Change Info

Let's say you've finished ripping a handful of CDs and had no hitches. When iTunes automatically looked up information on the Internet about each CD you imported to your Mac, it loaded a bunch of data into a database it keeps in your iTunes Library. In most cases, you won't need to mess around here, but if the CD data doesn't come up the way you want it tobecause you don't have an Internet connection, the data doesn't exist for your CD, or you simply don't agree with some of the characterizations the CDDB database offeredyou'll need to add or adjust information. It's easy to do, and as you get more advanced with iTunes, you'll learn many interesting ways you can catalog and organize your collection.

Note

The Gracenote CDDB is compiled through user submissions and not from record companies. Consequently, there may be some errors or subjective opinions about data included.

Adjusting Information Before Importing

Let's begin by adjusting information for a CD you haven't yet imported into your computer. Follow these steps if you have a CD with "problem" information.

1.	Insert a new CD. If the CDDB has info on this album, it will show up in the iTunes window. In this example, the album is Rock 'n' Roll Gumboan album from New Orleans great Professor Longhair. The CDDB has information on the album but considers it to be in the blues genre. As far as I'm concerned, zydeco is a better genre classification. So let's change it.
2.	Select the CD's icon in the Source list.
3.	Choose File > Get Info. The CD Info window opens and gives you an opportunity to adjust basic info before you import. If you add info prior to importing, the data will follow the songs into iTunes automatically. If the CDDB did its job correctly, all this data should be filled in. In my example, I just want to change the genre.
4.	Add or change information in the fields. Christopher changed the Blues genre to Zydeco.
5.	Click OK when you're done.

Adjusting Information After Importing

Adjusting information prior to importing is good for data that's related to entire albums, but it's not the end of the process if you still need to add data about individual songs. In particularsay, for a custom CD that a friend has provided or for an arcane CD that isn't yet in the CDDByou might need to add or change more info for the disc.

To do that, let's import our albums and check out the same Get Info function on albums and songs, this time using it in the library. It looks similar to the way it did a moment ago, but now there are more fields and options.

Here's the library after a few albums have been imported. One of them was not recognized by the CDDB, and its tracks were sorted to the bottom of the list of songs.

See the five tracks at the bottom of the list with missing information? Since Christopher didn't input new info prior to importing, he'll have to do it now. First, he's going to add information that is common to all the songsthe album info.

1.	Select all five tracks. To do this, click Track 01; then Shift-click Track 05. All the tracks from 01 to 05 will be selected together.
2.	Choose File > Get Info. Since it's a little unusual to modify information for more than one track, iTunes will pop up a warning to make sure you intend to do this. If you're confident of your Mac skills, you could select "Do not ask me again"; however, it's a good rule to keep the safety on. Either way, click Yes in the warning window. iTunes will now open the information window, in this case entitled Multiple Song Information. If the CDDB didn't recognize the CD, the window will start out blank. Fill in as much data as you can.
3.	Click OK and check out your library. The songs have been updated, sorted by artist. iTunes still doesn't know anything about the individual tracks. For that you'll need to go through song by song.
4.	Select Track 01.
5.	Choose File > Get Info. Notice this is the third time we've chosen Get Info, and it has behaved slightly differently each time. First it was for a CD prior to importing, then it was for multiple tracks after importing, and now it's for a single track. What you see initially is the Summary tab of information. Five tabs appear along the top of this window.
6.	Select the Info tab, opening up an area in which you can enter a variety of important tidbits about your track.
7.	Change the name of Track 01 and click OK. Track 01 is really called "Sweet Baby's Arms."
8.	Repeat these steps for all unnamed tracks. Before you know it, your library is complete and looks something like this: Tip If you can't see all the information about a track in the window, you can change the width of the column. When you move the pointer over the lines that separate columns at the top, the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow. You can drag the column border to the right or left to enlarge or narrow a column, respectively.