CoverScout 2.3
equinux
Price: $19.99 (volume licensing available)
Pros: Fully compatible with iTunes 7.x, ability to use iSight to capture images, easily scan your entire music library.
Cons: Inconsistent interface for search methods, cost.
by Michael Sanders, 1st Lt, USAF
With the iPod being the most popular Personal Music Player on the planet, it shouldn't surprise anyone that iTunes gets a lot of use. Last fall, when Apple announced that cover-flow would be integrated, and that users would be able to download high-resolution cover-art for all of their albums the masses cheered - because who doesn't like pretty pictures? Add to that the fact that iTunes is now the fourth largest music retailer and you have an application that is going to get a lot of attention.
equinux is a Mac software developer who is paying attention and has developed a little application that helps you with a problem you didn't even know you had. iTunes technically does allow you to download album artwork, but only if it can find your song/album in the iTunes Music Store. So, what do you do if your album/song isn't in the store? You have to go out on the intarweb and search for images, download them, and copy them over to iTunes. Hopefully you selected all the songs for that particular album, or you have to repeat that process for each track. CoverScout is a smart application that does most of the heavy lifting for you by searching, finding, and applying your missing covers to your iTunes library.
Installation is drag and drop easy, and they go so-far as to include an alias to your application folder in the .dmg file. This little timesaver earns Equinux bonus points right off the bat - it's like going to wash your hands in a public restroom and finding out they use the foamy soap bonus!
When you start the program it loads your iTunes library; on my iMac G5 this took about 20 seconds (3350 songs). The view you are presented with has your albums on the left and the individual songs on the right; the album artwork, or lack-thereof is displayed at the bottom of the window. Overall the layout is intuitive and makes getting started easy. I had to manually reload my iTunes library before CoverScout accurately read the album-art data associated with my songs this took approx ten minutes. After that it appeared as though CoverScout had done a better job of detecting what was up in my library.
CoverScout alerts you to a relatively new decision Apple made with iTunes, which is to save the artwork separately from the song file. Which is great for the iTunes/iPod ecosystem, but does nothing for you if you ever want to take your music (with artwork) to another platform. The icon that CoverScout uses to indicate that your artwork is stored externally to the song (not in the ID3 tag), makes me feel as though the iTunes method is somehow not right... The grey triangle with an exclamation point looks more like a warning that something is wrong than a helpful indicator informing you where your artwork is stored. CoverScout does not give you the option to use the new artwork database, it operates on the premise that there is life after iTunes for your music. This decision has no real negative impact aside from swelling your iTunes library slightly. The image data will be stored both in the ID3 data for each file and the cover-flow database.
CoverScout allows you to use the two most popular methods for manually obtaining artwork, Amazon and the Google. The way CoverScout implements searches is different depending on which site you want to use. Searches conducted using Amazon appear more integrated into the overall flow of the application, with search results appearing in place of existing artwork (or lack-thereof) at the bottom of the window. Searches via the Google are displayed via a modal window that rolls out from the application toolbar, and requires input from you before you even get to a downloadable image. The two different interfaces strike me as a bit odd and the extra steps required when using the Google seem unnecessary, but in the end it works. If Amazon doesn't find a suitable image... the Google usually will.
Still, CoverScout, with its redundant search methods, is at best an 80% solution and the people at Equinux realize this. One of the coolest features is CoverScout's ability to utilize an iSight camera. For those über-rare B-sides you just can't find an image of online, you can just capture the actual album. While not everyone will use this feature, it's inclusion, demonstrates attention to detail and a willingness to listen to their customers.
CoverScout allows you to select many albums in your library and do a one-click album cover search on Amazon. Once you have preselected one album in each search you can apply them all instantly to your iTunes library. CoverScout can also automatically apply covers to your iTunes library, without you having to manually do it. So... Search all your albums, come back later and the job should be done. The only risk being that you may not always get what you expect. When browsing through the different searches, you can place your favorite covers in the clipboard. This will give you a clear view of your (sometimes many) choices and you'll be able to use them later. CoverScout's built-in cover editor even lets you resize, crop and rotate your cover images to adjust them to meet your needs.
CoverScout is a clean good-looking piece of software, that simplifies the process of finding artwork for your music. It won't help you clean your gun or plan a mission, but when your stuck on guard duty and all you have is your iPod (or if your lucky your MacBook) it sure would be nice have some pretty album artwork to peep. However, with so many free alternatives, to include the one built into iTunes, it is hard to justify the price-tag. especially for a piece of software you will use so infrequently.
System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
* iTunes 6.0.2 or later