McFilter

Flicking Through My Album Collection

Earlier in the week Apple launched iTunes 7, and most of the hype and discussion has been about being able to download movies and hook your computer up to your TV. That's not why I downloaded it the other day though.

Like Dan Hill, the thing that excited me about iTunes 7 was the new cover art browsing interface. You can flick through the albums in your collection, with the cover art flicking past much as it might if you were leafing through your stack of LPs. It's very cool when it works, and I've been happily rediscovering all sorts of albums by being drawn to the cover as it flicks past.

Sadly, as Dan notes in his cautious welcoming of iTunes 7 (which includes a few screenshots if you want a better idea of what I'm talking about), there's a big problem at present with it only choosing artwork from albums available on the iTunes Music Store. iTunes spent an age processing the 4000-odd albums in my collection to gather artwork, and has found (I think) 696 album covers. That's less than a fifth of my music collection, so at present it's not a very useful way to look through my music.

Still, it's a start. And I think it's the tipping point for me to start trying to get hold of the artwork for more of my collection.