; and, hopefully, the same column within the Edit screen.

If 4 songs are imported from a CD into iTunes, Refresh iTunes Tracks is run, computer is rebooted, and CDPedia still shows one song as not being in iTunes when it in fact IS in iTunes, then I consider the feature is not performing accurately, and as such is a component whose removal from the software would strengthen the software's integrity.

In a database software such as this, I prefer to trust that the information I'm looking at is correct.

[Nora]

Of course you may remove the column from your list view (not possible in the Edit window though) but since this is obviously a bug in the program we'd like to fix it so if you could please send me a .ccard file for each of those four entries as well as an XML export of the entries from your iTunes Library so I can try to repeat the problem here.

To create a ccard, select the entry in CDpedia's table view and drag it out to your Desktop. The .ccard file will automatically be created and you simply have to attach it to the email.
To export the entries from iTunes, select them and choose 'New Playlist from Selection' from the File menu. Then select the newly created playlist and go into the File menu Library > Export Playlist and select the XML format.

You'll find our email on the Support page.