On August 15th Amazon will kill all previous versions of Fetch Art

Amazon is changing how applications can interact with their Web Services.

On August 15th 2009 Amazon will make changes to how calls are made to get album art. This change is big and will completely break any software that is not updated to the new calls. This of course, includes all previously released versions of Fetch Art including the latest release version 2.1.

I am working on a new version to address these issues. Amazon has posted some information on how to use the new calls. Unfortunately they are not supporting AppleScript (the language Fetch Art is written in.)

I am working on some changes to Fetch Art that will allow it to work with Amazon after the 15th of August, however, these are not small changes.

Keep checking back here for updates. My goal is to have a new version available by August 15th when Amazon will disable the old calls. Due to my work schedule and the short amount of time, I may not make this deadline.

Also, Amazon is slowly rolling out these changes leading up to the 15th, so you can assume the current version of Fetch Art will start having more and more issues, until it finally stops working on the 15th. Amazon has said during the following dates and times, Fetch Art may not function:

• First Round: One in five unsigned requests (selected randomly) will be rejected.
  • In all regions (NA, EU, and JP) starting Monday, August 3rd 2009, 6 PM GMT/UTC for 24 hours (that is 11 AM PDT and 3 AM JST).
• Second Round: all unsigned requests will be rejected at these times:
  • Europe (UK, DE, FR): Monday, August 10th 2009 from 2 PM to 4 PM GMT/UTC
  • North America (US and CA): Monday, August 10th 2009 from 11 AM to 1 PM PDT (6 PM to 8 PM GMT/UTC)
  • Japan (JP): Tuesday, August 11th 2009, 10 AM to 12 Noon JST (1 AM to 3 AM GMT/UTC
  
  
  
  

Tutorial for using Fetch Art

Ok many of you have asked for a tutorial since Fetch Art doesn't work like a standard Mac OS app (this is because it runs as an iTunes Script.) Let me know what you think.

YouTube video (lower resolution but more compatible and quicker to load)

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Hi resolution QuickTime movie (might not work in all web browsers)

Fetch Art 2.1 Verified iTunes 8.0 Compatible

As soon as iTunes 8.0 was released I started testing Fetch Art 2.1 with it.

The latest version of Fetch Art is compatible with iTunes 8.0.

Often updates to iTunes will require Fetch Art be updated.  Thankfully that isn't the case this time.

Enjoy!

Fetch Art 2.1 Released, Adds iTunes 7.7.1 Support

I've just released a new version of Fetch Art.  This is the first "non-Beta" release in the 2.x series.

CHANGES in version 2.1.0:

1) Modified the code to fix a bug introduced by Apple in iTunes 7.7.1. Now this works with iTunes 7.7.1.

2) Added more logic in constructing the query to Amazon to improve search accuracy.

3) Amazon changed some behaviors with empty keywords, I've eliminated the existence of empty keywords in the search.

4) Prioritized album art so that it should find the correct album art before single releases. Earlier versions were returning singles instead of the album.

You can download it here: DOWNLOAD 2.1

NOTE:  For the first 10 hours after this post, the download was still pointing to an installer that installed the older 2.0.0 version.  I've fixed that now.  If you are still getting errors in Fetch Art, check to make sure you have the latest 2.1.0 version.

iTunes 7.7.1 Introduces AppleScript bug that breaks Fetch Art 2.0 and Earlier

With the latest release of iTunes, Apple introduced a bug.  AppleScript code that previously returned a track object now returns a list of tracks (it should return a track.)

I spent a bit of time narrowing the issue down, only to find Doug had already documented the problem here:  AppleScript Bug or Feature in iTunes 7.7.1  I sure wish I had found that before I spent a while blaming my own code and debugging.

Anyway, the next version of Fetch Art will contain a fix for that AND I wrote the code so if Apple changes the behavior back in a future version of iTunes, Fetch Art should still continue to work.  It will handle the return object whether it is a track or a list.

Stay tuned for the new 2.1 version update.  It will be available soon.

Fetch Art 2.1.0 Nearing Release

With the release of iTunes 7.7.1 Apple changed something in how you can reference a track by ID.  This has broken all previous versions of Fetch Art.

I'm testing a new 2.1 version that addresses some of the bugs that have been reported as well as this issue.

Fetch Art 2.0 has been working for many people prior to iTunes 7.7.1 and I've gotten feedback that will help improve the accuracy of the Album Art. 

It will be a few more days before I can solve this issue.

Check back here for updates and thanks for the great feedback!

Fetch Art 2.0 Released as Beta

Hi all.  I wasn't able to test the new version of Fetch Art enough, so I am releasing this as a beta.

If you encounter any problems please report back to me whether you are on an Intel Mac or not and the name of the song that caused the issue.  If you can include a screenshot of the problem, do that too!

Email me at aric@aric.org for support.

Also if you use it without any issues, I'd love to hear back from you.  Post to this blog with your comments.

You can download the new beta version here.

CHANGES in version 2.0: 

1) Fixes for compatibility with Amazon's new search web service. 

2) Improvements in accuracy logic in searching for art.

3) Added the option of skipping tracks that already have art 

4) Improved Unicode/extended character support 

5) Removed dependency on Perl which has caused problems when Mac OS X updates caused changes to Perl 

6) Increased performance by removing dependency on custom C application for image conversions. 

7) Added support for searches on Amazon Japan, France, and Canada as well as including the ones previously supported which were US, UK, and Germany