Short & sweet to help out future Googlers. Trying to use abcde I got the error:

[WARNING] something went wrong while querying the CD... Maybe a DATA CD or the CD is not loaded?
[WARNING] Error trying to calculate disc ids without lead-out information.

Google found me this StackOverflow article which ultimately ended with the OP having a faulty drive, but courtesy of a well-written question I got this snippet to try:

cd-info /dev/sr0

which gave me

cd-info version 2.0.0 x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
Copyright (c) 2003-2005, 2007-2008, 2011-2015, 2017 R. Bernstein
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
++ WARN: open (/dev/sr0): Permission denied
++ WARN: could not open input stream...
cd-info: Error in automatically selecting driver for input /dev/sr0.

So it was a permissions error for me, fixed by adding my userid to the cdrom group thus:

sudo usermod -a -G cdrom rmoff

After logging out and back in again, cd-info worked:

cd-info /dev/sr0
cd-info version 2.0.0 x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
Copyright (c) 2003-2005, 2007-2008, 2011-2015, 2017 R. Bernstein
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
CD location   : /dev/sr0
CD driver name: GNU/Linux
   access mode: IOCTL

Vendor                      : TSSTcorp
Model                       : CDDVDW SH-224FB
[…]

as did abcde:

No default output type defined. Autoselecting vorbis...
Executing customizable pre-read function... done.
[…]

I could have fiddled around with usermod and groups and stuff like that, but chmod was quicker & as effective on my simple home server. YOLO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯