For xmas I got a Zune (expected) and a $50 gift certificait to the Zune music store (unexpected). I hadn't been planning on buying anything DRM'ed, but I couldn't use the money for anything else so said what the heck and bought a bunch of songs.
Recently, I've decided to strip the DRM by burning and ripping from a CD. I stuck all the music I'd bought in a playlist and burned that list to 3 CD's. I re-ripped the music, dragged the (now untagged) files to where the old files were, and renamed them. Then in the Zune software I had it grab the metadata online. Except - it still somehow thought all the music on each CD was part of the same album. So when it DL'ed the info for one song, it would assume all the other songs that had been on that CD too and would rename them (improperly, of course, because they came from completely different artists and albums). No matter what I do it still seemed to remember in its gut that the tracks are linked. If I edit the tags so that a song is in a different album, then ask Zune to DL the info for that album, it updates all the other songs as well (wrongly) and puts them together again. Frustration. I restored from a backup of my library.
I came up with a plan to foil this idiocy. I went to another computer, running a different OS (XP) using a different media player (WMP11, though Zune is really a skin of WMP11), and ripped the CD's to that computer. I then copied all the files into directories on an external drive, which mirrored the arrangement of the files on my computer. I manually renamed and entered basic tag info for each file (track #, song name, album name, artist name). I then plugged the external HD into the original computer and copied the files over. No way could this mysterious link survive a file copy - not file move - onto a separate HD, then onto another computer. I was wrong it still somehow knows that some files are linked and if I DL info for one, it chucks all the rest into an album with it.
How do I defeat this menace?
Recently, I've decided to strip the DRM by burning and ripping from a CD. I stuck all the music I'd bought in a playlist and burned that list to 3 CD's. I re-ripped the music, dragged the (now untagged) files to where the old files were, and renamed them. Then in the Zune software I had it grab the metadata online. Except - it still somehow thought all the music on each CD was part of the same album. So when it DL'ed the info for one song, it would assume all the other songs that had been on that CD too and would rename them (improperly, of course, because they came from completely different artists and albums). No matter what I do it still seemed to remember in its gut that the tracks are linked. If I edit the tags so that a song is in a different album, then ask Zune to DL the info for that album, it updates all the other songs as well (wrongly) and puts them together again. Frustration. I restored from a backup of my library.
I came up with a plan to foil this idiocy. I went to another computer, running a different OS (XP) using a different media player (WMP11, though Zune is really a skin of WMP11), and ripped the CD's to that computer. I then copied all the files into directories on an external drive, which mirrored the arrangement of the files on my computer. I manually renamed and entered basic tag info for each file (track #, song name, album name, artist name). I then plugged the external HD into the original computer and copied the files over. No way could this mysterious link survive a file copy - not file move - onto a separate HD, then onto another computer. I was wrong it still somehow knows that some files are linked and if I DL info for one, it chucks all the rest into an album with it.
How do I defeat this menace?
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