Entered CNET Catalog: 03/23/2006
SKU: CNETIPODSOFTIART
Manufacturer: iPodSoft.com
Manufacturer description
iArt is used to download album art or lyrics for your iTunes or iPod library. It currently supports searching Amazon or Google Image Search for artwork and new sources can be made through its plug-in architecture.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 04/03/2006
Ah, yes, there's iArt from iPodSoft. This $10 Windows-only shareware program makes quick work of the task, adding a lot of excitement to an iTunes collection in a short time.
iArt's opening screen lets you select the type of content you'd like it to search for.
Downloading and installing the small program is easy, but the interface is a bit confusing and inelegant. The many options are poorly displayed, so it can be hard to know what to choose. You can opt to confirm every lyric or cover pic that the program finds, but we recommend simply choosing the automatic mode and letting iArt run wild. It swept through a 500-song collection in about 5 minutes and found the cover art for nearly every song that was correctly tagged. It didn't get any covers wrong in our testing but couldn't find art for a few independent albums. iArt can use a few different cover-art resources, so you can always choose a different one and try again.
The iArt's lyric search is a bit slower but just as effective. It found the correct lyrics for nearly all our songs and raced along in automatic mode. Watch out, it's karaoke time. For complete tags in a hurry, iPodSoft's iArt is a great choice.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2
User Rating: 
5/10
So much promise, so disappointing
Pros: Inexpensive, finds lyrics in addition to album artwork
Cons: Inconsistent, clunky interface, little support
Review:
iArt is a great idea which is not executed very well. The idea is that for $10, you can have a program which will search for and add artwork and lyrics to your iTunes collection. Unfortunately, the execution of that idea was inconsistent and ultimately disappointing.
I loved the idea of not having to search and add artwork manually to my 1800-song collection. So I plunked down the $10 for the full edition of this program. (The demo version allows searches for up to 50 albums.) There are two basic search modes, "automatic mode" where the program does all the searching and installation of artwork itself, and "manual mode" where the program searches for the artwork and you approve or modify to add a different album cover. I chose the latter so there would be no mistakes.
The program seemed to work well at first. When we finished, it claimed it found 97% of the album covers I needed. Unfortunately, only about 50% of the artwork actually got installed where it was supposed to. Some of the artwork was installed on the wrong songs, some of the artwork installed only on 1 or 2 songs of an album, and a lot of the artwork just never transferred over at all. This was especially true with entire albums that were on my iTunes; for some reason, iArt did a better job of transferring artwork if I only had 1 song from an album. If I had the entire album in iTunes, it often copied artwork onto just 1-2 songs, and many times didn't copy the artwork over at all. Attempts to find out what the problem might be were fruitless, because the help file just isn't very helpful. Ultimately, I ended up having to add artwork manually to about 50% of my music collection.
It's neat to have a program that transfers lyrics in addition to album art, and $10 would be a great price if the program worked as advertised. But with such inconsistent results, I have to say that iArt isn't yet ready for prime time.
I loved the idea of not having to search and add artwork manually to my 1800-song collection. So I plunked down the $10 for the full edition of this program. (The demo version allows searches for up to 50 albums.) There are two basic search modes, "automatic mode" where the program does all the searching and installation of artwork itself, and "manual mode" where the program searches for the artwork and you approve or modify to add a different album cover. I chose the latter so there would be no mistakes.
The program seemed to work well at first. When we finished, it claimed it found 97% of the album covers I needed. Unfortunately, only about 50% of the artwork actually got installed where it was supposed to. Some of the artwork was installed on the wrong songs, some of the artwork installed only on 1 or 2 songs of an album, and a lot of the artwork just never transferred over at all. This was especially true with entire albums that were on my iTunes; for some reason, iArt did a better job of transferring artwork if I only had 1 song from an album. If I had the entire album in iTunes, it often copied artwork onto just 1-2 songs, and many times didn't copy the artwork over at all. Attempts to find out what the problem might be were fruitless, because the help file just isn't very helpful. Ultimately, I ended up having to add artwork manually to about 50% of my music collection.
It's neat to have a program that transfers lyrics in addition to album art, and $10 would be a great price if the program worked as advertised. But with such inconsistent results, I have to say that iArt isn't yet ready for prime time.
User Rating: 
9/10
Muy buen programa comple lo que se pide
Pros: Ayuda a tener muy organisado y limpia la informacion de cada cancion
Cons: tarda mucho en buscar cada cancion pero
Review:
Muy buen programa es una lastima que no exista para mac
