Download Album Cover Art in Linux with Coverfinder

When I use a Mac (or Windows), I typically use Apple's iTunes to play my music, and when in Linux, you can generally find me listening to music with Quod Libet. What do those two programs have in common? They can both find "missing" artwork to a particular album, Quod Libet by searching Amazon.com, and iTunes by searching the Apple Store.

But what if I use a different program? Or what if the iTunes Store doesn't have it? Sure, I can head over to Amazon.com myself and search for a particular album, then find the large version of the artwork, and then finally save it to my hard drive, but that involves a lot of steps, and typically a good deal of back and forth. Plus, if I have a lot of albums I need to find artwork for, it can turn into a repetitive bore.

What to do? If you're a Linux user, you're in luck. I recently stumbled on a new program (currently at version 0.0.3), called Coverfinder. Coverfinder does exactly what you'd think it would do. It searches Amazon.com (either the US version, or the German, French, Japanese, Canadian or British version if you'd like), and finds album art that matches your search criteria.

So if, for example, you're searching for artwork for the new cast recording of a Broadway show, just type in the name of the show and in a second or two, ten results pop up that match your query. If you see what you like, great. Go to the File menu and save the cover to your desktop. If you don't see what you want, you can always refine your search. Sometimes adding search terms (such as the composer's or artist's name) will help, and on occasion you may find that only searching for a couple words is helpful, instead of the entire name of the album.

I was thrilled to find Coverfinder. I've recently been going through roughly 1,000 different albums on my computer, and trying to get them completely organized, both within the hard drive (making sure mp3 files are named correctly and consistently and that there aren't six different folders all with music from the same artist, only spelled differently), as well as making sure (if possible), that each album has artwork.