Core is live for CDs!

The first Core edition, the one for books, was launched 3 months ago.
And today, it’s time to release the CD edition: Core for Music !

Core for Music is a new system that lets Music Collector users help each other
by improving the quality and completeness of our central online CD database.
It replaces the old “Submit to Collectorz.com” system with a more “quality focused” system and, on top of that, adds a quick way to report errors in our central data.

Important:
To use Core for Music, you need Music Collector 10.1 for Windows (released today). To get it, just use Check for Update in your current version. (Core will be added to the Mac edition later).

Core for Music consist of 3 parts:

1. Add missing CDs

In the Add Albums Automatically screen, when a scanned CD is not found, you are now able to immediately add the CD to our central CD database.
A browser window will pop-up, letting you enter all album level information (Artist, Title, etc…), plus all track titles (and track artists if applicable). The Core page even lets you add a cover image right away.

New CD data entered via this “Missing CD” system is inserted into our central online database immediately, without moderator intervention. Which means that after adding it to Core, you can just repeat your CD-ID search to retrieve the data you entered in Core into your local Music Collector database.

(this Core / Missing CD system replaces the old “CD not found, please provide Artist/Title” popup)

2. Report data errors

The Report Data Error part of Core is a more efficient way to let you fix data errors in our central database (as opposed to the old “fire and forget” Submit to Collectorz.com) system.

Click the red “Report data error” in Add Automatically to report open the new Core screen in your browser. The Core page shows the current data in our database, so that it’s clearer which parts need fixing. After submitting your fixes, your reports are queued and processed by our content managers as soon as possible.

3. Submit completed CD data

This Submit to Core part is the replacement of the old “Submit to Collectorz.com” feature. This too takes you to a page on the Core website, where you can see the current data in our central database and, right next to it, your submitted data. You can then use your submitted data to complete and fix our central data.

Choose Submit to Core from the Connect menu or use the button in the Edit Album screen.

Important: Connect account required

To be able to submit data or report errors and missing entries, you need a Connect account. Of course, a free Connect account is sufficient and can be easily created by anyone. This requirement introduces a small extra step that will hopefully discourage bogus data submissions.

It also lets us track Core reports per user, allowing us to:

1. Reward especially helpful users.
2. Block users who are only sending bogus or otherwise useless data.

Request: report your missing CDs and the data errors you find!

We’re hoping that you will join in and use Core to help improve the central CD database. Imagine what would happen if *every* Music Collector user would just ADD the missing CDs they run into and FIX the data errors they find.

With all Music Collector users doing just a few extra clicks now and then (yes, it’s that easy), we all would get less and less unrecognized CD-IDs and the delivered CD data would continuously get better and better!

So here’s my request to you all:

• Add missing CDs: If you run into “CD not found” in the Add Automatically
  screen, add the CD and its’ full Artist/Title data to the central database.

• Report data errors: If you encounter an error in the CD data delivered,
  just fix the error in your local database, then Submit the corrected entry.

Core for Music makes both of the above super-easy, just takes a few clicks.
I mean, you’re entering and fixing the data in your local music database anyway,
so why not send the entered data to our online database, for others to enjoy?

For clarity:
No *extra* manual entry is needed, just *share* the work that you do anyway.
Your fellow Music Collector users will be thankful!

We’re looking forward to your Core reports!