When I made this request, your site was included in the Album Art Downloader program, so I assumed it was OK to add here. So it wasn't meant to be a malicious backdoor to the site. I do understand, though, that you need to make money to cover the cost of the site.
Yes, Album Art Downloader was using an AAX API. I asked the author to remove it months ago and he complied. The original owner of the site posted an API but that was way back when we first started out and it was hosted on his home machine. We had maybe 3k covers and a max of 6 users online at a time back then. I took over the site some 19 months ago. Now, we are growing exponentially and have had to move to a dedicated server. The only way I have of keeping the site alive is with some revenue through user sales. Sad but, reality. I refuse to plaster advertising all over the place like some sites so, this is the alternative.
Back door traffic is about 20% of our total bandwidth and this has to change. Also, we are initiating some changes in the coming week that should throw a wrench programs like this as well as off-site downloading software. Glad you understand that I am not just trying to be a jerk about it.
As far as "malicious", I'm sure that 99% are just trying to download in what they perceive to be an easier way. OTOH, there are wholesale downloading attempts all if the time which is why I do not authorize software such as this program and need to route them through the front so that it is easier to monitor; that's Webmaster SOP for security. More importantly: Many of our submissions are worked on very hard by their contributors and they deserve the view count and votes.
But, just a question, does the site have to be fully removed? Could it possibly just return a result that confirms the artwork is on the site without showing the image or allowing it to be downloaded? Now that your site is removed from Album Art Downloader and will be removed from MusicBee, I'd be unlikely to manually visit your site just to check for artwork. I appreciate the quality of the scans, but without a convenient search that at least confirms if the cover is on the site or not I'm unlikely to use it at all. And having it in the program would no doubt increase exposure of your site (I never knew about it until Album Art Downloader, myself).
No offense and pardon my hubris but, we’re probably going to have it and there are only what, two other real choices? I’ve got about 75, 000 tracks all filled with artwork that is on AAX. If we don’t have it choice #2 quality wise is ACDC and if THEY don’t have it, Amazon. Yes, it’s nice to be able to do this from one spot but there is no cheap and easy way for us to let just SOME of the programs in and the programming changes that are coming will probably make software like this ineffective for accessing the site, anyway. Perhaps in the future, we could modify and distribute an API that only allows thumbnails like ACDC’s. I am willing to do that at a later date (I already have a lot of upcoming projects for my programmer. ).
Hopefully, the exposure aspect will work itself out over time, Now that we have moved to larger quarters, I am about to enter another phase of a multi-phased SEO scheme which should greatly improve our exposure.
Cheers,
Scott
