iTunes and GraceNote getting increasingly unreliable

[mhschmieder]

I am shocked at how many albums now load as anonymous and with numbered tracks -- and these are ones that used to load fine. Sometimes after a half dozen or so re-loads, the information from CD-Text pops up, but it's taking longer and longer for iTunes to recognize a disc and to access GraceNote, and it rarely presents an error message if it couldn't connect to the GraceNote database.

This situation got a lot worse after the most recent update last week, that was supposed to improve support for more hardware devices.

[mhschmieder]

This is ridiculous; I was blaming it on the CD's previously, as it has been a creeping problem for years and getting worse, but has always seemed to affect small labels and non-rock genres (especially jazz, and slightly less so for classical or world) the most, so I figured maybe there were problems with the CD's.

When The Velvet Underground and The Smiths are seen as anonymous CD's without CD-text and hence generic numbered tracks, I can't buy into the notion that the CD's are the problem (or the media tray). I think the newest iTunes 12.9.5.5 may have broken Grace Notes. I reported this problem, but the newest version of iTunes you can select for your report is 12.9.3.

Maybe Grace Notes deleted everything that isn't currently available in the iTunes Store? I have never bought anything there and never will; my entire iTunes library is made up of CD uploads. And I don't want to waste time checking all of this material to see if it's no longer in the iTunes Store (or never was).

[mhschmieder]

I wonder if this is related to my brand-new iMac that arrived at work late Wednesday afternoon?

As Apple only lets you have one account, my business and personal stuff unfortunately has to be the same account, so maybe the new work computer is confusing Apple when I log in to my home computer and causing it to reject all connections to the Grace Notes database as unauthorized?

[stubbsonic]

I wonder if peoples diminishing use of CDs means that Apple has a diminishing interest in keeping those things working as they should.

Is Gracenote "crowd-sourced"? I recall the option to submit track info as well as download it. I wonder if there isn't some issue with trolls messing with track data?

[bayswater]

I've had similar problems, but so far I've managed to find everything I want in GraceNotes, including recent rips of 80s CDs that came with BBC Music mag that were never in the iTunes store. But iTunes itself doesn't seem to be able to work consistently with GN and you sometimes have to try a few times, reinserting the CD, etc. There also appear to be a lot of GN server errors.

IMO Apple is no longer interested in those who have physical music media. They have a library and want you to use that, so that's where iTunes takes you. I'd expect support for local iTunes libraries to eventually disappear and it will become merged with the Music app.

In general iTunes has become a dog's breakfast. So far I've have landed on Anytunes for playback. For conversion you can use just about anything but I haven't landed on anything that works with GN. But this is becoming a non issue as CDs themselves become obsolete.

[bayswater]

Is Gracenote "crowd-sourced"? I recall the option to submit track info as well as download it. I wonder if there isn't some issue with trolls messing with track data?

Possibly, but it must be curated to some extent. A more common problem is when a CD gets issued many times as part of collections and compilations, or packaged differently in different countries and each release has a different title and track list spellings.

[mhschmieder]

If it's crowd-sourced, that's new (by my standards, that means within the past 12-15 years ), as they were completely disinterested in my offer of pro bono help (well over a decade ago).

I don't understand why apps can't just read the CD-text information; why do they even need Grace Notes for that? I find that even new albums don't have album art at GN, but this problem with numbered tracks and zero CD info is REALLY new, even though it was a sporadic issue over the years.

Are there other apps that successfully read CD-text so that you at least don't have to waste a lot of time gathering your uploaded tracks, inserting the global info, and then renaming them (this also means you can't load more than one at a time before taking the time to correct the missing info, of course)?

[bayswater]

If it's crowd-sourced, that's new (by my standards, that means within the past 12-15 years ), as they were completely disinterested in my offer of pro bono help (well over a decade ago).

I don't understand why apps can't just read the CD-text information; why do they even need Grace Notes for that? I find that even new albums don't have album art at GN, but this problem with numbered tracks and zero CD info is REALLY new, even though it was a sporadic issue over the years.

Are there other apps that successfully read CD-text so that you at least don't have to waste a lot of time gathering your uploaded tracks, inserting the global info, and then renaming them (this also means you can't load more than one at a time before taking the time to correct the missing info, of course)?

GN offers a SDK, but there is probably a licence fee, so as long as iTunes has it, there's not much point in many other apps having it. I think the Windows equivalent (Media Player?) can access GN.

AFAIK, it has always been possible to upload to GN, at least from iTunes. As for CD-text, do you know it's always there and always contains track info? I don't know, I haven't bought a new CD for a very long time. Looks to me like the usually isn't but there is a link between a unique identifier on the CD and the GN database.

[mhschmieder]

Hmm, you could be right. I sold my hi-fi system a few years ago in order to simplify my workflow vs. constant re-wiring for listening vs. producing. So I no longer have a standalone CD player, and have to upload to listen to anything (better than playing in-place in the media tray, which requires better algorithms for real-time problem-resolution).

I thought that CD-text was part of the CD mastering standard and thus was on anything after 1988 or so, except for maybe some non-compliant small labels.

[bayswater]

I thought that CD-text was part of the CD mastering standard and thus was on anything after 1988 or so, except for maybe some non-compliant small labels.

Yes, it is part of the standard. But as I said, I stopped buying new CDs a while back. And just because it's there, you wouldn't have to use it.

[mikehalloran]

GraceNote is a Nielsen company nowadays HQ’d in Emeryville since 2017. Although originally open sourced, I think that was dropped when bought by Sony who owned it between 2008–14. AOL owned them for awhile.

They’ve been going through licensing issues since the purchase from Tribune Media. The big revenue stream has been from licenses for car CD players. GraceNote is the only way car players can show CD titles. One of their big customers, Winamp, fell off the radar for awhile. It’s a $100M annual revenue stream.

Since it works on my iMac currently, I’m guessing that Apple’s license is still in good shape. I have no idea why it isn’t working for everybody.

Anyway, with the decline of CDs, the big push is data mining these days (duh—it’s Nielsen). I expect that they’ll get back on track soon enough. They’re trying to monetize video and AV but I don’t know enough about their revenue stream to understand what is going on over there.

It’s still free to upload tunes.

One of the problems is that the technology is very dated. They still use exact song length as one of their indicators and go from there. You’d think they’d use ISRC codes as the main marker. If the link isn’t good, the app guesses.

[mhschmieder]

Useful info, Mike. When I bought my first home computer, during the transition to OS X (a G4 iMac that got me nowhere until I went MacPro in late 2010), everything uploaded as anonymous and redundant numbered tracks, so it was a nightmare to find anything and I'm not even sure we could directly name the tracks at that point. But I hadn't started uploading yet; these were just my own demo CD's and those of friends and collaborators.

[mhschmieder]

I get the following error message if I try to get the library to sync up:

"An error occurred while accessing the Gracenote server. Gracenote Error: 0x0"

It did not help to log out, re-authorize the computer, etc.

I saw this being discussed relative to a mid-2017 iTunes update, at Apple's site, but no responses.

It is difficult for me to believe that I am just suddenly getting to CD's that aren't in the database, across major labels and major artists, as some kind of weird coincidence, after years pf rarely a hiccup.

[mhschmieder]

One other note that I forgot to mention, is that every time I close iTunes, since the update last week, it throws up an error message saying it hasn't finished downloading artwork, even though it never found any and also never reported status previously. This is repeatable, but I just dismiss it, as I'm used to artwork not being found (but not album names, artists, and track titles!).

[mhschmieder]

I didn't want to take the time to enter all the info before upload to the computer, and see if I can then upload it to GraceNote, as I suspect that isn't the problem and that GraceNote has all this info already.

Also, in the past, if I have corrected mistakes before uploading to the computer, all of my corrections are lost and I have to do them over again from scratch within iTunes. So there's a huge penalty with inadequate feedback, but maybe I'll take the time risk on something that only has one or two long tracks.

It's too bad that you can't upload to GraceNote afterwards, but that's probably because the CD-Text information isn't read by iTunes (I didn't know this until recently) and thus it can't find the codes it needs to connect the information?

If I'd known all of this years ago, I probably would have tried uploading to GraceNote after track corrections, years ago -- although that might not work anyway; it may only work when GraceNote has no database entry to start with.

As always, a user manual (or a detailed Help section in iTunes) would be nice. But we live in the age of disposability and entertainment vs. professionalism.