Adding your first albums

Contents

• Introduction

• Creating your database

• Adding Albums Automatically
  • By CDID
  • By Artist/Title
  • By Barcode
  • By Catalog Number

Introduction

One of the main features of Music Collector is that it automatically gives you full album details and cover images for the albums in your collection.
And all those are provided by our own central online album database called: “Core for Albums”.

When you first try to add an album you will receive a warning that you are using the ‘Example’ database, it’s up to you how you proceed: You can try adding albums to the example collection to get a feel for how everything works, or you can get started immediately by creating your own database.

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Creating Your Database

To get started with cataloging your Album Collection you’ll need to create your own database.

1. Click File > New Database
2. Save your database by clicking: File > Save Database
3. Name your database, select a destination then click Save

Make sure you remember where you’re saving your database.

*It’s always a good idea to make a regular, external backup of your database. In the event of computer failure, or worse, you can always recover your collection. If you are creating lists for insurance purposes then an external backup is essential.

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Adding Albums Automatically

Adding albums is done by searching that central online database, either By CDID, By Artist/Title By Barcode or By Catalog Number then adding the results to your own local database.
Both methods are located in the Add Albums Automatically screen. To open it, click the left-most button on the toolbar:

Here you have the Add Albums Automatically screen. This enables you to search our online album database and download detailed information to your own personal database.

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By CDID

The recommended way to add CDs to your Music Collector database, is to add them by CD-ID, that is, by inserting the actual disc into your computer.
Just insert the CD, click the Scan button, then click the Search button.

The CD-ID is a unique identifier for your CD, so searching by CD-ID will immediately give you the correct CD and the correct edition that you own.

After searching, just select the CD from the result (only 1 in most cases), then click the Add button on the bottom right.

*TIP: If the CD-ID does not provide any result from our online CD database (which should be a rare event), then you can select the “CD Scan” result, which will at least give you the scanned track lengths from the CD. Alternatively, try searching again, this time by Artist and Title. Our online database may have a different edition of your album, which will at least save you the manual entry of artist, title and track titles.

By Artist/Title

To search for an album:

• Type the artist/title’s title in the artist/title box field
• Click Search Now on the right or press enter on your keyboard to start the search
• Music Collector will search our database for appropriate matches.

Now you have two options:

1. You can just select the correct album entry and click the Add button. This will give you full album details (musicians, label, genre, format, etc…), plus a “generic” cover image, what we call the “default” album cover.
2. Alternatively, you can “expand” the album entry to make the program show all different CDs and Vinyls editions we have listed for that particular album. This way you can select the specific edition that you own, with the specific CDs and Vinyls cover that you own (if we indeed have your CDs and Vinyls edition).

***Tip:**If you can’t find the album you were looking for, then check if you spelled the Album’s title correctly. Also, it helps to enter the full title.

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By Barcode

The 2nd way to search our online database is by Barcode. The big advantage of searching by Barcode is that it will immediately give you the correct album and the correct CDs and Vinyls edition. No need to wade through a long list of search results.

If you own a lot of CDs and/or Vinyls, then consider getting our “CLZ Barry.” barcode scanner app (available for iOS and Android).

Here’s how to add by barcode:

1. Scan or type in the Barcode (if you type it in, you must hit Search Now)
2. Click Add Selected

*Tip: If your barcode search does not deliver any results, don’t give up! It does not mean our database does not have your album. We may still have full album details available, but just not “linked” to your barcode. So just try again, this time searching by Title.

*Pro Tip: You can use the Queue Mode to add multiple albums to the search queue. Click ‘Show/Hide Queue’ to enable/disable the Queue Mode. This is a Pro only feature.

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