Titanium Community Questions & Answer Archive

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Album artwork database

Does anybody know if it's possible - or even legal - to access an album artwork database to display a thumbnail image along with the current song playing in a streaming radio app?

I have a potential customer with a shopping list of features and this is one of them! Apparently "other" radio apps he has seen have this feature.

— asked November 22nd 2010 by Patrick Mounteney
  • iphone
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3 Answers

  • Pandora does it, but they have a deal in place with record companies for using music and artwork from the artists - I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure you would need to have similar permission from the artists is question. But it's purely hypothetical until you have more details about what art is to be used, and where.

    From a technical perspective, if the resource exists on the web (or is in your possession on disk), it is trivial to include it in your application as an image view, background image on a view, or inside a web view. So there are no red lights from Titanium - very probably in the legal area, though.

    — answered November 22nd 2010 by Kevin Whinnery
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    1 Comment
    • Thanks Kevin. I was rather thinking there would be legal issues - trouble is nowadays everybody expects it all to be free. I doubt my potential client would be willing to pay a license fee to display album art in their app given they are a small on-line radio station.

      — commented November 22nd 2010 by Patrick Mounteney
  • What about checking to see if LAST.FM api would cover that?

    — answered November 22nd 2010 by Chris Johnson
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    1 Comment
    • Thanks Chris - as far as I can tell with a quick look the last.FM API can get artist images but I can't see any mention of album artwork. But it does a lot of other stuff that may be useful.

      — commented November 22nd 2010 by Patrick Mounteney
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