CoverSutra – Love your Music
I am always on the look for a simple, yet easy to use application that allows me to control my iTunes listening, without having to even touch iTunes. To me, it’s always a little bit of a nuisance to have to switch windows back and forth to change the album, artist or playlist that I’m listening to. Enter the world of CoverSutra, this application allows you to change the song, artist, album or playlist you’re listening to through designated shortcuts, through the application window, or it’s built in Menu Bar option.
Upon opening CoverSutra, you’ll be greeted with it beautiful and elegant interface. CoverSutra is split into three main viewing options – firstly, you have the main CoverSutra window. The window itself is pretty basic – and that’s because there’s no need for it to be overly complicated. From this window, you can change the song you’re listening too, skip through and rate the song, change the volume and turn on repeat & shuffle. It’s very handy to invoke the window with a simple shortcut, do what you need to do, and continue with what you were doing earlier… all with no need to even touch iTunes.
One of the other options of controlling your iTunes listening, is also the most powerful option here (and one of my favorites). CoverSutra also adds itself to the MenuBar and 
upon clicking the logo, pops-up a Spotlight style search box, from here you can search for an Artist, Album, Song, Playlist or all at once. CoverSutra even includes the album artwork, which easily allows you to distinguish between different songs and albums easily – from there you can then start playing the song or by performing a secondary click, add it to iTunes DJ.
And lastly, CoverSutra also displays a CD Case on your desktop, displaying the album art of the song you’re listening to. You can have it display the album artwork as a Record Sleeve, an old-style CD Case or a Jewel Box CD Case, and by performing a secondary click on the album artwork, you can easily browse the songs that are on that album and play them. CoverSutra uses the album artwork found in your iTunes Library, but if there’s no artwork associated with the song, it displays a handwritten style cover. Even with the vast features and options CoverSutra offers, it never becomes complicated or bloated, it stays refined and easy-to-use throughout the whole application.
One of my favourite features is Last.fm integration – CoverSutra allows you to scrobble the song’s you’ve played to Last.fm HQ, where it’s displayed in your Profile. I love using Last.fm to let others know what I’m listening to, so it’s a great addition to have. The application also support Growl Notifications and Bezel-style notifications which display when you change the song – another nice feature to have.
CoverSutra also has a ton of shortcuts that you can record to perform actions within the program, including those to show/hide the player controls, the iTunes window, to toggle on & off the Repeat and Shuffle functions, to search for music and to rate songs. There’s a vast array of options that you can record shortcuts to, all of which can be found in the applications Preferences.
All-in-all, CoverSutra is a fantastic application, which is easy to use, sports a beautiful refined and easy to use interface, has options to Scrobble to Last.fm and record keyboard shortcuts for nearly every feature in the application. CoverSutra is compatible with Mac OSX Tiger and above and sells for $19.95 (£13.20). It’s available to download from the Developers Website, and a free trial is also available – I highly recommend this inexpensive application to anyone who wants an easier way to control their iTunes music playback – without having to touch iTunes.
