Is there anything worse than scrolling through your music library and cringing every time you pass by an album with no artwork? Have you ever spent hours searching through Google Images to find blurred, low quality pictures of your favorite imported CD’s?

If yes, then 5byfive is a service that will make your day.

Brought to my attention by its creator Bill Labus, it didn’t take me long to appreciate the effectiveness of this tool. Here’s how Bill described it to me:

I’ve recently polished off the beta of a new site I created that allows you to quickly and easily grab CD album art covers: http://www.5byfive.net

It’s focused on simplicity, speed, and accuracy.

The concise explanation gives good insight to how this tool was designed.

Using the Tool

Right off, the interface hints that this is a well designed tool.

This app is visually appealing.

Go through your favourite media player and find an album with a missing cover. Then in 5byfive, simply type in the album name. Results start showing up as you type, but once you’ve completed your typing, you should be left with the correct album cover.

The large image ensures you get the right album cover.

In my usage, I found that 90% of time, the results were accurate. The only trouble I encountered was with classical albums that I had ripped from CD. Aside from that, every missing cover was replaced with the proper image file — all of good quality.

The Options

Once you’ve found the image you’re looking for, hover the mouse over the image for the available options (note again the nice design touches in the hover options).

Choose from the three available options.

They are: Download, Email Link and Get Album.

• Download: Clicking this will open another browser window or tab with the image file only.
• Email Link: This will option a new message in your default email application with the link included in the body of the message.
• Get Album: Lastly, you can purchase the album itself from Amazon by clicking on the Get Album options.

That’s all that you can do with this tool. Simple and effective, as well as fast.

Once you’ve found your album cover and clicked on the Download link, simply right click on the image itself and save it to a convenient location on your computer’s hard drive.

Save the image from your browser window.

Finish it Off

From there, follow the instructions for applying album art to files in your music library. For iTunes users, this can be done by right clicking on the song or album in iTunes and selecting the Get Info option. On the Artwork tab, simply drag and drop the image file onto the large blank box in the middle.

Done.

The Web at Its Best

In recent times, single page websites and single purpose applications have received a lot of attention. There’s a lot to be said for doing one thing, but doing it really well. 5byfive is a great illustration of this concept.

If you’ve got a messy music library, go clean it up.