CNET Editors' review
In spite of its all-business design and rather slim feature set, this utility for retrieving album cover art from the Web demostrates largely reliable performance. Cover Art Downloader's ho-hum interface is no more exciting than its name, with a large queue for loading up MP3s and another pane for selecting album art. Operating the program is simple: you just open a folder containing MP3s, select files, and press the Find Cover button. The application then will quickly generate a list of albums from the artist in question and let you scroll through them to find the right one. If you've never seen the album cover in person, you can resize the picture to get a better view. After you've found the right art, you can choose to resize it and automatically save it to the same location as your audio file. In our tests, Cover Art Downloader located art for the lion's share of the MP3s we threw its way, although it choked on a couple of obscure records in our collection. Still, we would like to see a few extra features, such as support for audio formats beyond MP3. An integrated player also would be a nice touch. Nevertheless, anyone who wants to add some visual flair to their digital music collections will find this application useful.Publisher's Description
From White Bolt Software:
Download album-cover art based on the ID3 tags of artist and album names in your MP3s. Import right into the ID3 tag from an online database. Customize the size of any cover on both locally saved and ID3-tag pictures and save the images directly to your hard drive with whatever names you want. The program supports bulk saving. Click a picture box to see the full image in its original size, detect corrupted tags and audio-sync headers to fix them, and search for subdirectory options.
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All versions:
1.9 starsout of 13 votes
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Current version:
1.9 starsout of 13 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"doesnt do anything"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
i like the preview windows of old & new
Cons
will not access most of the existing tags, cannot write to any of my files even though all tags were done in windows explorer
1 folder at a time, 1 song at a time. useless. I cant even tag an entire album at once.Summary
garbage, dont waste your time
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"Have to manually pick one folder at a time?"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
Finds cover art
Cons
You have to pick each album individually... ***.
Summary
I have thousands of albums. What good is this software? No good at all. I'm on to search for the next. I recommend the developer add recursive search through subdirectories.
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"I can't see a purpose to it"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
I'm sure it works, thoguh I stopped at the "Select Files..." stage
Cons
Can only pick one directory to search, doesnt look through subdirectories. It's not as usable as the itunes covert art importer, and that's what I was hoping it would replace
Summary
iTunes organises a various artists album of 40 tracks into 40 different folders. Putting cover art in them all using this utility would hence take approximately 40 times longer than the proces in itunes which is:
Switch to album view
Click album
Find image on web using web browser
Copy image
Paste into artwork area in itunes
40 tracks are updated
The creators of this software need to take a look at the functionality it offers; it's superceded by most media library aware music players -
"It Simply Sucks!"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
Absolutely None!
Cons
Everything!
Summary
Use CD Art Display
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"No Longer works here either!"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
Sounded like a good idea,add album art. That would be great when playing music on my laptop at a party!
Cons
Error Message that shows up is this:
An error was encountered while attempting to download images from Amazon.
Error:The request failed with HTTP status 410: Gone.Summary
Program simply does not work anymore. I'm going to try the search on Yahoo as recommended before me.
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"No longer works"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
Would be very nice if it worked.
Cons
It doesn't work because it uses only one service to grab cover art from and it seems that the service at Amazon doesn't exist anymore. So, the program can no longer search for the cover art and it just doesn't work.
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"No Longer Works?"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Cons
Could no longer find any art at all.
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"Does what it says on the tin!"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
I like the way it just did it! No messing - easy to understand.
Cons
I didn't like the fact that it referred me to the installation folder for the help file and it wasn't there. Hence I'm uncertain as to what some buttons do. This doesn't detract from the fact that it does what it says.
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"Doesn't work"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Cons
I installed the program succesfully, but when I open the program it stops running and gives me this error: "The application failed to initialize properly". My Windows XP is healthy.
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"Poor Customer Service!!! Do not purchase!!!"
Version: Cover Art Downloader 1.1
Pros
Software easy to use, simple. Liked the ability to choose which cover art to use, unlike Fixtunes which you cannot change easily.
Cons
Better free alternatives out there. I purchased the software and was told in 24 hours I would receive info on how to register. Eight days later, no response to 3 e-mails. Was refunded promptly when a complaint was filed with Paypal, however. Search for Album Cover Art Downloader instead on Yahoo, it's the first link. It's free and it is better.
