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30 Most Recent RSS FeedJanuary 2024
UPDATED: Save Album Art to Album Folder v2.0
Save Album Art to Album Folder v2.0 is a collection of two scripts that will assist with exporting Album artwork to a track's parent folder, presumably the track's "Album" folder.
- "Save Album Art to Album Folder" will export the artwork of the selected tracks or tracks in the selected playlist as a graphics file to the folder which contains each selected track's file--or a specific user-selected folder.
- "Save Track Art to Album Folder" exports the artwork of the single selected track to its parent folder, replacing any previous version.
Read Me explains much more, including modifications you can easily make.
Universal binary for OS 10.5 and better only.
This latest version updates syntax for compatibility with Snow Leopard, streamlines some code, provides new bundled progress indicator app.
iTunes 9 Released
Apple released iTunes 9 today at its "It's only rock and roll" event. New features include "Genius Mixes"; improved syncing behaviors, like iPhone app organization; "Home sharing" to play, sync, copy tracks among up to 5 users on your local network; "iTunes LPs" in the iTunes Store featuring bonus material like lyrics, art, and video ("Cocktail"); new iTunes Store features.
Change in Folder Actions
The "on files added" Folder Actions handler in 10.6 now waits for a file to finish "arriving" before being called. Earlier versions would call the handler as soon as the a new file hit the folder. But if the file was very large the handler might fail because the file hadn't completely arrived in the folder. Now, under 10.6, if the file-being-added stays the same size for more than three seconds, it is deemed "done", and the action is called.
The workaround suggested in this Folder Actions and iTunes tip is no longer necessary in Snow Leopard.
Target QuickTime Player by application id
If you've got a script that needs to target QuickTime Player in Snow Leopard you probably really want to target "QuickTime Player 7". Otherwise, if you target "QuickTime Player" the QuickTime Player X app will run and it doesn't have the AppleScript Goodness like QTP7. However, if the script also has to run in Leopard, you have to target "QuickTime Player"--without the "7". But you don't need to write two scripts.
In OS 10.5 and later you can target an app by its application id. I remember seeing that in the AppleScript Release Notes for 10.5 thinking "Hmm. Now how can I use that" and never really thought of anything. Until I needed to access QTP in both 10.5 and 10.6.
This tell block:
tell application id "com.apple.quicktimeplayer" -- do something in QuickTime Player end tell
...will target "QuickTime Player" in OS 10.5 and "QuickTime Player 7" in OS 10.6. The application id is the same for each, so it makes no difference what their names are. And the AppleScript architecture is virtually the same in both operating systems. (Remember that "QuickTime Player 7" is an optional install either during installation or from the "Optional Installs" folder on your installation disc.)
"QuickTime Player X" is a drastically different version of the player app and scripts written for QTP7 will not play well with it. However, it is scriptable to a modest extent. Its application id is "com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX" in case you need to target QTPX specifically.
A Taste of Music Publishing
If you want to get an idea of what music publishing is like--and how it is not like the recording industry--read this NYT article that profiles Martin Bandier, chief executive of music publisher Sony/ATV. The article's accompanying photo may be all you need to see. And this: So it’s come to pass that after decades of playing second fiddle to the much bigger and brighter stars in the industry’s recording business, music publishing is on a roll. It is, as its executives like to say, a business of pennies and nickels, but that small change generates $3 billion in annual revenue, throws off enviably predictable streams of cash and has caught the eye of private equity firms and large institutional investors who are snapping up catalogs of stars like Frank Sinatra and Madonna.
NMPA Sues Motive Force
Motive Force LLC is behind LyricWiki. From an August 27, 2009 article in Ecommerce Journal: "The suit against LyricWiki [by the National Music Publishers Association] also states that the site "knowingly assist[s] and induce[s] third-party software developers to distribute copies of lyrics from Plaintiff's Songs to consumers' computers and personal media player." However, earlier this month [LyricWiki's] Sean Colombo published a letter on the LyricWiki API Developers Google Group telling developers that licensing agreements with big music publishers meant that the company could no longer add programmatic access to LyricWiki's collection."
Music publishers have waited way too long to do this and it'll be the whole RIAA thing all over again. The music publishing business may be bigger profit-wise than the recording business (and after all, before recorded music, publishing was "The Music Industry") so they've got time and resources to seriously entrench on this.
LyricWiki API Blocking SOAP?
I haven't seen anything definitive, but over the past couple of days SOAP calls to LyricWiki.org's API are being refused with a "Transport error". It's possible the API is down or that it is flat-out blocking SOAP calls. This affects the ability of the Lyrics Via LyricWiki script to function correctly.
Updated: Yes, The LyricWiki API is no more.
UPDATED: Lyrics via LyricWiki v2.1
Lyrics Via LyricWiki v2.1 addresses some changes in LyricWiki page formatting.
