Automating album art and lyrics fetching on Windows

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Automating album art and lyrics fetching on Windows

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Q: I have nearly 100GB of music in iTunes, which I’m running on a Windows XP machine. I’m purchasing an iPod with a color screen soon, and I’d like to start filling my library with Album Art. I understand that with AppleScript, Clutter, and many freeware programs, there’s a plethora of ways to do so on the Mac. Is there anything that can help me on the PC?

While I’m at it, in last week’s Ask iLounge, you mentioned using pearLyrics to automate lyrics fetching on the Mac. Again, how about Windows?

- Anonymous

A: You’re definitely right - Windows iTunes users still have far fewer options for iTunes add-ons… especially for tagging automation and track management. However, there are at least two software options available that will automate the fetching of album art on a Windows PC, one of which does lyrics, too!

First of these options is iCoverArt from Maximized Software, Inc. This software is $5.00 for unlimited use, and offers a free trial that allows you to fetch and embed album covers into five songs per session. It should be noted that this program does *not* fetch album art from the internet directly, but rather piggy-backs upon the web-scouring work to be done prior by Windows Media Player 9 or 10. Read the iCoverArt Introduction at the link above.

iArt 3.1 from iPodSoft is an option many will find worth the additional $5 premium compared to iCoverArt. This program fetches both album art and lyrics directly from the Internet and embeds each into the appropriate fields in iTunes. The lyrics are placed directly into iTunes 5’s new Lyrics data field, and are transferred to the iPod nano for on-the-go viewing.

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