CoverScout 2.2

reviewed by Eddie Hargreaves, November 2006

Prior to iTunes 7, it was possible to add images to songs in your iTunes Music Library, it just wasn't easy. And equinux's CoverScout application helped make it easier. Now that automatically downloading missing album artwork is built into iTunes, equinux has had to make a few changes to CoverScout to keep it relevant and useful.

CoverScout loads your iTunes Library and determines the cover status for all your music files. It then labels each album as having complete, incomplete or missing covers. You can set the left pane list to show all albums or only those with missing or incomplete covers.

If you select an album in the left pane, CoverScout will show you the existing artwork in the bottom pane, including the size of the image in pixels. If individual tracks are missing the artwork, you can drag the existing art to those specific tracks.

Two locations can be searched for missing or replacement cover art: Amazon and Google Images. You can set the application to automatically search one of those two sites simply by double-clicking on an album and to automatically apply the art found if there is only one result and the album name matches. Most of the time this works, but it's frustrating when it doesn't work. For instance, when I tried to get art for Peter Gabriel's album Us, it found an import version with foreign language stickers and automatically applied that. Granted, you can then remove the cover with a simple right-click, but it's an unnecessary step that happened often enough to make the auto-apply feature not worthwhile.

Prior to iTunes 7, CoverScout could also pull cover art from the iTunes Music Store and apply it to your tracks. Apple has since altered the store so that is impossible. It's not a big loss, though, because it could only grab the smaller, 170x170 pixel images instead of the 600 pixel wide images.

It would seem that iTunes 7's Auto-Download Missing Album Artwork functionality would make CoverScout useless. But anyone who's actually used the iTunes functionality knows there are limitations. First, it's based on the iTunes Store's selection, which, though large, is not complete, and The Beatles are one of the obvious exceptions. Second, it can be awfully picky about how your tracks are labeled.

Unfortunately, CoverScout's searches are not reliable enough. For instance, I hit the Amazon search button on the album Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles and got zero results. Yet if I go to Amazon.com in a browser and type the same query, it immediately loads that album. Conversely, when I hit the Amazon search button on The Beatles album A Hard Day's Night, I get 9 results, none of which are the correct album. Again, typing it into Amazon.com gave me the correct album immediately.

Soundtracks and compilations are also problematic for CoverScout. I selected the soundtrack to the movie The Avengers and the only results it found via Amazon were Moulin Rouge 2, an album by the group Bond and the Japanese version of that same Bond album. Again, typing The Avengers into Amazon's search box brought up the correct result in the first page of listings.

Searching Google Images in CoverScout is different than searching via Amazon because it uses an integrated browser window instead of the artwork inspector pane on the bottom. When you find an acceptable cover in the browser window, you right-click on it and choose "Apply cover".

The integrated browser is not limited to Google Images. You can type in other URLs if Amazon and Google Images have not located the cover art you're looking for. Of course, by that point, you're basically performing the same task you would be if you hadn't purchased CoverScout.

Another change brought on by iTunes 7 is that the artwork downloaded from the Store is not stored in each individual music file, but in an Album Artwork folder outside of the iTunes Library. This is helpful for reducing file size, as an album cover is only stored once on your disk. But it also means if the file is transferred to another program, it is missing its accompanying artwork. CoverScout shows you which albums are using the proprietary iTunes 7 covers and allows you to copy them into the corresponding music file.

equinux has labeled CoverScout as "the ideal complement" to iTunes 7. And considering the flaws of Apple's solution, it has the chance to surpass it. But unless it gets smarter about its cover searching, it's going to be passed by for good reason.