iTunes 4.8 fiddles with file names on iPods

Gracenote has nothing to do with this. There are 2 ways to reconstruct a good filename if you want to take the file off the iPod - reconstruct it from ID3 stored in the file or reconstruct it from the data found in iTunes database, found on the iPod. A good program to extract mp3s out of iPod (legally - you already own the mp3s!!! it's your data, you can do whatever you want with it) is ephPod ( http://www.ephpod.com/ ). It also works with iTunes 4.7.1 database format (I assume that it wasn't changed in version 4.8).

IIRC, Gracenote works by comparing the length of all the tracks on any given CD to its database. Generally, there's only one CD title that fits the times.

There hasn't been any mention yet of metadata being changed (presumably the ipod will still tell you what track is playing), so database lookups should still work. You've always been able to name you're files whatever you want. The motive here is certainly suspect, though. I'll believe it will run a little faster. Since they can guarantee unique keys, they can hash the filenames somewhere. But it doesn't seem like there will probably be enough of a boost to be worth the effort. It is, though, going to make it a lot harder to figure out what's what on the iPod. In order to figure out which song corresponds to which file, you'll have to compare the filename to the hashed track titles, wherever they're stored.

Is it meant to make the iPod a little faster or to make file sharing with your iPod a little harder? If the file name is obscured, can the Gracenote database pull up the song information from a file pulled from an iPod?