CoverScout can search Amazon’s music library for covers, but it doesn’t match the song with the correct album.

iTunes’ ability to display album artwork adds a visual element to your music collection, but its ability to actually get that artwork doesn’t always work. CoverScout can help fill those holes in your music collection, if you can work around some of its shortcomings.

The Get Album Artwork feature in iTunes only searches the iTunes Store library. CoverScout searches Amazon and Google, which means you’ll be able to find artwork for just about any song. CoverScout embeds the artwork into the ID3 tag of the music file, whereas iTunes keeps artwork in a separate database - and separate from the song file itself.

CoverScout needs to improve its search function, however. For example, an Amazon search for Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass’s “The Lonely Bull” gave us 20 album covers, but “The Lonely Bull” was a track on only four of those albums. CoverScout’s Google searches can tie a track to the proper album, but you can’t have symbols such as “&” in your ID3 tags.

The bottom line. CoverScout isn’t a one- or two-click solution, but we like how the software incorporates the artwork into the ID3 tags of the file.

COMPANY: Equinux

CONTACT: www.equinux.com

PRICE: $19.95 (single user), $29.95 (three users), $49.95 (five users)

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later, iTunes 6.0.2 or later, Internet connection

Get art for music not found in the iTunes Store. Embeds album art into song’s ID3 tag. Universal binary.

Searches need more features to help increase accuracy.