Automatically retrieve Music Album Cover for MP3s

[sCAPe]

hi guys,

i had the idea, when listening music to display the album cover from the currently playing artist/song automatically! this makes sense when you do not have a folder.jpg cover in the specified folder or especially when you have a own folder with different artists and/or songs from different albums!! :cool:
i have so many folders on my pc where i just copy the best music i like. surely, the mp3s in this folder are from different artists/albums, so i cannot just create a folder.jpg for this special folders, where all the music is mixed into.

so, xbmc would look in id3 for artist/album tag and automatically retrieve the album cover for each song from allmusic.com or amazon.com !

so, when switching from song to song xbmc would automatically retrieve the album cover for id3 tags (artist/album) from the internet. if the album tag in id3 is not set, then xbmc would display just the default album cover (pm iii).

i know for the pc there is a plugin (widget) for the konfabulator desktop modding. when in winamp it shows the album cover from the currently playing artist/song. it also works for streaming internet radio (shoutcast).

see here: http://www2.konfabulator.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8323

and there is also a plugin for winamp called "winamp cd case".
look here: http://www.closetosoftware.com/wcc.html
forum: http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=24294

first: xbmc would check if a folder.jpg exists. if it exists, it would be displayed!
second: if a folder.jpg does not exist, then it would retrieve the album cover from the internet.

i think for xbmc we would just need the artist id3 tag and album id3 tag. then just retrieve for artist/album the correct cover from allmusic.com and/or amazon.com !

for the future this could also be implemented for streaming internet radio stations. but i don't know if the radio stations are sending the album id3 tag. i think, they send only artist/songtitle id3 tag.. but that would be just an option to be added later..

first, it would be really cool if xbmc could retrieve the album cover automatically from the internet! :cool:

what do the devs think about it?

cheers,
scape

[Djsnake]

i would like that xbmc will recognize the cover.jpg inside the folder of the album i'm playin' and will display it in milkdrop.

[Loto_Bak]

insted of relying on xbmc to make up for your tagging issues why not tag your songs properly in the first place.

id3 tags support embedded images. when you embed these images inside an mp3 file they are assigned as the album art when played/viewed by xbmc.

for more information on properly tagging your music (and a small tutorial on tagging program called tag&rename) visit this link
http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/wakka.p....2&v=wqt (http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/wakka.php?wakka=prepdatabasemymusichomemenugeneral v2&v=wqt)

djsnake
milkdrop never has displayed album art. it really has nothing to do with album art. if the song as an image assosiated with it is displayed along with the title/track/album/artist info at the bottom of the screen. this song info bar is triggerable with the 'black' button

[sCAPe]

@loto:
thanks for your tip with the correct tagging using tag&rename.
but i already tagged my music albums correctly with "the godfather" program! that is not the point.

the main problem is when having a folder with different artists/songs from different albums! i don't mean various artists/samplers or soundtracks! i mean manually created folders.

my example:
i have created a folder c:\music\my personal hip hop collection
in this folder i manually copy my favourite mp3 songs from different artists and thus from different albums!!

now, for this special folder i cannot search amazon.com for an album art, because this album does not exist anywhere. it doesn't exist, because i manually made my personal compilation in this folder.

now, the idea was that xbmc could display for each song the correct album art by reading artist and album tag from id3 and do a lookup on amazon.com. this would be working, as i correctly tagged my music with this tags.

begin of example:
folder: c:\music\my personal hip hop collection
track 1: 50 cent - in da club.mp3

this track has the following tags in id3 stored:
artist: 50 cent
songtitle: in da club
album: get rich or die trying

now, xbmc would do an lookup on amazon.com for artist tag: 50 cent and for album tag: get rich or die trying.
xbmc would find the correct album art from amazon.com (50 cent - get rich or die trying) and would display this album cover just for this track.

now after this track has played, the next track gets played:

folder: c:\music\my personal hip hop collection
track 2: redman - rock da spot.mp3

this track has the following tags in id3 stored:
artist: redman
songtitle: rock da spot
album: muddy waters

now, xbmc would do an lookup on amazon.com for artist tag: redman and for album tag: muddy waters.
xbmc would find the correct album art from amazon.com (redman - muddy waters) and would display this album cover just for this track.

now after this track has played, the next track gets played, and so on.....

end of example

hope, you understand now what i mean. ;)

updating every single mp3 file in an huge music archive is a never ending story! especially, when you only have very many music singles and not complete albums.
i understand that it is easy for music albums, because you can just do a search for this music album and place a folder.jpg in the folder or just implement the album cover in the id3 tag in each mp3 file for this album.

but if you have very many music singles, how do you want to do a lookup for each music single and save the album art in each id3 tag for each music single? you were busy for years..

so i thought an automated lookup of xbmc would be very handy for a lot of users. :nod:

i am sure other users would find this feature also very useful. an option in settings screen to turn on/off this feature could be implemented.

also, when listening to internet radio stations (streaming) this could be very cool!
xbmc could do an automated lookup on amazon.com and display the correct album art for the currently playing song which is currently played by the internet radio station.

cheers,
scape