KayJayPro

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Introduction

KayJayPro is a commercial, professionally curated, subscription database that contains a subset of meta data for just about every single karaoke disc that exists. That is, it contains entries that specify, for each CD, all the artist, album, and track title information (NOT songs!). There are currently 31,814 Karaoke discs cataloged. kJams incorporates access to this database so that, when you insert a CD, all you have to do is enter a search term (see below), and the meta data is updated automatically. If there is more than one search result, then you'll be presented with a choice of all the discs that match. Then the database is queried for the CD's meta info, so that you don't have to type anything in.

How to Turn it Off

The KayJayPro dialog will pop up any time you put in a CD and there is no info in any of the free databases. If you are annoyed by this, and you do NOT want to subscribe to KayJayPro for a month while you enter all your discs, it's easy to turn it off:

  1. run kJams
  2. in the Menu Bar, go to the kJams menu and pick "Preferences"
  3. select the "KayJayPro" tab
  4. un-check <<Use “Kay Jay Pro” Online Database>>

How to get a Subscription

You can click right here.
To manage your existing account, click here.
For kJams users, The landing page is here, and you can do an online search here.

Getting Track Data for a CD

Any time a CD is selected in kJams, you can attempt to get the disc info using this database. When you go to the "Advanced" menu and choose "Get CD Tracks from KayJayPro…", kJams will then ask you for the "Disc Identifier" name of the disc. Alternately you can just enter the number part of the "Disc Identifier", and kJams will fetch the list of discs that have that number, and ask you which one you mean. When the disc is found, kJams will update the copy of the meta data that kJams keeps for that disc. Note you will loose any info currently stored for that disc.

What is a "Disc Identifier"?

[manufacturer abbreviation][manufacturer disk number]{{-}designator}{-series number}

Things in [brackets] are required, things in {braces} are optional

 manufacturer abbreviation   a usually two or three letter abbreviation of the manufacturer name. this *sometimes* includes a space at the end
 manufacturer disk number   a usually two to four digit number
 designator   sometimes a distinction is made for two different discs that share the same number. the dash is optional
 series number   a two digit number: an album that comes as a set of two or more discs is a "series"

Examples are "SC1234", "SPK01", "ASK1112-PRO", "CB5111-1", "KSA 111", "DMG100022-01", "DKL022a"

Instructions for Use

  1. stick in your disc
  2. either the KayJayPro dialog will automatically pop up, or you can pick "Advanced -> Get Tracks from KayJayPro…"
  3. Enter a search term: Choose your search type (one or the other):
    1. "manufacturer disk number": Just the number, do NOT enter any letters, eg: if you have Pocket Songs 1234, just enter "1234"
    2. "song name": enter the name of any one of the songs on the disc
  4. click OK
  5. if there is only one disc with that search result, you're done, else kJams will present a list of choices
  6. pick your disc from the list of choices
  7. if you do not see your disc in the list, then it is not in the database
  8. that's it!

Instructions for kJams directly from KayJayPro

Here are some notes written by the folks at KayJayPro.

Assigning Metadata to songs in any Playlist

This also works for playlists with less than 30 songs in them. The songs MUST be in the correct track order and MUST contain every song in the album. Sort the playlist by "#" first (NOT by track number), and drag-reorder them to get them into the correct order. Then select the playlist and then go Advanced->Get CD Tracks from KayJayPro. Note, if the songs are in the wrong order, it will still "work" but you will have set the wrong meta data on the wrong songs!! Simply re-order the songs into the correct order, and re-get, and they should reset to being correct.

Probably too much detail

Scenario: So the metadata of your tracks is all messed up. Maybe you have a bunch of files with names like "Track 01.zip" or some such. You know the album name, so you can browse the KayJayPro database for the information, and fix everything by hand, but that can be very time consuming, especially if you have multiple albums that need to be fixed. Perhaps you don't like the names that get assigned by any of the other databases accessible from the Advanced menu (GraceNote, TrackType, freedb, or MusicBrainz) or perhaps they do not have a listing for your album. Here is a (somewhat) simple procedure that will allow you to pull metadata from the KayJayPro and apply it to your tracks, assigning them the correct ID3 tags.

  1. First, make a playlist with the tracks in the album you wish to fix. (Click the "+" button on the lower left of the browser window and then drag your tracks to the new playlist.)
  2. If you do not have the "#" field visible, right click on any column header and scroll through the pop-up menu to "#"
  3. sort by # (this is called User Sort Order)
  4. drag each track to the correct position in the playlist corresponding to its track order. This is EXTREMELY important. If the tracks are not in the correct order, they will be incorrectly named!
  5. now go to the Advanced menu and try try all three "Get Tracks from..." entries: "GraceNote", "freedb", "MusicBrainz", "TrackType". If one works, you're done. If not, read on...
  6. follow the procedure above under "Instructions for Use", starting at step 2

And there you go. All your tracks will be renamed to match the KayJayPro database.

Notes: As stated above, you MUST have the same number of tracks in your playlist as KayJayPro lists for that album. If you do not have all the tracks you need (say you are missing one of the songs on the album) you can create a dummy placeholder by going to the correct album folder in the Finder, duplicating a song (by selecting a song and typing CMD-D) renaming it something informative, like the name of the missing track or just "dummy track.zip", dragging it into your playlist, and then placing it at the position corresponding to the missing track. This dummy track takes the place of the missing track. After you have finished the metadata assignment procedure above, feel free to now delete this dummy track (or keep it around to use again later for fixing additional metadata. Just remove it from your Library, in the Finder drag it to a location where you can find it again, reimport it to your Library, and give it its own playlist in kJams.)

If for some reason you get the message "Disc not found" After you select "Get CD Tracks from KayJayPro™…" from the Advanced menu, Check to make sure that the blue "focus border" is around the browser frame. If it is and you still get the error message, this is a good indication that one or more of your tracks have become separated from the original file(s). Play each one until you find the ones that will not play, and re-link them to the original files in your Library.

If you mess up, and did not put the tracks in the correct order (was I not clear enough about how important this is?) do not freak out. Play each track to identify it, and discover it's proper order. Drag-reorder the songs to now be in the CORRECT order, and simply re-get the info from KayJayPro.