Album art lookup using MusicBrainz - experimental free app

ScreenSleeves generally receives the album cover  art from whatever music player you're using (Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and many others).

There are cases where it doesn't. For example when listening to an internet radio stream using certain apps, often only the artist and track name are provided. 

ScreenSleeves has traditionally had the option to look up album art online where necessary. (In fact, it had the option to *always* look up art online when using Snowtape, because the method SS used was more likely to produce the correct art than Snowtape itself.)

ScreensSleeves has used Gracenote for a few years. GN is a firmly commercial operation but they allowed me (with the actual number of requests capped) to use the service for free.  At some point recently that lookup service seems to have unceremoniously stopped. My account doesn't exist any more and there's no longer any information about the lookup / API. (Often the way when you make use of 3rd-party services.) A quick Google shows that software and even hardware that made use of CDDB for CD information no longer works since a certain date. 

MusicBrainz is a much more open music database. They allow free non-commercial use. I have discussed Screensleeves with them and come to an arrangement which allows SS to perform the necessary lookups when necessary. 

This is a good solution. I have some old and obscure albums that it doesn't have artwork for, and even the odd album that it doesn't even have in the database (I must learn how to contribute to the database). However, the search works beautifully and when the artwork is available it's very good quality. 

With this up and running in the development version of Screensleeves,  I was impressed with the quality of the artwork and wanted a way to simply perform a lookup and save the cover for my own use in iTunes.  (My personal media server uses an old version of MacOS and iTunes, because when something works I like it to remain the way it is, rather than changing at the whim of the maker.)

I've built an interface around the MusicBrainz cover art lookup that I'd written for ScreenSleeves and this is the result. 

The download is here (well done for finding it. At this point I won't publish it on the peacockmedia.software main site or anywhere else). 

If this interests you, please let me know in the comments or by email. Other apps are available but they do tend to integrate with your iTunes/Music library rather than simply allowing you to save the artwork and do what you like with it.

Screensleeves album art screensaver as a standalone app

Screensleeves has been a popular screensaver for a number of years, but the security changes in the new Mojave OS may make its functionality impossible.

Over the years people have suggested that it could be a free-standing app rather than a screensaver. This comes with some advantages - eg you can keep it minimised and floating above other windows in the corner of the screen when it's not in full screen mode.

This may be the only way to keep the screensaver alive. I've been experimenting with the idea, ironing out some issues related to the change, and using it. I have to say that I like it very much.

Here's a very quick peek at what all this means.

New theme in Screensleeves

Welcome to the new 'Ambience' theme.

It goes against the idea of a screensaver a little to have a static coloured background (I've been toying with the idea of adding a little 'Ken Burns' to the background, but this would have little benefit if the album cover is fairly homogenous in colour.)

But there is a fade to black and repositioning of the album cover and details every 30 seconds, which existing users will be familiar with. And if you're listening to individual tracks rather than complete albums or audiobooks, then there's no problem as the coloured background will change significantly every few minutes. Plus as now, when the music stops you either get a black screen or random artwork (whichever you choose) so no problem there.

Above all, it just looks so cool. I'm so excited about it and love using it.

[Update] This theme is now available in Screensleeves Pro v5.1.  You can download and use the Pro version without paying, just certain Pro features will be disabled before you obtain a key.

Swinsian - zen-like alternative to iTunes

I'm very grateful to the friend who recommended Swinsian as a replacement for iTunes (thankfully its pretty yellow icon is more memorable than the name).

When it comes to "it just works" (which used to be the Mac way) then the team have it sussed. It was incredibly easy to import my music, with no appreciable disk space used. it just built its own library leaving the files where they were, which is exactly what I wanted. (I noticed later a Preference which allows copying of music into Swinsain's music folder). Plus it watches the music folder and just adds anything I buy via or add to iTunes.

Using Swinsian is such a zen-like experience. It's so nice to have a music player that only handles music. It does podcasts too (which I've switched off). But I hope they're not tempted to start adding more stuff and allowing it to become the nightmare that is the current iTunes.

I keep discovering nice little touches, like the 'animated dock icon'. It's no more than a dot that moves as a progress indicator, but that's really neat.

It supports many music types. Which is nice to know but I'm not sure whether anything in my collection isn't aiff, aac or mp3

There's no cover-flow which I know people still miss, but there are a number of ways to customise the display, including my favourite, the good old list with whichever columns you like. The font size in there is a little smaller than usual, which is great. (Spotify annoyed me greatly by taking the opposite approach - big spacious text so that you can't see much at a time and have to scroll lots.)

Buttons look like buttons! No symbols just printed on the textured surface of the window, or within the LCD display. Or words printed in an area of nothing that could equally be a field, a label or a button. The search box is nice and simple, it just filters your music in the display according to the word you type.

It's like having iTunes 10 back again!

There are one or two glitches - I have given up on the desktop widget which I couldn't get to work properly, also it would be nice if, when you're using shuffle, the display scrolled automatically to the track that's playing. But I'm sure these will get ironed out with time.

Expect Screensleeves support very shortly!

Apple Music not playing nicely

[update 16/8/15] This issue now seems to be resolved in iTunes 12.2.2.25

21 Jul 2015

Screensleeves, the album art screensaver for Mac, is currently having trouble displaying the artwork and track details when the new streaming service (Apple Music) is being used.

Applescript (the sensible way for applications to talk to each other) is often overlooked - there are ongoing problems with Spotify, although it's been possible to work around most of these. But it's particularly disappointing when Apple themselves neglect their own scripting interface.

iTunes' 'current track' seems broken when it comes to the new music service as developers of other apps have reported.

I hope that this is 'teething trouble' with the new service and can only suggest installing updates when they're available.