Slow response rate from Curl / Ajax - php

Question

General Info
Hi guys,
I was deciding to post this or not due to the question but i said hell, why not!
What am i doing?
I have an array of music tracks which is pushed into a ajax request which i then loop through in php and pass each track into a curl request to then go off and pull down coverart for them specific tracks! The coverart of course is in .jpg or .png format of a link, so rihanna.jpg is returned. I then push them into another array which is my end result which is then pushed back to my ajax result (data) and i go from there.
My issue?
When i push in 60 tracks, the response is around 30 seconds which is a long ass wait! I am trying to retrieve information as quick as possible so i can update the end-users GUI without leaving them with a loading bar for periods of time while the data loads.
Now i looked into this and my theory behind why its so slow is either down to the api call is lacking in the response department or the curl is hogging and slowing it all down! I heard of curl_multi and all those but have never used nor do i no were to start! I am not even sure if that will solve this. Can someone please input on this to try ease my mind? Is this speed all i will ever get or is it possible to speed this up? Before i was creating ajax calls within a loop and i thought it was because of that so i did a change to push all the tracks into one array which is then passed into one ajax but it did not speed anything up.. Same response rate to be honest!
My PHP code:
function curlGet($url, $proxy = null)
{
$ch = curl_init($url);
#curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Connection: close"));
#curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL, 1);
#curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_IPRESOLVE, CURL_IPRESOLVE_V4);
if (isset($proxy)) {
if ($proxy['enable'] === '1') {
$proxy['user'] === '' || #curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, $proxy['user'].':'.$proxy['pass']);
#curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy['host']);
}
}
#curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS, 400);
#curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
#curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
#curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $response;
}
$trackarray = $_POST['trackarray'];
$returnarray = [];
foreach($trackarray as $i => $track) {
$strippedarray = explode(" - ", $track, 2);
$strippedartist = $strippedarray[0];
$strippedtrack = $strippedarray[1];
$ArtistTrack = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=track.getInfo&api_key=KEYHERE&artist=".$strippedartist."&track=".$strippedtrack."&format=json";
$ArtistL = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=artist.getInfo&api_key=KEYHERE&artist=".$strippedartist."&format=json";
$AToutput = json_decode(curlGet($ArtistTrack, $proxy), true);
$Aoutput = json_decode(curlGet($ArtistL, $proxy), true);
if($AToutput == "" || $AToutput['track']['album']['image']['3']['#text'] == "") //Artist-Track failed, lets try just arist!
{
if($Aoutput == "" || $Aoutput['artist']['image']['3']['#text'] == "") //If Artist Failed, serve default-coverart.png
{
array_push($returnarray, "../location/cover-default.png");
}
else //Artist success, serve artist.png
{
array_push($returnarray, $Aoutput['artist']['image']['3']['#text']);
}
}
else //Artist-Track Success, Serve artist-track.png
{
array_push($returnarray, $AToutput['track']['album']['image']['3']['#text']);
}
}
echo json_encode($returnarray);
My Javascript:
$('#spinner-db').removeClass('hide');
var windowwidth = $(window).width();
var blockwidth = 350;
var rowcount = parseInt(windowwidth / blockwidth);
var buffersize = parseInt(rowcount * 4);
var endindex = parseInt(buffersize * 2);
var loadimagearray = localcontent.slice(0,endindex);
var currentdatabase = "#database-entries";
$.ajax({
url : '/location/script.php?cmd=commandhere',
cache: false,
type: 'POST',
data: {trackarray: loadimagearray}
}).done(function(data)
{
$.each( loadimagearray, function( i, l ) //Loop through each item in array
{
if($(currentdatabase+' li[track-info="' + l + '"] img').attr('src') == "../assets/img/cover-default.png")
{
$(currentdatabase+' li[track-info="' + l + '"] img').attr('src',JSON.parse(data)[i]);
if(i == (loadimagearray.length - 1)) //Hide Loader
{
$('#spinner-db').addClass('hide');
}
}
});
});