If your computer is connected to the Internet, for most CDs you'll see the title and artist informa- tion. Even obscure artists are (usually) represented in the free online databases. If the information isn't available, you can enter it yourself.

The interface for adding information about the CD and its tracks is very nice. Click the Open Track Editor button. You can add Artist and Title information about the CD. Then you can select each track to type in the track name. To add the name of the artist and the disk title, click in the appro- priate text box, and type in that information. Figure 20-1 shows the CD player and the CDDB Track Editor.

Playing Music with the Rhythmbox Audio Player

Rhythmbox provides the GNOME music player that lets you do everything, at least according to the Rhythmbox documentation. Rhythmbox is built on the GStreamer framework for developing media players, video editors, and streaming media. You can play music files, import music from CDs, and play Internet radio stations, all from one interface. Recent additions let you play podcasts and free music from Magnatune and Jamendo online music services.

The first time you run Rhythmbox, consider setting some Rhythmbox Preferences by selecting Edit Preferences (see Figure 20-2). On the Music tab, you can tell Rhythmbox where you store your music files and how Rhythmbox should organize and store your music (including how folders are named and how songs are titled, and the format in which music is stored). After you've set up your preferences, you'll see the main music library interface (see Figure 20-3). Rhythmbox makes it easy to organize even large collections of music files.

NOTE

If your distribution does not include support for MP3 playback with Rhythmbox, fear not - there is hope! In Fedora, you can use the Codeina feature to download free MP3 decoder support from Fluendo (www·fluendo·com). For Ubuntu and Linspire, check out support in the Click-N-Run service (www·cnr·com).

In addition to playing music files, Rhythmbox can easily rip CDs. Just insert the CD you want to rip, right-click the CD when it appears under the Devices heading in the left column, and select Copy to Library. The CD will be ripped and stored with your Rhythmbox music collection.