The database can be used in a number of different ways, depending upon your needs. If you're a serious collector and you have the room, you can actually download the whole thing to a local drive. This would not be practical in most cases, though, since the CDDB takes up 20MB even in compressed form (80MB uncompressed), and since the benefit of the constant Web updates would be lost. You can also access and search the database through Lycos. But the CDDB is probably best used in conjunction with one of the special programs designed to download its musical information for your CD-ROM drive to use right away. We tested two such programs, one for Windows 95 and one for the Mac; both are freeware.

Clarion, the Windows 95 program, offers an elaborate CD player interface with many more options than Windows' built-in CD Player. (Editor's Note: Clarion is no more, but there are tons of other Windows programs available—check the link above.) The program works with the CDDB by going online to query the server about the music CD in your drive—if a match is made, the disk's title and performance information, along with individual track titles, are seamlessly downloaded to your hard drive, usually in 10 seconds or less. Once there, the information is stored—the Windows CD Player and Clarion will both "remember it" the next time you load the disk. Clarion works flawlessly, even if its interface is a bit dense for our taste.

InCDius is relatively new, and the only CDDB-savvy program available for the Mac. Like Clarion, it can play your CDs but its main purpose is to extract information from the Internet database. Also like Clarion, it does its job well. The InCDius interface is at the other end of the spectrum, however, being minimalist in the extreme. You'll want to play your disks through the elegant AppleCD Audio Player after downloading the CDDB information.

Enabling your CD-ROM player to call out albums, performers and song titles is nice, but some music lovers will undoubtedly want more, viz., a customized database of their own. Building such a database in a program like Access or FileMaker Pro is straightforward enough, but somewhat labor-intensive—particularly for large collections. Fortunately, alternatives exist. There are a number of pre-made databases for music collectors on the Windows side, some of which can also access the CDDB. On the Mac, Audiofile, a stylish FileMaker Pro-based database (also available for Windows), accomplishes much the same thing by working with InCDius to import CDDB information. The collector will still have some work to do, especially for classical music entries—CD and record labels will need to be manually entered, for example. But these programs are inexpensive and can save a great deal of time and effort.

The CDDB itself is not complete, and never could be; nor is it completely infallible. But the database is already comprehensive enough to be able to match some fairly out-of-the-way recordings, and its accuracy rate is quite high. If you enjoy music, you should try it.

(Reviewed September 30, 1997)