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Why doesn't iTunes get track names when I rip CDs?Every time I copy a music CD out of my collection onto my computer, it shows up with "Track 01", "Track 02", and so on. What the heck? Surely I don't need to manually enter all the track names for each of my hundreds of CDs as I rip them? You are experiencing something quite common for people who are starting out with Apple's popular, though not always loved, application iTunes. The problem is that there's a setting in the configuration of the program that indicates you want it to check for CD and track names online (at the CDDB music database, owned now by the innovative Gracenote company) and, well, you don't have it checked or selected. I know from experience that if you don't have this set, importing CDs can be a huge pain as you have to type in the artist, album, all track names and, if you're fastidious, the year of release, total track count, and other trivia that does make it more enjoyable to explore your resultant music library. Without it, here's what you're likely to see when you put in a CD: ![]() That's pretty depressing, I must say! Fortunately, tweak that one setting and you shoudl never see that again. To modify the setting, go to iTunes --> Preferences... and choose "Advanced" from the row of buttons along the top: ![]() Next to "General" is "Importing". Click on that and you'll see the preference you want to tweak buried in the middle of this complex window: ![]() The one you want to ensure is selected is "Automatically retrieve CD track names from Internet". Select that, eject the disk, reinsert it and things are oh, so much happier on insertion: ![]() Make that change in your own version of iTunes -- oh, and as usual, always make sure you have the very latest version of iTunes by checking the Apple download center -- and you should be able to happily and efficiently import your CD music collection.
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Mac OS X Help
(Article 7839,
Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: apple itunes, cd ripping, cddb, gracenote Previous: How do I disable the IR infrared port on my Mac? Next: What's the difference between "HD-capable" and "HD-ready" televisions? Reader Comments To Date: 62adam said, on June 11, 2008 5:39 AM:
Is there any way of getting song names on my itunes when I have already put my cds through when off line I have 11k songs unnamed, big job to do manually as my cds are not with me any more to be reloaded Dave Taylor said, on June 12, 2008 3:01 PM:
Adam, it should work for you to select the CD or CDs in question, then choose "Get CD Track Names" from the "Advanced" menu (at least it does in the Mac OS X version of iTunes) Jake Radatti said, on August 28, 2008 3:11 AM:
My mate has burnt heaps of albums straight from the net but wen i load them to itunes it doesnt have the track names.I have already changed my settings so it searchs for them on the net. Is there any other way of retrieving them???? Kerry said, on October 24, 2008 7:03 AM:
Hi Dave, Fred said, on November 18, 2008 1:20 AM:
Just wanted to say thank you. Did a google search for this question and came up with your thread. You just saved me hours of useless entering of info. Thanks!! Jim said, on January 10, 2009 2:41 AM:
Recently, when I rip a CD iTunes has been grabbing the album name as the track name! Most of my music is what most people would call Classical and I have to "Join" tracks a lot to get movements together. When there is only one "Joined" track on the disc, iTunes imports the track using the Album name??? What the...? Jim Jimmy Peters said, on February 22, 2009 11:21 AM:
How do I get CD track names in iTunes? When I go to Advanced, "Get CD Track Names" is light grey instead of black. When I click on "Get Cd Track names" nothing happens. btspac said, on March 8, 2009 12:12 PM:
Dave, Thank you for the explanation on the CD info. My question though is this...Why should I have to utilize the internet to get my CD info? Windows Medica reads this directly from the CD. But, from what you're saying, ITunes forces you to utilize the internet to import this information. Why would this be, other than to systematically track people's music preferences and or purchases? Correct me if I am wrong...but don't you also have to have an itunes store account (with personal information) to have this work? I suppose I just have a problem with Itunes (unlike Windows Media) having set up a program that knows whether I still listen to Color Me Bad, Vanilla Ice etc. (I don't ;) ...but you get my point right?)_ unamed said, on September 25, 2009 12:05 PM:
Verify that Norton Internet Secuirty was not set to block the traffic from iTunes. I created the proper rules, and poof, now I can get my track names. kerry said, on November 30, 2009 1:23 PM:
Hi, I have had the same issue as a number of people trying to get track names off the internet when downloading a CD to itunes. I have checked the tick box you mention assuming it isn't ticked, but it is. can you advise what to check next amazonwoman said, on December 13, 2009 4:47 PM:
I have a similar issue. All of the right things are clicked. The CD was burned correctly to include track names. I try to open on my computer and it won't show the names. HOWEVER, when I put the disc in my car, it can read th names. It tells me the track # and the Title of the song. WHat the heck?????? carlos said, on January 3, 2010 12:58 AM:
i followed you steps and it still dint work what do i do? Beth said, on January 5, 2010 9:56 PM:
Hi Dave - a supplementary question to this one: Why isn't iTunes importing CD track names even though I have the "Automatically retrieve CD track names from the Internet" option selected in preferences? I am using iTunes 9.0.2.25 on Windows XP. Hope you can help! Tristen said, on January 28, 2010 11:36 PM:
Ya Dave i have Itunes 9 and i was wondering how do i do that on my ituens because it doesnt have that same menu and everything....and i get real annoyed when i look through my Itunes and i have songs that are named "Track 1" etc. and no album artwork even after i go online and jus type in lyrics but i have like 300 songs that are like this and that would take forever and im only 15 and thats alot of wasted time. so please help me. Oh and by the way this is on a pc not a mac or apple jus windows 7...or the lastest window and Itunes 9 Jacob said, on February 3, 2010 1:51 PM:
Thanks for the great resource. I'm sure if more people did this than their iTunes names wouldn't me so messed up. Wesley said, on February 22, 2010 1:44 PM:
How do you tick all tracks in the main itunes library? some are ticked and some are un-ticked which means often an album will not play in order. Please help Judy said, on March 5, 2010 2:04 PM:
Hi Dave I am having problems with importing cd music...its really slow ..Is there a way to fix this. Chris said, on March 11, 2010 11:49 AM:
KERRY AND OTHERS: when you burn a CD in iTures (or in general, even with Toast) it is converting the audio from the iTMS into aiff which is the standard Audio CD format. When you do that it loses all of the ID3 tags that contain the information and just puts down Track 01 etc. The reason that it doesn't matter with full albums is because when iTunes (or any audio player) connects to the CDDB databasem (now known as Gracenote) it can get all the track information (it looks at all of the track times and finds the matching album). Only real way to get around it is to burn as an MP3 cd (iTunes -> Preferences -> Burning) which will allow you to put a lot more music and save the information. Only downside is most standard older stereos cant play these (but the track information doesn't even matter on those)... hope that helps. dave mott said, on May 19, 2010 1:10 PM:
my advanced does not look like that in preferences. and the header advanced will not highlight get track names.problem started with itunes 8. that is why so many people say i used to get track names on burnt audio mix cds and not now. do not want to make a data disc. do not want to download other music manager programs. never changed settings. do not have general,importing,burning selection bar you show. tiger 10.4,itunes 9. what is the fix? cause what ive read aint it.not in itunes anyway. Victor Black said, on May 27, 2010 9:25 PM:
Hi Dave, thank you. Worked great for me. iTunes 9 on Win XP. Bill said, on June 2, 2010 9:23 AM:
I was downloading cd's with no problem then all of a sudden, no more info. My advanced setting doesn't have, "General, Importing, Burning" in it. What do I do now? thank you sintia said, on June 16, 2010 4:19 PM:
Thanks, this worked for me... ituneshelp said, on July 19, 2010 10:43 AM:
i did what u said except it was on a windows vista computer. i still didi it and it still dosent show the song names, album and etc. HELP PLZ PLZ PLZ!!!!! Del Stribling said, on July 22, 2010 8:16 AM:
This is a good answer but it doesn't really answer the question. All of the track info is actually stored on every commercially produced CD. My question is why does iTunes require a person to be online to "download" the info from Gracenote? It's just another way for the man to keep track of what we're doing. Dave Taylor said, on July 22, 2010 10:51 AM:
Actually, Del, the vast majority of audio CDs do *not* have the individual track information encoded on the disk. What they have is a unique numeric identifier that is used to look up the information in the public CD track database (Gracenote). There is a different CD format that includes this information - my car stereo knows it - but I have never found a music CD that actually uses it. :-( Ralph said, on August 23, 2010 6:00 PM:
Hi, pob said, on September 22, 2010 12:05 PM:
try going to list view, find all tracks that need re-naming by sorting track name aphabetically. select first occurance of 'track 1' press shift and select last occurance of 'track [whatever -say 13]' right click and on sub menu select 'get track names'. this seems to work even though the option on the advanced tab is mysteriously greyed out. david walmsley said, on September 28, 2010 7:52 AM:
Dave, slight difference to the problems above in that on buying an iTouch, i transferred 100 or so CD's with track names (using the gracenote database) to itunes without a hitch...then, all of a sudden, the function stopped working.....have tried all of the usual with no luck.....any idea as to why this would happen? Deb said, on October 17, 2010 3:21 PM:
I burned cds to import music library from itunes to a new laptop. All the songs are coming over as track 1 track 2 etc. I have tried all of the suggestions I could figure out from the above posts and nothing works. Help please there are over 500 songs in my library. Sean said, on October 22, 2010 5:36 AM:
Hi Dave, yeepoon said, on October 27, 2010 9:43 AM:
I use itune10, by the way , thank you very much for your work . Paulk said, on November 10, 2010 2:24 AM:
Get Track names under the advanced setting is in grey and I cant tick it. What should I do ? pete said, on November 21, 2010 3:22 AM:
hi pete Pedro said, on November 27, 2010 11:24 AM:
I've tried all of the suggestions here and it still doesn't work. I may try saving them in a separate folder and then importing to itunes. What a major issue for software this popular! Jon said, on December 13, 2010 8:02 AM:
This was such an easy problem to solve thanks to you Dave! Edwin said, on December 13, 2010 6:02 PM:
Dave, Karen said, on December 20, 2010 9:34 AM:
When I first started using iTunes a couple of years ago, it extracted the Track name and Artist information off my CDs. Then, this stopped working. I have a slow, dialup connection to the Internet and iTunes now reports it cannot connect to GraceNote. I've owned some of these CDs for 15 years. I KNOW the data is ON the CDs. What program do I have to use retrieve it? What do other people limited by dialup (not even DSL) Internet connections do . . . ? Rodney said, on January 1, 2011 10:41 PM:
Hey, Dave - Any ideas? Thanks for all your work/advice. Rodney said, on January 1, 2011 11:18 PM:
incredible....MULTIPLE websites/discussion boards regarding the subject this issue. See: Seems the problem is ONLY appearing with version 10....Anyway, tried a couple of "suggested fixes", and the one that FINALLY fixed it was to: I'd say the next update to iTunes may address this :) Thanks for all your help. Matty said, on January 8, 2011 9:26 PM:
Norton Internet Security firewall was the culprit in my case. Michelle said, on January 27, 2011 10:38 AM:
During the 70's/80's, I compiled cassette tapes of mixed songs to play when on the road - most tracks taken from LPs or other cassettes. Recently, I had the tapes converted to MP3 and burn to CD. Unfortunately, no song title/artist information was available. Is there any way for me to now get the song title/artist without have to go through each song one by one and try to remember titles/artists? I have copied the songs to my external hard drive; put them in my iTunes library - but no luck so far. Any suggestions? Thank you. Bernard said, on February 12, 2011 9:36 AM:
When I play an album using Microsoft Windows Player, the track names appear right away (even if my Internet connection is disabled) which makes sense because they are on the CD. So why don't they show up on Itunes???? They are on the CD. There is no need to get them from the Internet. So is this a flaw? I would say Yes. Julie said, on March 10, 2011 6:48 PM:
My itunes is already set to do that but it still couldn't find the names and artist. Whats wrong?? Ernest said, on March 19, 2011 9:28 AM:
Hi Dave, From your menu graphic it looks like you are using an Apple Mac but I am on Microsoft and your solution does'nt work, help. Dave Taylor said, on March 30, 2011 8:07 PM:
Julie - sometimes it just can't match the CD to any known album (common if it's new or offbeat music, less common if it's just popular tunes like Lady Gaga or U2). In those cases, you should enter the track names, then select it all and choose ""Submit CD Track Names..." from the "Advanced" iTunes menu. Ernest - I'm looking at the Windows version of iTunes and see "Get Album Artwork" on the "Advanced" menu. In "Preferences", "General", there's also a checkbox for "Automatically retrieve CD track names from the Internet" too. What are you seeing? Iain said, on June 19, 2011 12:42 PM:
For iTunes v10 on Widows Vista (and maybe others) the 'select track(s) and right click method seems to work, even though the 'get track names' option is greyed out under 'advanced'. Thanks Justin said, on July 11, 2011 5:14 AM:
Hello Dave, I'm hoping that you'll be able to help with this. I have my Itunes library in my laptop. I was able to open it and transferred all the music (over 6,000 pieces) as a back-up, into my PC where I also have Itunes. I can only input the music by opening each folder (there are 49), selecting all, and dragging them into Itunes. (The program will not read the folder.) So far, so good. Now - the problem(s). Almost all the song titles show up with the 4 letter designation (example: KLNB). When I attempt to play it, it tells me that it cannot find it, yet it's all on the hard drive. At this point, all that's left is for me to re-enter all the music (a daunting task). The few songs that it does play are still titled (ABCD) and would require renaming. Any suggestion(s) will be welcomed. Thank you in advance. Justin Charlie said, on July 30, 2011 9:06 AM:
What if I want to change a group (say 100) mp3 track names, each having the same label with a one-up number following. For instance CD1-Track 1, CD1-Track 2, etc. What software is available that will make the one-up changes after I have selected multiple tracks? Thanks for any help. Suzy Hein said, on September 23, 2011 1:04 PM:
Mine wasn't working after these steps either until i finally just updated version of itunes. If you've done everything else you may need to update. i didn't even realize i wasn't running current version. now it's working like a charm. yay! Danna said, on September 24, 2011 10:49 AM:
Thanks for all your help! Everything is good with the Song Title being transferred to my Mix CD. Titles show up on my car's player. I love it! QUESTION: Can I get the Title AND the artist to burn to the CD? (And show up on my player?) Thank you for your time. "Pete" Huey said, on October 18, 2011 2:42 PM:
This situation may have been addressed but if so I apologize for the old eyes (and brain) missing it. Thanks so much for helping out an old geezer who should probably be kept at a distance from anything more complicated than a dial phone..... Dave Taylor said, on October 20, 2011 9:10 AM:
Got ya covered, Pete: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/add_track_names_titles_to_itunes_music.html Elsa said, on October 30, 2011 1:40 PM:
Like Paula and Edwin I'm also wondering how I can keep & transfer track information from a mix cd (not an original) to iTunes. Is there a way? Gary Vincent said, on December 15, 2011 12:09 AM:
When I go to Preferences, Advanced I don't get the options of; General, Importing, Burning. Why is that and what can be done to get my track information without these options. danielle said, on May 1, 2012 7:45 AM:
I have had problems with itunes for over a year now. First it wouldnt let me access the store,so i had to uninstall/re-install it. for a while that seemed to solve the problem but then again i couldnt access the store.Since then i havent been able to access the store which i have money tied up on.Im now having problems with burning cds-no track names.It tells me that i am not connected to the internet when i am,im going out of my mind help me? Relieved said, on October 9, 2012 7:43 AM:
If 'Automatically Retrieve CD Track Names from Internet' is checked, try unchecking, press OK, and then re-check the box - worked straight away for me! Ron said, on October 19, 2012 10:28 PM:
I have an IMac and a Mac Book Pro if I upload store bought cds the name and song titles come ok but if I use a cd I burned from someone else with no play list those do not ID. I have looked under iTunes advanced and get track names or submit track names are not highlighted. How do I get those highlighted? All apps I have seen are for iPhones or iPads? All settings are correct. Ellen said, on November 3, 2012 12:35 PM:
I know this is an old post, but ... I am importing my library. I have a number of cds that iTunes cannot find in Gracenote, but for which I can find track lists elsewhere. Is there any way to point iTunes toward the lists it cannot find? Dave Taylor said, on November 3, 2012 11:05 PM:
Hi Ellen. Unfortunately, there's no way to point iTunes at a different track name database. And yes, it can be tedious. Especially when you import a 15-disk audio book. Just sayin' :-) Sal said, on December 3, 2012 1:25 PM:
Hi Dave, I've ust done the latest itunes update, followed your steps as above, but the "general, importing, burning" tabs aren't under the advcned tab? Any suggestions?? I'm running itunes on a 2009 macbook pro. Dave Taylor said, on December 3, 2012 11:14 PM:
You're right, Sal. iTunes 11 has reorganized, well, everything. The preference you seek you can find if you go to "Preferences..." then look on the General window, 2/3 way down, and find the "When you insert a CD" label. You can decide what you want to do and if you click on the "Import Settings" button you'll find what you seek!
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This didn't work for me. I am moving music from my pc to this mac. These songs are not directly off the original cd. My old desktop drive went bad. I had my music retrieved from the bad hard drive. Copied those onto my pclaptop (song names etc, exist on laptop. Now itunes won't import from burnt cd.
Please help.