This discussion somewhat overlaps the "yadb is too sparse" thread, so I wanted to make one more post and then I'll shut up on this issue.
I certainly understand why J River dumped CDDB -- not only did Gracenote raise CDDB prices, but I believe they now prohibit dual use of CDDB and another service (which is how MJ8 works).
But I still don't understand why MC doesn't use freedb (which was the starting point for yadb). Perhaps freedb has some technical deficiencies, but its success rate is very high (EAC uses it, and knows about every one of my CDs that yadb doesn't yet know about).
MC9 is a sweet product, and I hope it becomes popular. But I doubt that this will happen if it's released with yadb in its current state, because (given current success statistics at [urlhttp://www.yadb.com/stats.html[/url]), roughly 1 out of 3 CDs will not be recognized. Reviewers and customers will quickly notice this and be unhappy. They will not have the same attitude as the enthusiasts who test the beta and converse in this forum.
It may be that an important J River goal is to develop a commercial alternative to CDDB, and the company is willing to sacrifice some MC9 convenience and therefore popularity to achieve this. I do not mean this as a negative comment - it's a business decision that might well make sense.
But as an MC user, I sure would like to see freedb as a supported alternative, at least until yadb catches up. (Yes, there's a "catch 22" in there, but perhaps there could be some incentive offered to those who contribute to yadb.)
js