artExamples

Take a look at the amazing quality! Here are a few examples. Click the cover for the full-sized version.

  • Terrene – The Indifferent Universe
  • Mute Math - Mute Math
  • Mute Math - Mute Math
Lets get arty!

9.26.07: It appears Apple has blocked this again :( Querying the store still works, but if you try to download the art (no matter jpg or TIF) you get an error. This for the same albums that worked an hour or two ago. Thanks a lot Apple!

It was also some really bad timing as I was *this* close to launching a new version of the site complete with the ability to query other sites (such as Buy.com, Amazon, Walmart) in addition to iTunes. I might still launch that (I mean, I did kinda buy the domain already..) but it'll be kinda 'bleh' without iTunes art :( If anybody can figure out a way to bypass this, please please send me an email at joshpowell@gmail.com. Thanks!

Artist    Album   

How to:
It's really simple =) Just type in both the arist and album you want, hit find, and you're off! (if you can't find the album this way, use this alternate method.) This script will query the iTunes store and search for the album you specified then give a thumbnail and link to a full sized version of the art. You can use the grabber with any media player that supports coverart. Now you have no excuse for you're media collection not to be dressed up :)

Why?
» Extremely high quality -- up to 1425x1425px and above!
» Fast! Just type in the album name or artist, and you're off.
» Free! You'll never have to pay for an album art grabbing program again.
» Its easy! Just type in the album, how much easier can it get?

This site useful to you?

I've been featured on CNET's Crave, Digg, TUAW, Lifehacker, UNEASYsilence and countless other smaller sites. =) Over 120,000 album covers served and counting! Thank you all!

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9.8.07: This works again. After quite a bit of playing around I discovered (thanks Isolder for the tip!) that it looks like Apple has put unencrypted artwork back online, though they still give the ecnrypted URL... all it takes is a little bit of URL modification and voilà, it works again. And the best news, this new unencrypted artwork is at a whopping 1425x1425 resolution! An example.

Now for some bad news, not all artwork on the store seems to be availible (though a lot of it is, mostly recent releases) -- you'll get some 404s, and not all of it that is availible is at 1425x1425 (some are still at 600x600, and others at rather random resolutions such as 620x620, 750x750, 900,900, 1500x1500 etc). Anyhow, I hope you you all enjoy this and it proves useful to a few of you. And thank you Apple for putting your unencrypted artwork back online, and I ask you kindly to leave it that way if possible =)

9.9.07: I also updated the alternate method, that is, the iTunes store URL method. You can find that here. This is useful if for some reason your album is on iTunes but this script can't find the artwork, OR, if you're trying to get artwork for albums that are only up for pre-order.

9.10.07: Hello Digg!

To clarify some things, YES, you need to type the album and the artist to get any results. This is the only input Apple's page accepts.

Yes, not all album artwork is availible at the high resolution. I've said this above. I'm sorry... nothing I can do about this. I can only take what Apple gives me. Beleive me I'd change it if I could =) If anybody comes up with a way to get the artwork for URLs that currently return a 404 please do let me know. joshpowell@gmail.com

Lastly, this, at it's current state, isn't meant to be your primary source of finding album art, as it just doesn't have a large enough percentage of the iTunes store. BUT, it IS a great place to possibly find artwork that is at a high enough resolution to not look like total shite when printed, etc.

9.11.07: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Mike! I just received a tip via email on how to get the artwork for those that return 404s. You change .jpg to .tif! I've updated the script to give you a .tif link in addition to the .jpg link. It looks like it's only one or the other. I've gotten the .tif on all of the ones I've tried so far that previously gave 404s. Yay! A breif warning though, the tif artwork is on average 1MB an image. I'd recomend re-saving it as jpeg before embedding it in your music. (I'm not sure if iTunes lets you embed tif anyway.. haven't tried it.)

Also, the gzinflate error should be fixed now. The script SHOULD detect when the gzinfalte function fails and will turn it off. It's kinda hackish but has worked fine for me. :)