Update 22nd Feb: New super awesome download application, no need to install anything, just pass the artist as a parameter to the .exe, the artist image will be downloaded as a .jpg to the same directory.

The files:
http://host.trivialbeing.org/up/artistimagebig.exe
http://host.trivialbeing.org/up/artistimagethumb.exe

More details at Fooblog2000

NEW
A quick note to say that I have updated the artist image downloading service to include a browse of the files cached: http://artists.trivialbeing.org/browse.php
Also, appending a URL with &imgs=large will download and display the full artist image rather than just a thumbnail.
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I've been working on developing a little service that anyone can use for downloading or finding artist images, mainly for use in their track info panels.

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=system of a down"
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:


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 using foobar and a keyboard shortcut or button, when passing the artist to the batch file you should take care to replace characters that cannot be used in creating windows filenames. I have not extensively tested how the service deals with foreign characters and it may be buggy for such artists. Foreign characters do not currently work. EDIT: I think I have this sorted now, try it out and gimme some feedback on your results please.

When using image output, if no artist is found the script returns the 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 explicity 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).

CiTay has given me the all clear to post this. The code is heavily based on Chronial's efforts, so many thanks to him. I do not plan to make the code public, mainly at Chronial's request.

My web host should offer enough bandwidth and web space for this service. And for these reasons only thumbnails and not full images are used. Depending on how this pans out full images may become available.

If you notice any bugs or have improvement suggestions please discuss them here.

great news! i just requested this for discogs

Some illustrative pictures:



No need for underscores or removal of spaces between words, "system of a down" works.

this is really cool.

maybe on the main page (the one with the text and information, etc), a link back to the artist page and/or artist picture page would be nice if you want to maybe find a different picture?

Using this i get bad request? any idea

URL2File.exe http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/%1.jpg C:\artistimages\thumbnails\%1.jpg -o 60

Edit: might help if i replaced those %1 lol

when you call the batch file:
e.g.
batchfile the+artist+name
then "the+artist+name" replaces %1

just did most of my collection, thanks alot

although it cant find quite a few, 1 example

i tried it on a mp3 tagged as artist "The White Stripes"

said file not found but if you look on their page on last fm they have a pic

do they miss off 'the' or something?

it didnt find Elvis Presley either - there is a pic

Both of these work just fine for me. How are you passing the variables to the batch file? passing "The White Stripes" will replace %1 with "The" and not the complete artist name.

You may need to do a $replace(%artist%, ,+) I also recommend replacing the & character to "and".

Is there a way to display these pictures in trackinfo_mod without "manually" downloading them to your pc first? Like inserting an image "http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=%artist%"?

No I don't think track info panel supports showing images from the web.

yeh u were right lack of sleep screws with my brain, thanks for the great prog

Björk


Kemialliset Ystävät


Alèmayèhu Eshèté

Foreign characters seem to work just fine now.

what do i need to change to get this one?

Royce Da 5'9"

take it i need to replace "'" with something

otherwise i got all of my artists except 'Jadakiss' which i cannot think why it didnt work so i just got it manually

"Royce Da 5 9" works.

sorry to be a pain fofr but i cant get it to work with '

it does manually if i type it into the address bar, but im using foo_run

"\PortableApps\new foobar2000 9.4\URL2File\URL2File.exe" http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/$replace(%artist%, ,+).jpg "\PortableApps\new foobar2000 9.4\dark1\thumbnails\%artist%.jpg" -o 60

another simpler example artist "Cam'Ron"

Now if i change the output filename to the same as the search eg:

$replace(%artist%, ,+).jpg"

i get cam'ron which is what i expect but when i open it, its the no image found!

thanks for taking the time to help

$replace($replace(%artist%, ,+),',).jpg
That should work, I believe that will remove all the 's

tried it earlier and again now to double check, it doesnt work

$replace(%artist%, ,+),',).jpg

i also tried

$replace($replace(%artist%, ,+),',+).jpg

Edit: as soon as u add a 2nd replace or $replace(%artist%, ,+,',).jpg it doesnt download anything not even on a straight forward artist

Try a double single quote, remember the single quote is a special character in tagz.

thanks you very much

I've combined these images with the recent tracks rss feed from Last.fm and magpierss to generate a list of recently played tracks with artist images aside: http://fofr.trivialbeing.net/page.php?p=nowplaying

I've spruced up the landing page:
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=dirty+projectors

I plan to add more details and also build the now playing script above into a PHP image that anyone can use on their site.

Hmmm, 8000 cached artist images and 40,000 requests later and my bandwidth has not been dented. Thus, as a present to the late comers -full size images are no available:

Simple append the URL with &imgs=large

e.g.http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=the%20m...&imgs=large
or:
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=the%20m...;outputmode=img

No .jpg wrapper for this yet however.

I am getting a lot of AutoHotkey browsers (http://www.autohotkey.com/), this may be a better service for automated downloads. I'll check it out when I get my internet at home back up and running.

A quick note to say that I have updated the artist image downloading service to include a browse of the files cached: http://artists.trivialbeing.org/browse.php

Update: The database now has 17500 artist images, large and small. This comes to 380mb and has served 2GB of bandwidth since launched. This is all much less than anticipated so try and leech more, thanks.

Well, if you want people to leech, please tell us how to make a button in foobar to allow us to download this stuff. If you do, and if you give me your permission, I'll do a stress-test.

about other languages...

You got the artists names and pictures from Last.fm.
Last.fm can show both English artist name and a foreign name (in every user settings, there's an option for choosing english or foreign artist's name).
So, you have Israeli artists like "shlomo artzi" on your site, but you don't have him in his Hebrew name "שלמה ארצי".
all my Israeli artists are tagged in Hebrew... can you add support for the foreign names in last.fm?

Thank you for your great service, I've been looking for something like this a long time!

Using foo_run:

I have this command named "Download Artist Image":
"C:\Program Files\foobar2000\artistimgdownload.bat" $replace($replace(%artist%, ,+),&,and)

This batch file contains:
URL2File http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/%1.jpg C:\artistimages\thumbnails\%1.jpg -o 60

Where URL2File is the program outlined above.

Then using track display:
$button($get(centrea),$get(artistpos),0,0,$get(arth),$get(arth),,,'Download Artist Image',)
The important bit is the command at the end.

A stress test isn't necessary, I just wanted to remove any reservations people may have had about using this service to download 2000 high res artist images for instance.

Just like to say thanks, it works great. I'm very happy

What can I do to search images for all my artists? I don't want to do it manually .
Thank you very much for this, it's just what I wanted.

Edit: I solved my problem with an artist list and a crappy program I wrote. Thanks again for you work FofR.

Update: New super awesome download application, no need to install anything, just pass the artist as a parameter to the .exe, the artist image will be downloaded as a .jpg to the same directory.

The files:
http://host.trivialbeing.org/up/artistimagebig.exe
http://host.trivialbeing.org/up/artistimagethumb.exe

More details at Fooblog2000

This fixes some of the command line problems where double spaced characters were producing errors using URL2File.

Also broken the 20,000 images mark.

i've just tested you service on some japanese artists with unconfident results some works realy great some doesn't.

i've tried these two artists:
1) 椎名林檎
2) 宇多田ヒカル

first isnt found, but when i go straight to last.fm and enter this string in search field it found artist page with photo
the seccond works great but i cant figured why first doesn't... can you pls look at it and tell me if im doin something wrong?

ps: i used primarly albumart downloader but get same result with artistimagebig.exe

I tested it. It is great but by changing "the Notwist" to "the+Notwist" in the parameter, the file is saved as the+Notwist.jpg
Could it be possible to have a way to save it as "the Notwist.jpg"?

use the romanized names:

1: shiina ringo:
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=shiina+...&imgs=large

2: utada hikaru:
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=utada+h...&imgs=large

yup i know that last.fm track both "roman" and "kanji" version (sory i dont speak japanese and have really shallow knowledge of it so excuse me if i typed names of transpcripts badly) of names but i dont have any "lamaproof" way to translate names to "roman"... i hope fofr will somehow solved this issue which looks like has something to do with unicode support? dont know. anyway thanks for answer.

I am using this command line:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\Artists\artistimagebig.exe" "$replace($replace(%artist%, ,+),&,and)"

My OS is Vista Ultimate 64. When I run this, nothing happens at all. Any ideas?

brackets must be escaped: '('x86')'

That worked - many thanks.

Seems like Last.fm changed their site a bit and their image locations, so the service will not have worked correctly for new artists for the last two days or so. I have now fixed it and its up and running again, I've also improved the "large" image results code.

Just updating this thread to say that more than 50,000 artist images have now been cached.

Some stats:

Successful requests: 681,434
Average successful requests per day: 4,914
Data transferred: 13.09 gigabytes
Average data transferred per day: 96.68 megabytes

Any possibility to give artistimagebig.exe multiple parameters? It'd make mass-downloading a lot easier and less time consuming.

I'll look into it, shouldn't be too difficult.

At the moment I have it setup with foo_run passing %artist% to the exe with a keyboard shortcut. With a component that runs this at the start of each song when an artist image doesn't exist it becomes fully automated.

Well I already managed to download artist images for my collection with foo_run and some heavy clicking (didn't think about assigning a keyb shortcut). But I still think that someone could find that feature useful.

fofr:
some artist with unicode characters in name are still really hard to find with your service (asian, eastern europe and similar) did you tryed to look into that as i humbly asked you? i still have difficulties with most of anime soundtracks

What component do you use to run it at the beginning of the track?

Whilst I am here, thank you! Such an awesome component/plug-in. I hadn't really considered artist art as necessary but it's nice to have having seen a lot of the setups around.

I wanna know this too... Sorry for OT.

Great program!

Hi,
thanks for this nifty utility!
Not sure if anyones figured this out already but the filenames that are outputed use + as spaces, as indicated in the command line:

"C:\Program Files\Foobar2000\Artists\artistimagebig.exe" $replace($replace(%artist%, ,+),&,and).
eg. The+Cinematic+Orchestra.jpg

If you want to use spaces instead the following commandline seems to work:

"C:\Program Files\Foobar2000\Artists\artistimagebig.exe" $replace($replace(%artist%, ," "),&,and)

---> The Cinematic Orchestra.jpg

"C:\Program Files\Foobar2000\Artists\artistimagebig.exe" $replace(%artist%,&,and)

Actually you can take that bit out altogether. This will achieve the same thing.

Hi,

I have artistimagebig.exe in my foobar2000 directory and it saves images as "%artist%".jpg there...
would it be possible to save each image as artist.jpg in the album folder???

I'm curious about this too. Is it possible?

Hi, I'm having trouble getting this to work, I'm trying to make a button on a panel so that when I click it it gets the image, but it's not working. I'm not sure what command to go for, I tried:

$button(82,0,0,0,112,20,C:\Program Files\foobar2000\icons\getartistimage.bmp,C:\Program Files\foobar2000\icons\getartistimagehover2.bmp,Run: Artist Images,)

I can't think what others to try, none seem to be working.

Next issue is how to get your image to show up in foobar, in a track display panel for instance. I tried:

$imageabs(0,0,E:\More of My Documents\More of My Pictures\Artist Images\$replace($replace(%artist%, ,+),&,and).jpg,)

but it isn't working. Is there a way to get the image of the now playing artist to show up?