14 DAY TRIAL // Originally developed by Yoel Inbar and then handed over to Aric Freisen, Fetch Art is a Mac OS X application for adding cover art to your music in iTunes. The application is extremely useful for music fans, as well as for casual listeners. If you've ripped music from your own CDs and iTunes doesn’t have the art for them, Fetch Art for iTunes can find it for you.
Fetch Art for iTunes is capable of fetching album art for one or more songs using Amazon's XML interface. The app lets users preview the art that was found, and add it to iTunes. Fetch Art is controlled through the iTunes Script menu, meaning that, once it is installed, album art can be downloaded by selecting one or more songs in iTunes. Users must choose 'Fetch Art' from the Script menu.
With version 2.5.0 having arrived, developer Aric Freisen gladly announces that he has added support for Amazon's new Web Services. “As of August 15 2009, any version of Fetch Art prior to 2.5.0 will stop working as Amazon changed how their servers worked,” Freisen says on his blog. “This requires encrypting part of the call, which does slow each call down a little bit over the previous version.”
Also, Aric has added more logic in constructing the query to Amazon to improve search accuracy and speed. “It can often find album artwork now even if the album name is spelled wrong and it requires fewer calls to the server to find it,” the developer adds. With the addition of a debug logging mode, Fetch Art for iTunes will save a detailed log that you can send to Aric for support, if you are having problems. This mode is off by default.
An option to turn off extended searching is also included with Fetch Art 2.5. “Previously Fetch Art would try to find art for any album even if it found the wrong art. Now that level of searching is off by default. It may not find as much are [sic.], but accuracy should improve. You can turn it back on in the preferences if you like,” Aric explains.
Lastly, the software now boasts an automatic check for new versions and improved error handling, while PowerPC macs are still well supported. One known issue remains – songs with extended characters (symbols and accents) in their names can cause Fetch Art to get an error, according to Aric. Also note that this freeware app is provided entirely without warranty.