I have all my CDs copied to MP3 files on one of my servers - go to MP3.com to get a copy of MusicMatch. When you record the CD, it will get the information from CDDB (I presume this is CDDB.com - similar to IMDB for movies?).

Also, I have investigated activeX control EzID3.OCX (from download.com - I think). This will read the header information from MP3 files.

This won't quite work with CDs from 'Various Artists' as the artist will contain 'Various Artists' on all tracks.

Should get through quite a few of them. Alternatively, your friend could buy a sizeable drive (I have about 2,500 tracks on about 12Gb) and copy all CDs to hard drive and install WinAmp to play them. Could even then have a database with an app to link to the file and play it?