Identifying CC licensed music in iTunes

Lucas Gonze lgonze at panix.com
Tue Dec 16 12:06:03 EST 2003


Cool idea, Nathan.

Modifying the album artwork may be easier than you think.  iTunes  
artwork comes from images embedded in non-audio frames in audio files  
(you may already know this); if the particular CC license permits  
modification, you can just embed the image in the song and release the  
new file.

- Lucas

On Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003, at 11:56 America/New_York, Nathan R. Yergler  
wrote:

> Winter break is coming up for me, so naturally I'm looking for  
> something to entertain me (besides fixing mozCC bugs, of course).  As  
> some of you might know, I am a Mac user, and really enjoy the bundled  
> applications.  Especially iTunes.
> I've been toying with ways to display some metadata indication in  
> iTunes when the song I'm listening to has a license URL embedded.  I  
> have two ideas, and I'm looking for some feedback.  I've done some  
> *very* basic looking online, so I think both of these are possible.  I  
> have not found anyway to actually modify the iTunes GUI or display (to  
> display metadata in the "now playing" area, etc); if anyone has an  
> example or can point me in the right direction, I'd definitly be  
> interested in that.  As such, here are my two ideas; I'm not in love  
> with either, but absent a "full" GUI integration, they're what I've  
> come up with.
>
> First (and possibly easier): place a (CC) menu on the menubar; when  
> the currently playing song is licensed, attribute icons would  
> (optionally) be displayed, so some other indication made.  For  
> example, the menu icon might have a glow or underline added when  
> metadata is available.  I like this because I think I can build on  
> some sample code I found, and I think it'd be easier overall to have a  
> separate "helper" app which just looked to iTunes for signals.   
> There's a small mock-up attached, and a larger, full-screen one at  
> http://yergler.net/projects/images/itunes-mockup-1.jpg .
>
> Second: Add licensing attributes to the album artwork for a song when  
> a licensed song is played.  The composite artwork could be shown in  
> the "Selected Song" area of iTunes.  I like this because it's  
> integrated within iTunes, but it's not perfect because it is only  
> visible in full-window mode (not in the collapsed mode).  Again, a  
> small mock-up is attached with a full-screen version at  
> http://yergler.net/projects/images/itunes-mockup-2.jpg .
>
> So I'd like to get some feedback about which approach seems better.   
> I'd especially like feedback from Mac users and iTunes users, but any  
> feedback is welcome.  Thanks in advance for all your help.
>
> Nathan
> <itunes-mockup-1-excerpt.jpg><itunes-mockup-2- 
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