Suddenly the portable Hard Drive shows up & titles for Itunes also, w/internet

[LongTimeMacUser]

We've had a Verbatim Portable hard drive for over a year. It never ever showed up on our desktop when plugged in.

Recently got connected to internet and today, I plug in Verbatim hard drive and it's actually showing up!
Also, with our Itunes, the artist, song, and album NEVER showed up either when downloading a CD into our Itunes lately.
Same thing, the artist, song & album is FINALLY showing up and we don't have to put it in ourselves by hand no more.
WHY is that happening, is my question? I don't understand why a sudden internet connection would affect these devices or software.

[chas_m]

I can't explain the Verbatim, but the iTunes song information is dependent on the internet, so that is why that is showing up now that you have an internet connection.

Contrary to popular belief, the song titles and such are NOT encoded into an Audio CD; instead, iTunes has to reach out over the net to the CDDB (aka Gracenote) and identify the disc via its unique identifier. This then supplies the artist, title, songs etc.