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- PathDaemon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23I just "bought" Apple's free song for this week, and grabbed the data stream as it went by. I managed to capture the art request, so here's the URL:
http://a1.phobos.apple.com/r10/Music/cc/af/60/mzi.qxyslgav.600x600-100.jpg?downloadKey=1149054111_c909728a52e1bba519564c189b22fd66
Bad. News. Apple only serves the image if a unique download key is passed as a GET. The scheme may be crackable (i.e. the only part of the key that's checked is a common album code), so if others who know how to grab traffic can DL the free song and maybe a few others and post the keys, that might be helpful. Aw, Apple.
It couldn't last forever. - danglerman, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19didn't even know that you could do this in the first place
- 4tygames, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15The best way to get better album art on Amazon is to contribute scans of your albums.
Just take one Saturday and go through your music collection and scan your albums and upload the images to Amazon. It isn't that hard and would definitely help everyone.
Another idea is to copy the album art that you purchase from downloaded iTunes tracks and upload them to a specific website. Just some thoughts. - PathDaemon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Followup: I tried changing random digits in my key. The art is not being served with anything other than a valid one.
----
A note to anyone from Apple passing through-
We like you. We like the iPod and the iTMS. In iTunes and on newer iPods, having decent album art for ripped albums is essential. If the iTMS offered it as a free service, without hacks by savvy users, it would be appreciated. But even if this isn't possible, suddenly making a deliberate change to a service which breaks part of it is mean to users. Maybe Apple fancies itself too corporate for this, but if it posted messages explaining things like this — an Apple blog of sorts — people would be much more accepting. If we saw a message apologizing mildly, saying that Apple had to increase the security of its album art to satisfy its clients, we might not be rushing to crack it, because then the decision, and the company, would have a face.
I might have been able to make my statement better, but it's late and I must go to sleep. You get the idea.
-PD - dkordik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Enough people clicked "digg this" to make it to the front page. Is that such a hard concept?
- Snyder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10For anyone who thinks Amazon is a good alternative to Apple's album art, I give you these examples from my collection...
Coldplay - X&Y
Amazon: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0006L16N8.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
iTunes: http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c284/SNYpod/Coldplay-XY01-Cover.jpg
Missy Elliot - The Cookbook
Amazon: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0009F2BOO.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
iTunes: http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c284/SNYpod/MissyElliott-TheCookbook01-Cover.jpg
The Killers - Hot Fuss
Amazon: http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/B0002858YS.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
iTunes: http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c284/SNYpod/TheKillers-HotFuss01-Cover.jpg
The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
Amazon: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00097A5H2.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
iTunes: http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c284/SNYpod/TheWhiteStripes-GetBehindMeSatan01-.jpg - Unr3a1, on 10/17/2007, -1/+11People will find a way around it. If the high quality album art can still be displayed in iMS, then there has to be a way to download it.
- nerdbaby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11It's not just iTunes users idiot.
It's people who want hq album art. - tackle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11[Quote]even if Apple AAC was better than MP3 for compression[/Quote]
Apple AAC? What do you mean? AAC is NOT a format developed by Apple. It is a pre existing format which Apple merely chose to use. - dkordik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8from some quick poking around, it looks like
1149058082 _ affd6c1af964b548dd17b5d2440f5885
is
expiration-time _ md5-hash
So as far as saving the download keys for future strangers to use, there goes that idea; the keys expire.
I'll be posting further findings on my blog, http://marv.kordix.com for when this digg page is buried. - Ashex, on 10/17/2007, -1/+9This is a possible workaround, when you get the link to the image, use the itunes store as the referrer to download it.
- kyeetza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Here's a place that has very large album art. Most of the stuff (actually all of it) I got from them was 953x953.
The site is spanish, but you can type in searches in english
http://www.coveralia.com - Bobboes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Yeah i just realized it when I tried my usual website for this: http://tpemble.urfbownd.net/itunes/itunes-search.php
i will miss you high-quality artwork - hungarianhc, on 10/17/2007, -1/+8They were probably paying a lot of money in bandwith that they didn't feel like paying. At least amazon offers up some pretty decent quality stuff.
- diehard2k5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Yeah, I realized that as well when trying to add some art to a cd. I guess hello to lo-qual Amazon art again. sigh...
- fantastine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I am the author of Corripio. I can say that some albums still work for no apparent reason. If I put the url Corripio uses to download the artwork (when it works) it gives the same error in Safari but works with the app...weird. I am working on implementing a backup artwork DB to Corripio (i.e Walmart (500x500)). I am planing on releasing the next version early next week. Furthermore the new version will have some tag fixing/fetching features in the release. We are also readying an alpha release for Windows. To stay up-to-date check the site regularly.
- msgmsg, on 10/17/2007, -1/+7coverdude just gets the images from amazon. look at the actual urls of the images
- boredzo, on 10/17/2007, -1/+7What if you forge the User-Agent to look like iTunes?
EDIT: Doesn't work. Foo.
EDIT 2: Yay, they fixed newlines in comment edits! - Artemis11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Same here, I wish I would have heard about this earlier, I've been using amazon for all my images :/ Someone will find a way past though.
- m99stump, on 07/29/2008, -0/+5Boo!
I really liked those, way better quality than I can get just scanning my booklets :( - PathDaemon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5STFU and help. If you KNOW that it's uncrackable, get a traffic grabber, DL the freebie, and give us your key. It can't hurt, and in this case 'twould be good to be proven wrong.
- jakeadams, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5http://www.thejosher.net/iTunes/search.php
the thumbnails are still coming up, and that's basically all you need for an iPod. But of course that wouldn't work if you wanted to make a cover slip or something along those lines. - eridius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You decided not to use iTunes because they disabled a "feature" that they never offered in the first place? Wow, what a cheapskate.
- mrwilly123, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6A lot of people. Look at the comments.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Same with me. If i knew about it I wouldnt have been using google images as much.
- chucker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I'd like to see you screenshotting an image you don't get to see to begin with until you buy the album.
- diehard2k5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, for the newer stuff Amazon art is okay I suppose. But for the older stuff, you get crappy lo-res art.
- acekicker2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4someone had to put thought into the covers (some more than others), it's worth checking them out.
- 4tygames, on 10/17/2007, -0/+3Is it just the US Music Store, or are all the iTunes music stores from around the world affected?
- itsnotvalid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You should probably digg this site.
- radmarshallb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Walmart.com has some pretty good album artwork. Just click on the enlarge image button underneath any album.
- nabilanwar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3umm, the only reason there was a script for the itunes store is because it wasnt normally accessible. Don't know what ur talkin about, since u can just find the album and get the image through search.
- abonghit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3did you try changing the referrer (or other http headers)?
- vypergts, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I use iArt; it works with Amazon and Google and I can just set it to auto mode to do my recently added playlist everytime I use bit...uh I mean buy music from iTunes ;P
http://www.ipodsoft.com/index.php?/software/iart - dkordik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Permanent link to my updated blog post: http://marv.kordix.com/archives/000849.html
Corripio developer blog post about it: http://nclasssoftware.com/index.php/nClassSoftware/comments/apples_changing_things/ - CamonZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3on the bright side., you can still see what new releases are on ITMS and download them from emule :->
- mrwilly123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4But usually you can only see the low-res version on the iTMS, and you get the high-res version once you buy the music. A bunch of different websites existed to work around that limitation, but they don't work any more, apparently.
- RobotCitizen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This blows. iTMS has the best quality cover art. I guess it's back to Amazon and their overcompressed JPEGs.
- dkordik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Open up a packet sniffer like Ethereal (www.ethereal.com) and set it to capture packets when you are making the iTMS purchase. After the purchase/download are complete, stop the packet capture and look for a large group of TCP packets. In ethereal they will be highlighted in green, and you can right click on one of them and select "Follow TCP Stream". If you have chosen the right TCP packets, the following should appear at the top of the window that pops up:
GET /r10/Music/a9/71/6c/mzi.sgmgosnz.600x600-100.jpg?downloadKey=1149061961_a064cdd8da355ac899c0296efe255cb0 HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: iTunes/6.0.4 (Windows; N)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, x-aes-cbc
Host: a1.phobos.apple.com - xboxing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@diehard2k5
Thanks for posting this, because I wasn't sure if it was just me or not. I've been trying last day or so and just figured the server was choking on the script again. - Vaha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2P.S. How did you guys manage to get your DownloadKey? Thanks
- diehard2k5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2iTunes has 600 x 600 images that look relatively nicer than the Amazon images.
- diehard2k5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2While this is a good idea, it would be a pain in the neck to pull off. You can set up a photobucket account and get it started if you want though.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If the band's label's site has good quality artwork, I'll use that. If not I just get it off amazon.
- aliguana, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3damn, thats the best "service" that Apple offered. I'm not interested in buying music from them, but for grabbing covers for my ripped CD collection iTMS was the best. Its so good that I would pay for it... maybe Apple could make it a $5 per year subscription thingy.
Back to scanning covers I suppose (takes longer to scan the cover than it does to rip the cd though) - REBELinBLUE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2ditto, I've been using google images and amazon :(
- kolop1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3 So how often do you look at the album cover after you purchase a song or album?
As far as putting thought into them, when is the last time you saw a really good album cover? - Vaha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm really disappointed that we can't get any more album artwork but I am looking into the iTunes debug website.
http://tpemble.urfbownd.net/itunes/itunes-debug.php (Enter the link from iTunes). There might be some things in there that could help, we just have to snoop around. Good luck to anyone that can crack this. - dkordik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thought: someone could make an app that simplified the sniffing and grabbing process; a user could click a button when they were about to make a purchase, or it could watch for iTunes making a purchase, and it could collect the download key. These could be uploaded to an online database. Not the most fun option but it may be our best one.
- tatical, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Spyware site...
-
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