PC help: View CD track names in Windows Media Player

Q I’ve been trying to burn some music to CD using Nero on Windows XP. The burning process goes fine, but I can’t get the track titles to appear when I put the CDs back in the computer and try to play them back.

The music plays without a problem, but the only thing that is shown where the title would normally appear is ‘Unknown Album’. I use Windows Media Player to play these CDs. Is there a way to make it show the names?

DJ Yates

A This isn’t an error so much as a function of the way the computer works out track and artist names, which are not actually stored on the CDs.

When you put a music CD in the PC, it looks up the disc on a database over the internet. The computer makes a list of all the tracks and how long they are, and sends this information across.

The database contains details of millions of CDs, including the lengths of the tracks. If it finds a match (so all the track lengths on your CD are the same as those of a disc in the database), it sends the artist and title information back to the computer, which then stores them on its own database (this is why, if your internet connection isn’t working, you probably won’t see any artist or track information from a new CD).

If you create your own compilation CD it won’t be listed in the database, so Windows Media Player won’t be able to figure out which tracks are on the disc. One slightly complicated way around this might be to burn music CDs using a feature called CD-Text in Nero. More information can be found at Nero’s website.

When you play the disc in some CD players, the track titles will be shown. To see this information in Media Player, you’ll need to install a plug-in, details of which can be found at Hydrogen audio along with a download link.

Be aware that we haven’t been able to review this software, so we can’t vouch for it, but having given it a quick try it seems to do the job you’re after.

The first time you run Media Player after installing it, a setup screen will appear. Make sure you tick the box marked ‘Automatically try to read CD-Text from unknown CDs’ and click OK.

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