[pkscout]

pkscout, I'm wondering if by setting the directory in the AS settings if the images that AS fetches are able to be saved there so they can be used next time a song by that artist is played, possibly on a different computer, as in my case. Right now the default is 'remote images first' which I suspect uses up much more bandwidth than AS using the images it downloaded last time.

I could change the default, but that would only affect new installs. Once you open the settings the first time in creates the settings based on the defaults. After that no change to the program defaults will have an affect. And if you don't select a local folder, the behavior is just like "remote first" anyway. I'm wondering how many people have multiple setups in their house that use AS. Those folks would certainly help things by using AS Helper to move images to a central location, but that means having network shares or a NAS, which isn't, I think, the case for most folks.

Honestly, if you have multiple computers, it would be much better to use something like Artwork Downloader to download art. Then turn all the remote image stuff off on AS and point AS to the Artwork Downloader folder. I've seriously considered modifying AS so that if it detects Artwork Downloader it sets all that and doesn't let you have AS download images at all. But that would mean no images for streaming audio. And I'm starting to think that's where most of the usage is and what puts the most load on theaudiodb.com (since it's highly likely you don't have artwork for that artist).

I could also look at capping the daily image downloads to something relatively small (like 20) to further reduce the load. Of course then folks will wonder why sometimes they get images and sometimes they don't.

But really, if folks would just pony up a few dollars a month to give to these services, I wouldn't have to spend my time trying to figure out how to make AS less useful.