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iTMS Artwork?

AppleMatt

AppleMatt

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 17, 2003
1,787
33
UK
I bought my first few songs from the iTMS today, everything went smoothly and I was impressed. Then I clicked the album art on the songs I downloaded...wow :eek:. It's massive and crystal clear. At this point I'm very impressed.

But there's no way I'm paying to download songs that I already own on CD's just for the better artwork. What do people think to starting a "public library" of iTMS artwork? Apple of course block taking artwork from the iTMS previews...I'm not sure why. Amazon's artwork is terrible, and allmusicguide etc is sporadic, usually not filling the artwork box. Personally I think it's a great idea, everyone helping everyone else out. But then I would! We could just have it hosted on a random free site, or, post songs you've got from iTMS and where you've uploaded the artwork. I prefer the first idea, because then anyone can access it.

So...what does everyone think?

AppleMatt
I'll probably post this idea over at SpyMac in the next few days aswell, if I can fathom how to work their forums...there's millions of them! :eek:
 
Are amazon's images really that bad? They're a couple of inches square, much larger than the preview window needs to be... They've always been more than sufficient for me. What types of uses would you need them larger/more resolution? Can you preview them "full-size", or use them for printing?

paul
 
It sounds like a good idea, but I am sure Apple legal will have something to say. If they have actively blocked downloading art from the previews, then they have some awareness of the apps that take from the amazon site, etc.

1 million songs would require a decent server and bandwidth. So as much as I wish it would happen, I doubt its feasible as a freebie kind of thing.

But its a great idea. Maybe someone can think outside the box and come up with a solution that works.
 
if you like apple's so much just take screen shots of the albums. personally for me amazons are more than enough, if not as big or bigger than apple's in many cases.

iJon
 
It would just be really cool if you dragged a art cover from Amazon over to song and it synced with all the songs on that album. Not necessary because I can do it 10 times for every song on the album, but it would be nifty. :)
 
there are a bunch of good apps on versiontracker that will go find them for you and copy them for every song in your entire library. they work good if you have your music tagged properly.

iJon
 
Dr. Dastardly said:
It would just be really cool if you dragged a art cover from Amazon over to song and it synced with all the songs on that album. Not necessary because I can do it 10 times for every song on the album, but it would be nifty. :)
Click to expand...
If you select all the album's songs, you can drag the artwork once, and it will be copied to all the selected songs.
 
paulwhannel said:
Are amazon's images really that bad? They're a couple of inches square, much larger than the preview window needs to be... They've always been more than sufficient for me. What types of uses would you need them larger/more resolution? Can you preview them "full-size", or use them for printing?
Click to expand...

The majority, say 85%, of Amazons are ok. The thing is, if you spend a lot of time with them you'll realise the contrast is often off, the size is odd (eg 297 x 300) meaning you get "bands" in the artwork box, they're often poorly compressed, as they're scans they have the sticky labels on them. Some don't even exist. I mean they suffice, but then having Apple stuff is about that slightly higher quality level :) (which no doubt is why the iTMS's are so good)

I admit, I am a neat-freak with my library, I like every song titled, albumed, track numbered etc etc.

seamuskrat said:
1 million songs would require a decent server and bandwidth. So as much as I wish it would happen, I doubt its feasible as a freebie kind of thing.
Click to expand...

That's a very good point. I suppose however that the number of people who participate will be a tiny fraction of the total downloaders, and hopefully the more popular tracks would be uploaded. Also, you only need to download artwork once, so if people who use it only download once that'll help. There's no way I want this as a pay-service, I want it a totally free community project. It's the Apple way!

seamuskrat said:
But its a great idea. Maybe someone can think outside the box and come up with a solution that works.
Click to expand...

Thanks :) That's why I posted this thread, if we can get just one or two people enthusiastic about this we can pull it off no probs.

iJon said:
if you like apple's so much just take screen shots of the albums. personally for me amazons are more than enough, if not as big or bigger than apple's in many cases.
Click to expand...

??? No, Apple's previews are tiny, which is exactly why I posted this thread. Also, if you spend ages lining up a screen-grab 1) you've wasted a lot of time and 2) you'll find the majority will have a grey boarder, and they'll be tiny.
I've only found a couple of Amazons images to be really big, but never as big as Apple's. The quality difference is the main thing though, amazons are terrible.


I think it's already clear there will be two camps with this, those who would really appreciate the availability and those who couldn't care less. I hope this thread gains a little more momentum and some people post some ideas, even if it's just a list of songs they'd be willing to drag the artwork from.

AppleMatt
 
Update,

Well although only a couple of people expressed interest, I carried on working on it anyway.

So far I've managed to find a way to extract artwork from about 50% of the songs put on the iTMS (directly from the previews, not any of this scree-grabbing rubbish, which incidentally is impossible after iTunes 4.1). This is...ok. The problem is that new songs that are being added don't have the artwork included in the previews, so aside from buying those I haven't got over that yet. As I said before, I buy the majority of my music on CD's so don't really wanna buy songs for the artwork!

I've got around 100 albums saved, a small amount yes but I've only been sporadically getting what I want. When it reaches a descent size I'll put the lot online, see what reception it gets.

If anyone thinks they can help, or benefit, with/from this shoot me a PM (even if it's just a one-time offer to donate artwork from your purchased/free songs).

AppleMatt
 
I do hope you're doing the "click for larger image" thing before dragging over the album art from Amazon. For me, this works reasonably well from Amazon more than half the time, and often Yahoo has what Amazon doesn't, or a better image for the more obscure stuff.

A Google image search will sometimes also find album cover pics on fansites and such, for albums Amazon and Yahoo don't have.

I've just gotten my color printer, one of the ones which prints on CDs, so it's become a bit more important to me that my entire library have album artwork. Some of the stuff has just been bloody impossible to find, though.

For example: can anyone send me a decent .jpg of the cover for Pigface's first United Tour? *argh*
 
Yes, the album cover for iTMS track is huge 1MB @ 600x600. But when you view the cover for each individual tracks, you're only looking at 115x115. Amazon's album covers, large, are 40KB @ 300x300. When shrunk to 115x115, you can't tell the difference between Amazon and iTMS covers. But that's just me.
 
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