iPod Classic Album Art

One of the great things about vinyl is the enormous album artwork; buying an LP is not just about the music, it’s a collectible package. Some music fans bemoan the digital era‘s paucity of album artwork, but perhaps new trends – such as the iPod’s Cover Flow – indicate that the tide is turning towards the visual once more…

Album Covers On Your iPod

I don’t usually deal with consumer electronics here, but Santa brought me a 120GB iPod Classic, which includes a feature called Cover Flow. This is basically a way of browsing your mp3 collection by flipping through album covers rather than with text menus – similar to how you might do it in a ‘virtual music shop’.

Although some regard this as a gimmick, I found it quite refreshing to have that visual complement to my music once more; as most of my music is ripped from my aging CD collection, seeing the covers again brought back memories of cracked jewel cases peeking out from behind the couch.

How To Find Album Art For Your iPod

I have accumulated a lot of mp3s over the years, but when I began to transfer them to the iPod I discovered that very few of them had any album art included. This was the perfect task to divert me over the festive season, so I found a few helpful applications that claimed to automate the process.

You can of course create an iTunes shop account and get the album artwork there, but if you want some alternatives, here they are:

• Zelek Album Artwork Locator
• Amphonic Album Cover Finder
• iPodSoft iArt

Getting The Full Picture

The only one of these programs I’ve actually used is iArt – it’s nominally a shareware app, with a $10 tag if you’re so inclined. You could use it for free, but for large library sizes the paid version is faster.

At any rate, iArt worked well for my collection, pulling over 90% of my album covers from Amazon and automatically adding them to my library. There were a few that required manual attention, but tidying up was a relatively simple task. Now I can indulge in a spot of visual nostaliga while listening to the classics…