Any cover art aficionado ?

grunthos

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Its a long shot, but with so many musically inclined people around - any cover art aficionados around ?
More specifically, people interested in hindi cover art ?

There is enough material for english music on the net - google usually suffices. But hindi is a different story altogether. Newer ones are easier to find but older ones are well nigh impossible ....

PS - Those wondering what cover art is - its the cover or sleeve of an audio CD. You can attach the tag to an mp3 or flac file and it displays everytime you play it. More useful in Windows Media Centre or a iPhone/ipod Touch ...
 
Not in particular just album art but I am a stickler for tagging all albums properly when it comes to my FLAC rips. I extensively use Tag&Rename to tag all album information including the reviews and this also includes the covers and all other scans of the albums. For those that I cannot find on the net I will use the scanner at home, but like you said Google does have most of everything.
 
I manually tag my files with mp3tag since the autolookup feature is usually not reliable
But is Tag&Rename more accurate in looking up data ?

And I am happy to have find just the front covers for all my songs - no luck on that yet :)
 
its nice to scroll through the collection in foobar coverflow...(check the top right window shown in pic fooAvA 1.05 by ~dawxxx666 on deviantART)

for hindi albums i use google images

The coverflow does look rather good - I should try out some skins I suppose

But meanwhile, has anyone found a source of decent sized hindi album covers other than amazon/emusic ? (I have already mined both of them :) )
Google images are usually too small to use ..
 
I manually tag my files with mp3tag since the autolookup feature is usually not reliable
But is Tag&Rename more accurate in looking up data ?

And I am happy to have find just the front covers for all my songs - no luck on that yet :)

Tag&Rename is the boss and checks all Amazon portals, also checks Tracktype. It also tags and review of the album and saves it as a TXT file too should you want. The best part is that it's the easiest to use. Only cons are that it costs (is not freeware) and does only the front cover.

MediaMonkey will do both front and back covers, but not that easy to use but is free and also as a media player is not all that great.

MusicBrainz is another option, but not that easy to use and not that detailed.

GraceNote was a very good option previously but now has been bought over and not accessible anymore.

Allmusic is an excellent site for all music related data, but not open to any 3rd party tools like Tag&Rename or Mp3Tag so its basically useless too.

FreeDB is okay but limited too.

Well there are lots more options but these are the best yet at least for my kind of music which is primarily English. Sorry not much help about Hindi album covers though.
 
Its a long shot, but with so many musically inclined people around - any cover art aficionados around ?
More specifically, people interested in hindi cover art ?

There is enough material for english music on the net - google usually suffices. But hindi is a different story altogether. Newer ones are easier to find but older ones are well nigh impossible ....

PS - Those wondering what cover art is - its the cover or sleeve of an audio CD. You can attach the tag to an mp3 or flac file and it displays everytime you play it. More useful in Windows Media Centre or a iPhone/ipod Touch ...


Have you tried media monkey to pick up the covers from Amazon? Its simply enough to right click on the song and tag it via the web - it usually brings the cover etc. by communicating with amazon services.
 
Have you tried media monkey to pick up the covers from Amazon? Its simply enough to right click on the song and tag it via the web - it usually brings the cover etc. by communicating with amazon services.

No I havent tried media monkey yet but I have already manually mined through Amazon and emusic (they have much better resolution covers) for hindi album art. They work if the music you are looking for is only 2-3 years old. Older than that, you have no sources
For ex, try finding original album art for Roja or Bombay and you will understand

I have put up my meager collection online so that I can save people the pain of looking them up - however I am always looking for more ...
Picasa Web Albums - Pradosh

Another source that I found for older hindi LP covers (which work pretty well as album art) is Picasa Web Albums - karen
 
MediaMonkey kicks ass. I use it for tagging my music with lyrics, cover art and other stuff. User scripts abound on their forums.

On a related note, Sleeveface.com is neat.
 
Interesting thread. Although I am not too much into cover art per se, I do love tagging and at one point had 30 GB worth music tagged for the most part. Since then, my collection has grown and time has dwindled. So, not much tagging going on now.

For the cover art aficionados though I have a music player recommendation -

Soundbase, a small album player

It is supposed to do a good job with the actual album art. There is another interesting player too on the same lines.

Jajuk Advanced Jukebox - Official Site - Jajuk

Both are jukeboxes and have convenient management and control options. Moser - yeah these might be down your alley except that I dont think they offer ASIO out:)

You might have to check out Musicbee.
 
I've played around with MusicBee pretty decent. In terms of media management though MediaMonkey is way ahead of the pack. Just that it sounds bad (as do the others) in comparison to cPlay (damn wish I had never heard cPlay!, now I just cannot listen to anything else).

However none of them come close to Tag&Rename when it comes to identifying and tagging entire albums. I use it extensively and for everything from cover art to album reviews and it does the best job. Once you get used to Tag&Rename there is no turning back.

PS - Will check the other players you've listed.

Interesting thread. Although I am not too much into cover art per se, I do love tagging and at one point had 30 GB worth music tagged for the most part. Since then, my collection has grown and time has dwindled. So, not much tagging going on now.

For the cover art aficionados though I have a music player recommendation -

Soundbase, a small album player

It is supposed to do a good job with the actual album art. There is another interesting player too on the same lines.

Jajuk Advanced Jukebox - Official Site - Jajuk

Both are jukeboxes and have convenient management and control options. Moser - yeah these might be down your alley except that I dont think they offer ASIO out:)

You might have to check out Musicbee.
 
I've played around with MusicBee pretty decent. In terms of media management though MediaMonkey is way ahead of the pack. Just that it sounds bad (as do the others) in comparison to cPlay (damn wish I had never heard cPlay!, now I just cannot listen to anything else).

However none of them come close to Tag&Rename when it comes to identifying and tagging entire albums. I use it extensively and for everything from cover art to album reviews and it does the best job. Once you get used to Tag&Rename there is no turning back.

PS - Will check the other players you've listed.

Moser - the latest version of Musicbee is quite decent in terms of offering functionality for music management. Any particular feature that you miss on this player? This is one of the few 'music management' type of players offering ASIO support implemented well.

Of course Mediamonkey too counts among those few and naturally is a mature product as it has been around for many seasons. But I see very good promise with Musicbee. Look forward to your trials with the other players.

Just dont expect great sound quality. :)
 
For excellent sound that won't break the bank, the 5 Star Award Winning Wharfedale Diamond 12.1 Bookshelf Speakers is the one to consider!
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