iOS iTunes Artwork at Full Resolution

[xArtx]

Hi Guys,
I had an idea that involves an app knowing if a music item was purchased.
I have even suggested it on the Apple forum, and the author used it.

He wanted his app to know if a particular album on the iPod library was
purchased from iTunes, or was potentially a CD rip, or pirate copy.

I suggested he have his app pull the album artwork, and look at the image size,
and the value of some random pixels, because it's unlikely that someone putting
together the album themselves would use the same cover scan,
even if they got all the track titles exactly correct.

I'm wanting to do something like this myself, but need to know if the full
resolution images are accessible (even from the Mac or Windows iTunes for desktop program).
An idea I have requires that it is very difficult o retrieve full resolution images.
I know that a programmer can get to them fairly easily with iOS.
Cheers, Art.

 

[dejo]

He wanted his app to know if a particular album on the iPod library was
purchased from iTunes, or was potentially a CD rip, or pirate copy.

I suggested he have his app pull the album artwork, and look at the image size,
and the value of some random pixels, because it's unlikely that someone putting
together the album themselves would use the same cover scan,
even if they got all the track titles exactly correct.

If they use iTunes' "Get Album Artwork" and they have certain fields set correctly, iTunes will pull down the artwork used in the iTunes Store. What about checking the "Kind" field of a track? I believe it will signify if it was purchased or not.

 

[xArtx]

If they use iTunes' "Get Album Artwork" and they have certain fields set correctly, iTunes will pull down the artwork used in the iTunes Store. What about checking the "Kind" field of a track? I believe it will signify if it was purchased or not.

There is a purchased property documented for Mac OS,
Didn't know about a property called "Kind",
That would be good, I'll have a look, cheers.

 

[xArtx]

I think it's a bit too much for them actually...

Basically Android provides for a distribution system where a library,
or some data in one app can be shared with other apps on the device
which iOS doesn't provide for.

One way to go about this would be to dump data into an artwork image and
then sell some track that goes with it in iTunes.


(the data in this image isn't valid)

Then any program can check that the track was purchased,
and then access licensed data.

Although I'm confident it would work, I don't think it's going to.
Just a bit too far out there I think...

There is a company able to license ROMs for an emulator, and are doing so
in the Android market, but have not found a way to regulate distribution with iOS.
Fortunately for me, there is an open source alternative ROM that can load a lot of games,
and I chose one of them initially.