Artist Image Downloader, Service, Script etc.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007

A big feature I wanted to include in my foobar2000 music player was artist images, i.e. pictures of the performers. If I had the images this would be possible using either the track info mod (which I now favour) or the album art panel. The trouble was, unlike album art, there was no service that offered image downloads and the only website that offered a comprehensive artist image database was last.fm. My first approach to this problem was to create a local C script that would, in a very roundabout manner, obtain the artist image url from last.fm and then download it. This proved rather slow and buggy due to various artist names, timeout problems and image creation, yet it sufficed for the majority, leading me to a collection of 2000 artist images which I posted earlier.

Still not happy, I looked into creating a web service, based on hydrogenaudio forums member Chronial's efforts and ultimately we developed an online resource for downloading artist images. I do not plan to make the code public, mainly at Chronial's request. I have created this service here: http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=ARTIST where ARTIST is the performer's image you are looking for, for instance:

http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=the microphones
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=radiohead

Images are first sourced from Last.fm before being cached so as not to cause any undue strain on last.fm's servers.

To make things more useful you can append the URL with &outputmode=img,
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie&outputmode=img
and a wrapper of sorts is available via http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/ARTIST.jpg
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/blondie.jpg
which can be used on forums:


or in an artist download script. I use the URL2File command line application with this command:

URL2File http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/%1.jpg  C:\artistimages\thumbnails\%1.jpg -o 60
Where %1 is the first parameter passed to the batch file and 60 is a one minute timeout.

Using a custom run component I can call this batch file using foobar and a keyboard shortcut or button; when passing the artist (%artist%) to the batch file you should take care to replace characters that cannot be used in creating windows filenames. Foreign characters work too, as do special characters such as the artist "Why?" or "Wham!".

When using image output, if no artist is found the script returns this image:


With regards to copyright issues, Last.fm's uploading policy states:
Because copyrighted images tend to be very restrictive about where they can be used we ask that you only upload images which are public domain, or that are explicitly licensed for promotional use. There are a number of places you can find images open to public use. First, try to find out if the artist has any promotional pictures on their official homepage (they usually do).

For those without foobar2000, I give an example of an alternative use. I took the recently played tracks RSS feed, played with it a little using magpierss and create a page that shows recent tracks along side artist images, an example can be found here:
http://fofr.trivialbeing.net/page.php?p=nowplaying

Labels: Foobar, Music, Technical

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Artist Images
Thursday, December 14, 2006

Here's a collection of artist images collected from last.fm: Artist Images (1890)

Labels: Foobar, Music

Last Weeks Most Listened To Artists
Monday, September 26, 2005

1. Jason Forrest
2. Vashti Bunyan
3. Paavoharju
4. Nick Drake
5. Sufjan Stevens
6. L'Altra
7. Kemialliset Ystävät
8. Three 6 Mafia
9. Arve Henriksen
10. The Microphones

Labels: Music

Hello, may I take your order?
Monday, September 12, 2005

Labels: Music

GET SOME CRUNK IN YO SYSTEM
Sunday, July 31, 2005

Labels: Music

This Weeks Listening Chart
Monday, July 11, 2005

1	The Microphones	32
2	The Arcade Fire	10
3	Idlewild	7
4	RJD2	6
4	Pink Floyd	6
4	Eva Cassidy	6
7	Les Savy Fav	4
7	Moby	4
7	Lightning Bolt	4
7	The Postal Service	4

Labels: Music

Current top 50 artists snapshot
Monday, June 27, 2005

Labels: Music

Last.FM - Another customised radio station
Monday, March 28, 2005

This is a station based on my Audioscrobbler profile, i.e. the site that logs what I listen to, it plays songs from other people's profiles that are similar to mine. Not quite the library of LAUNCHcast but improved bitrate, no annoying adverts and Audioscrobbler integration make this extremely good. Not quite as advanced as LAUNCH but it has a lot more user friendly features and is more community orientated; groups, friends, musical neighbors, RDF feeds, favourite albums, artists and songs, avatars and advanced features at a fraction of the cost.

Labels: Music

LAUNCHcast
Saturday, March 19, 2005

An online acquaintance suggest I check out Yahoo's customizable music radio station. I was highly unenthusiastic about this, I being a loather of all Yahoo products and services, their policy of covering things with adverts, the busy pages, the firefox crashing non-compatible codes etc... . But today, a couple of weeks later, in my free time, I decided to check it out. After filling out forms, registering a yahoo account and yadda yadda, I listened to my own personal station. I chose a few of my favourite artists to include at the start, Eva Cassidy, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith. My very first song was some upcoming teen-bopper loveydovey piece of shit which made my skin crawl, I rated it 1. Some more songs followed, Portishead, Massive Attack, Moby, all fairly standard songs I could hear a lot of other places. I wasn't too impressed at this point. Rather than give up and move on, upon hearing a Nick Drake tune (from Garden State OST) I felt compelled to make this great. I scanned my Audioscrobbler and iTunes for my fave songs and artists and I rated all of them. Now I am at 300 ratings with an Enthusiast user ranking and my station has developed a firm sense of ALL my tastes. Just now it played a local band "Sunna" followed by my favourite track from the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, "Dead Bodies" by Air. It successfully covers my need for ragtime, blues, rock, indie, rap and orchestral in one harmonious place. If anyone wants to listen to my radio station, PLEASE PLEASE do, you can find it here:
FofR's LAUNCHcast; click this to listen to what I listen to

Labels: Music

Sony's new Network Walkman flash players
Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Engadget is carrying an article concerning the latest SONY flash players. It's been a while since a Sony product has impressed me. However these look very sleak, small, handy and very useful. 1GB with FM tuner, jog dial and 50 hours battery life makes this an iPod shuffle beater. Slightly more costly though it seems. I finally see Sony getting back on track, their new stance towards their crippled music codec is refreshing. Oh and this: three-line organic electroluminescence displays!!!

Engadget: "Sony finally busted out all those new flash-based Network Walkman digital audio players they accidentally (or "accidentally") leaked out last month. First up: their new 400 and 500 series. It's pretty inevitable that the 512MB NW-E505 (pictured above), 1GB NW-E507, 512MB NW-E405, and 1GB NW-E407 are going to get compared to the iPod shuffle, so we'll just get that out of the way right quick.. All four players have three-line organic electroluminescence displays, up to 50 hours of battery life (if you connect directly to your PC via USB you can score a quick hit of three hours of playback time after just three minutes of charging), jog dial navigation, and native support for playback of MP3 files, as well as ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus, WMA, and WAV. The only real difference between the 400 and the 500 series is that the NW-E505 and NW-507 have built-in FM tuners. None of these'll be out for a couple more months, but the NW-E405 will sell for $130, the NW-407 for $180, the NW-E505 for $150, while the NW-E507 rounds things out at $200."

Labels: Music

QUOTE/LINK: Pitchfork
Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Pitchfork: "The most voyeuristic sensations are often felt while looking in on the least melodramatic moments. --Kristin Sage Rockermann"
I am loving this newly found reviews site - the music they rate highly is deservedly good music, the language reviews are written in give the best possible literary response to music. With indepth musical knowledge, involving and beautiful reviews that give honest opinions and pages not riddled with adverts - this site has honorably been added to my bookmarks and this blog.

Labels: Music