I put a CD in my computer this morning, and an application called Windows Media popped up.
It’s got a feature that lets you watch things on the screen while the music plays. Most of these things are brightly coloured shapes and swirls, but one of the is labeled ‘Album Art’.
I selected Album Art, and the blinking spirals were replaced by a picture of something very much (but not exactly) like the album cover.
I thought that was pretty neat. (On the other hand, if you click on the picture, it takes you to a website that tries to sell you the CD you’re playing.) So, I tried some of my other discs, and tried it while I was disconnected from the net as well.
Turns out, it only works for ‘Naveed’… the first disc I tried. And it works whether or not I’m online.
Or so I thought. Later this afternoon, I put in another CD. Lo and behold, up popped the album cover for ‘Music @ Work’. I tried my other discs, and it worked for most. I was on-line at the time, mind you.
So what’s up? Does anyone know where this thing is getting it’s info? Is there a website somewhere that contains reasonable facsimiles of the album covers for a select group of CDs? Or is there maybe a special hidden file on the disc?
I’m guessing it downloads the art when you play a CD while connected to the internet, then stores it in a database to display while you’re offline.
Also, I would suggest you use a program like Winamp v2.81 to play your music. Windows Media Player has rather low sound quality compared to the rest, and requires a lot more memory and CPU power. Winamp features crossfading, support for more types of audio, and a fully functional equalizer with a load of presets.