Thanks @chaban. I had actually spotted this blog item and was already using that Report to update some arts.
I had thought about necro’ing this old post too . I will distance myself from the above thread as I agree that Amazon can go bye byes and wont be missed…
[Edited to add: @chaban’s title addition to get people to skip this FOUR YEAR OLD thread needs to stay as I really don’t think like this now and know how unreliable Amazon is. The only thing worth reading now is “bye bye amazon, hello report”]
As have I. I just slogged through 3 pages of that report (its total length is 1450 pages as of this writing) and am wondering if we should have a Community Cleanup initiative to help take care of it before the new schema change rolls out. It may seem silly (since usually that cover art can be found elsewhere) but I’ve found a few examples where the cached images had been replaced with watermarked versions or the script couldn’t pick up any images at all.
@HibiscusKazeneko I was using the report to spot where art will be “lost” on artists in my collection, but was filling in with Discogs artwork instead. Often I have notice Amazon poaching from Discogs anyway.
That Watermarking had started to appear a lot on things like Audiobooks. At least when watermarked it is clear that it is less trustable.
YMMV. In cases where only tiny (i.e. postage stamp-sized) images are available, Discogs would indeed be a good option. Another case that comes to mind is digital releases that are no longer available; if there’s no Discogs link present, the only option is the cached Amazon image.
Oh I do agree it is a mix and match of choices. Sometimes Amazon has a nice big image that can be used and I try and check for that if it is there. Still compare it to Discogs as too often I have found CDs linked to Digital editions, or a UK CD release connected to a USA ASIN of an LP.
Depends how old the release is really. Second hand stuff is especially ropey. Anything older than 10years I treat as suspect.
It is why I didn’t really like seeing this thread appear as that idiot Ivan earlier in the thread waffling away has learnt so much more about quality artwork and how shops are often hopeless with accuracy.
From what I can tell with my releases in there, I don’t see this as a loss.
The covers are not always correct.
So uploading them as is would be no good.
Having those Amazon images now is nice for illustrative purpose but I never considered them as being the actual release front covers.
I mean we could as well fall-back display the release group cover for the releases without cover art, it would give the same results: Nice for illustration but this is (may) not be the front cover.
In case anyone else is working through this report, I can recommend using the Enhanced Cover Art Uploader userscript in combination with the following bookmarklet, which turns all the release URLs on the report page into “add cover art” URLs and changes the default behaviour to opening them in a new tab (which speeds up the process):
Since the report still has 140K+ releases, it will be kept up even after the next release on Monday that will drop support for Amazon cover art in release pages.
. I will distance myself from the above thread as I agree that Amazon can go bye byes and wont be missed…
