CoverScout, Track Down and Brand Your Music with Album Art

The latest version of iTunes has some very nice new ways to interact with your music library in a visual way. However, they require that the music should have album art present. Apple - thoughtful as always - has given people who have an iTunes Music Store account the ability to get missing album art directly from the Music Store, making this a very easy and efficient process; the only problem with it is that you need to have an iTMS account. If you don't happen to have a credit card, or if you happen to live in a country that does not have the iTMS, you are a bit stuck and have to do things for yourself. Up to now, the little album art display in the corner of the iTunes window was not that appealing, but the album view and the cover browser are much more compelling.
One option is to do things manually by searching on Google, or even on the iTMS itself, by copy-pasting the artwork in the files themselves inside iTunes. While (without a doubt) this will get you where you want to go, carpal tunnel syndrome will be your new best friend. Ideally, you would use a third party program such as CoverScout.

What it does

CoverScout is a program that does a heavy lifting to get album art inside your music library with minimal input on your part. While not as good as the built-in option in iTunes - for those who can't access that option - it is a whole lot better than nothing. Unlike traditional programs of this sort, not only does it help you find the covers and apply them, but it will also help in finding the albums in your library that need to be worked on.

Working with it

CoverScout has a very pragmatic approach. First, you tell it what kind of album you are looking for, and you can choose one that has all the artwork, one that has no artwork and ones that has incomplete artwork. Furthermore, you can filter compilations, choosing to show them or not. Below the filters there's an iTunes like display that will show albums and their tracks, with a little cover icon next to them that indicates if they have a cover or not.

From this point on, it is simply a matter of adding or removing the covers which can be done via contextual menus or drag and drop. If you are working on an album, you can have the cover applied to the entire album, but you can also work on each individual track. When you make selections, it will display all the covers in the lower part of the window and a little slider lets you choose how big you want to see those covers.

Two out of three

The description of the program says that it can search on Google, Amazon or the iTMS for album art, but this is not exactly true. While this may have been the case some time ago, right now both Amazon and the iTMS have blocked access for such programs, so that currently only Google will work.

While this might seem like a big drawback, the program is very functional, even if it can only work with Google, simply because of the easiness it makes it work with covers.

Full or partial

While you can set the same album art for all tracks on an album, or even set up as many pieces of album art as you wish per track, this is not necessary. Because of the way iTunes works, it is enough for just one track to have the artwork for it to be displayed. As such, there is no need to have the same redundant piece of information in all tracks and you'd better use that space for a bigger sized image. Those little artwork images might not seem like much by themselves, but they do have a tendency to add up, especially when you have large music collections, or when it comes to portable players with a smaller capacity.

More than just the art

While the locating of album art is considered the primary function of such programs, and it is true that this is a big part of their core functionality, the ability to find the albums that need to be worked on is just as important. When you have a massive library, it is a pain to go through it manually and see which albums still need covers. And that's an easy task… Imagine having to go through your library to find the albums that have incomplete album art, and going through all the songs one by one. CoverScout lets you do that by simply selecting the right option in the two filter drop down menus.

Moreover, the clipboard drawer is ideal for keeping various versions of album art until you find one that is just right, without having to redo any of the searches.

The Good

Quite powerful and easy to use, great for finding album art as well as the albums and tracks that need it.

The Bad

The description and documentation of this program needs to be updated by the developer to reflect the fact that it can no longer interact with Amazon or the iTunes Music Store.

The Truth

If you can't let iTunes add album art automatically, then this program is great for doing it the old fashioned way.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge: