great resource to get 600x600 album art

[urlwolf]

If you want to have the best quality album art, and don't want to be tied to iTunes, here is the solution to your troubles:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=56815&st=25&gopid=514412&#entry514412

I'm downloading covers now, and it works great.
PS: iTunes is quite a memory hog!

[Lashiec]

Hmmm, where? Maybe I'm a bit dense now, but I can't find the program. Do you need iTunes to work? If Walmart had a bigger selection of albums, I wouldn't have problems to find some elusive ones. Maybe it's time to download the source files for those cover sites, and then have XnView resize them to a normal resolution.

And those memory figures?? You really have no luck with memory usage of audio players, first foobar, now iTunes...

[urlwolf]

Not iTunes alone, you need this tool to extract the images from the fangs of itunes and save it as normal folder.jpg files:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=51708&view=findpost&p=513652

But, the tool is buggy as hell. Not sure if it's worth it...

[Lashiec]

Since I'm not touching iTunes not even with a 10 foot pole, I think I'll pass...

BTW, there were some other apps (at least two) for downloading covers, but I think they involved the usual resources, Amazon and such, being the one with the best quality Walmart, at 500x500 px). Never tried them, as Mp3tag does the same, but if someone fancies them, it's an easy find.

[edbro]

Check this new search engine out. It looks on several sites for covers up to 1425x1425.
http://www.albumartwork.org/

[Nighted]

http://www.freecovers.net/

[urlwolf]

Actually, the most automatic resource (if not the most accurate/high quality) is this tool:

mp3toys.net

And a very good player in itself.
I did most of my collection with the ITunes hack described above, and then I'm running mp3toys to find what's left.

edbro, NOTE:

UPDATE: The iTunes art grabber doesn't work now. Apple has blocked the full-sized artwork for 99% of the store. (only thumbnails are still availible) Feel free to search the other sources though.

ITsfv does work right now. Hurry up if you want large covers.

[Nod5]

Urlwolf, this looks interesting! Do you have time to explain a bit more? What do I need to install to get this to work? Do I need Itunes and then import all music into it before I can download the cover images? If so, then is there risk that installing Itunes will screw up the tags in my mp3 files? Is the process completely automatic once it is set up properly?

[urlwolf]

yes, yes, and yes.


You need to install itunes, make it eat your library, and risk that it may change some of your tags. then you can use ITsfv.

It may be worth it, but do keep a backup...

[Nod5]

Thanks. When I have time to try this I'll probably make a duplicate of the music folder but with only one file per album subfolder and then let Itunes do its thing on that.