How can I have Rhythmbox download album art for tracks?

Question

I can't seem to find an inbuilt way to have Rhythmbox fetch album art for tracks -- stock plugins also don't help. Is there any external package that could do that, or am I maybe missing something?

Answer 1

AlbumArtSearch is a third party plug in for Rhythmbox that will search for and download the cover art for the currently playing track. Unfortunately, it doesn't run in the background automatically, though the fact that you can refine searches makes sure you get the covers that you are actually looking for.

First install the two dependencies:

sudo apt-get install python-webkit python-mako

Next download the plugin. You can get it at the link above or run:

wget http://albumartsearch.googlecode.com/files/albumartsearch_0.2.tar.gz

Finally you need to extract it in the folder ~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins This can be done with Nautilus or by running these commands:

mkdir -p  ~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins
tar -xvf albumartsearch_0.2.tar.gz -C ~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins

Answer 2

You need to install the rhythmbox-plugins package then enable the 'Cover Art' plugin in Edit>Plugins:

Now, when you rip your CDs, the album art will be added automatically.

Answer 3

It would be useful to know what version of Ubuntu you are using. I use Ubuntu 10.04. In my Rhythmbox the cover art wasn't shown, too. But in the Plugins dialog there is a cover plugin. Initially it was checked. I unchecked it and checked it again. And then the area of the album art was shown and the album art of playing songs is also downloaded now.

Additionally there are other plugings, which you could try:

http://code.google.com/p/albumartsearch/