Official iTunes Album Art Distribution?

[AppleMatt]

What I would really like in iTunes is when ripping a CD, once it has looked up the CDDB, it then retrieves Album Art from the iTunes Music Store (if it exists).

However I don't know whether Apple will include this in an update, so...

What do people think to having a site somewhere with just iTunes album art from songs bought, ie, Joe bought eminem album, gets the official artwork from it and uploads it to the site, and also can download Coldplays art someone else uploaded (because he already has the cd and doesn't want to buy music just for artwork).

The main reason for this is that Amazon's and allmusics artwork is poor quality.

I'm sure there will be very mixed views on this idea.

(I'd also really like a preference to have artwork stored in the music folder and iTunes dynamically link it to the music, therefore not duplicating data and more importantly not wasting space on my iPod )

 

[Foxer]

The album artwork feature is my one major dissappointment with Itunes4. 95% of my itunes usage is listening to my library with the random button selected. However, as a new song starts, the album artwork is not changed. This seems to me to be counter-intuitve. I speant a couple hours downloading the artwork for my favees from amazon and band websites, and it turns out to have been a big waste of time.

If this aspect of iTunes were fixed, I'd be all for some sort of central repository.

 

[dynamicd]

Hmm....i don't know why your album art isn't showing up when you hit shuffle. Mine shows up fine. When you want to add art, try highlighting the songs from the album you want, go to get info in file, and then drag the artwork that you want into the little box for artwork. Now, the album art should show up everytime the song is played.

 

[buseman]

click on the little tab over the cover image to make the picture update to the currently playing song.

 

[iAlan]

you can display artwork either for the selected song or the song currently playing...just click the bar along the top of the artwork frame

as for scanning artwork into iTunes...I reize the artwork to 400x400 in PE...what dimensions are the original artwork with purchased songs (can't buy music in Japan...YET!)

also love the artwork being displayed in the botom left corner when visualizations are on

 

[Foxer]

Well, I feel like something of an idiot. I guess I should have known that Apple wouldn't create such a feature and then not utilize it.

I'll have to seee if it works when I get home.