First I tried creating something with FoxPro, The Fox app worked, but the thought of having to enter thousands of lines into the database was totally daunting.
Next I tried hacking one of the sample apps that comes with Access into something potentially useful. It worked ok. Just OK. I already had an Excel spreadsheet of my CDs, but it was limited to artist and title. I thought it would be really nice to have track listings in the database, which would facillitate finding a particular song when you don't remember the artist, or you want to know what other versions of that tune are in your collection. Now coding (programming) issues aside, think about how much work is involved entering the data. It's not a coding problem... IT'S A HUGE DATA ENTRY PROBLEM!
Well, it's all done here. Plug and Play. Inexpensive at that! I tried a shareware copy of CD Trustee and liked it enough to buy it!
CD Trustee solves this quite handily by using the CDDB online music database. To enter a disc into the database, open your computer's cd drive and insert the disc. CD Trustee enters it into a list, and then opens the drive and prompts you for the next disc. When you've run the discs thru the drive that you're going to catalog, you tell the program that you're done, and off it goes into cyberspace to locate the cds that you entered, and when it does, it retrieves the track information and other data. Then it does the next item in the list. There is little or no interraction from you. It takes perhaps 20 seconds to load a CD into the drive, read it, and spit it out again. By batching the read process, the program really cuts significantly into the drudgery of this simple task.
So, why am I devoting space on my website for some other programmer's product? That's a good question, and I'm not going to answer it. But the CD Trustee website will answer it, and it'll become crystal clear why I'm helping to advertise this great program. Oh! Windows only...Sorry Mac Guys!
November 2002: I just got Mike's V2 program update and it makes his already great program even better. He added several features that I wanted, like additional user-specified fields (Try that with Microsoft!), and added a spreadsheet-like facility for editing many entries at once. If you have to make a lot of additions to your database, this is a much easier way to do the deed than pointing and clicking.
I just can't say enough good things about CD Trustee. If you have a pile of CDs and need to catalog them, you need this program.
There, I've said it. Now go buy it. It's a good thing.
November 2003: I just upgraded to the pro version of this program. The big deal (to me at least) is the local copy of the CDDB database stored on your local machine. This is handy for those times when you're not connected to the Internet. Another new feature allows cataloging non-cd media (vinyl?). This also lets you look up all albums by a particular artist or all artists who have done a particular song (limited to what's already been entered into CDDB).
October 2009: They're still around. The program is still available. Still Best of Class.