I have been ripping my CD collection to MP3s using Windows Media Player for quite a while now, for backup purposes. Where the album and artwork information is not applied automatically by Windows Media Player I have been scanning the CD cover and manually typing the relevant information for the CD (such as track information). I recently lost one of the CDs and reproducing a copy of the CD was no problem, as I had all the backup MP3 files on the computer. However, I would like to reproduce the album artwork and track information. I assume that there must be a database of all the track information and artwork somewhere on the internet. Can you advise where I might find this information? The computer is running Windows XP.

When you insert a CD into Windows Media Player, or rip the CD locally onto your computer, Windows Media Player will usually query an online database to download the track listing and artwork for the CD. Your question implies that Windows Media Player already does this for quite a few of your CDs, as you said that you only need to scan the artwork and manually input the CD information when this is not automatically applied by Windows Media Player. So, this indicates that either the online database which Windows Media Player is querying does not contain information on the CD you have inserted into the computer or there is an internet connectivity program preventing Windows Media Player from connecting to the database and retrieving the results.

In any case, your specific question is asking how to retrieve information on a particular CD which you have lost but still have the CD backed-up in MP3 format on your computer. For the track listings, GraceNote (www.gracenote.com) is one of the bigger services which offer a listing of the track names on particular CDs and albums. If you visit their website you can search for music by artist, album name or track name. Once found, it will provide a listing of all the tracks on the CD. It may also provide album artwork, but this may be hit and miss (as I tried quite a few albums and got the artwork for a few, but not all). If you cannot find the artwork for the album, search Google for a term such as “music album artwork” (without the quotes) and this will provide many results for websites where you can download album artwork for various CDs. Another good source for artwork is Amazon.com (www.amazon.com). While this site isn’t purpose built for retrieving album track names and artwork (as Amazon.com is an online store) most albums in the music section have their front cover artwork and track listings included on the product page.

In any case, make sure you observe any copyright over the artwork on the albums.