Why Can’t iTunes Add Album Artwork Properly?
I was just listening to my music collection via XBMC and I noticed that despite my significant efforts to keep my iTunes mp3 collection nicely ordered, a lot of my new albums were ‘missing’ album artwork.
At first I couldn’t work out why as I always ensure that all new albums have the correct artwork and all in iTunes which I use to manage my files, before I sync them to XBMC or to any other device. Then I realised what was happening. Since iTunes 7 came out, it has been adding artwork automatically to files without me manually having to do it. Unfortunately though what iTunes 7 appears to be doing is rather than adding the artwork directly to the ID3 tag so that any other application or player can also see the artwork, it’s only adding the artwork to iTunes own music database. So to get the artwork to appear in other apps or XBMC, I’ve had to convert iTunes images into folder.jpg files and manually add them to the ID3 tags using mp3tag. Anotther way to add artwork is to follow my guide to Tidying Up iTunes, which walks you through how to correctly tag your files so that all mp3 players including iTunes can display and play your tunes in their full glory.
I guess Apple have decided to do this as I think the images are coming from the iTunes Music Store so technically they own the images, but it’s another reason why many users are going to struggle to ever break the stranglehold that the iPod/iTunes have on the market.
I’m so desperate to break away from Apple, if only to try something new. If anyone can show me an easy way to way to export all of my iTunes ratings to Windows Media Player (I’ve already worked out how to easily convert iTunes playlists to m3u playlists) then I think I’ll definitely be getting a Zune or another iPod ‘rival’ next year, as WMP is a much better player in my view and it will also give me better integration with my media centers.
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Comment by cameron on 8 January 2007:
Mediamonkey, my friend.
It will import your Itunes Rankings… and much, much more.
c
Comment by Jeffrey on 16 May 2007:
Hi, thanks for this article. I’ve run into exactly the same issues as you did, so many thanks for the offered solutions. It’s a shame that compatibility is still a problem in media-world. I liked iTunes very much, but the strategy Apple is following now is a bit silly. Another example of “more success doesn’t lead to better software”.
Regards,
Jeffrey
Comment by gary shelton on 25 August 2007:
I’ve downloaded a lot of art to my Itunes, but not all of it shows up in my Ipod. I’ll go back into the computer and, sure enough, the artwork is there in the summary, but it doesn’t reach the ipod. any hits?
Comment by Rob on 9 January 2008:
I have followed the instructions to add artwork for tracks for which iTunes doesn’t have artwork files e.g classical stuff from Europe. I can’t get it to work. The artwork appears to import using Get Info for multiple tracks, but even after doing Ok and the rest of it, it doesn’t show up where it should in the iTunes library. I tried closing and re-starting iTunes - no joy. Drag and drop for a single track doesn’t work for me either. This is iTunes 7. If I could work out how to copy the edition levels I would post them too. Looks like 7.5.0.20.
Help would be appreciated as I currently have 50% of my library without artwork - thanles
Comment by jason on 21 February 2008:
All i ever do is to googel the album cover and save it in the album folder, then in i tunes i highlight the album and drag and drop from the album folder into “album artwork”. this takes a while to do with each album but once you have caught up your sorted.
Comment by Ian on 13 May 2008:
Question of adding missing album art in iTunes - anyone knows a better method?
To Jason: I used your method while adding album art to files, but I encountered a big problem!
PROBLEMS AS FOLLOWS:
1) ADDING PIC TO MULTIPLE ITEMS ?
Whenever you use drag and drop you will add picture file to the ID3 of each songs of the album, and the size of the file will be enlarged accordingly.
When you have more than 1000 songs your iPod Touch or iPhone will have problem while playing in cover flow mode! It stopped abruptly as the image loading took lots of memory.
Also it takes hours if you want to import your selection with a new iTunes library (mine took 2 hours!)
2) ADDING PIC TO FIRST TRACK ONLY ?
When you add that cover manually to track 1 of the album only, it would save time process and space as well, as album picture will then adhered only to 1 track.
However, NO album art would be displayed on you iPod touch or iPhone if you transfer other songs to iPod touch or iPhone. Only track 1 will have the album art!
I PREFER THE SECOND AS IT’S A COMPROMISE TO PREVENT “HANGED” WHILE PLAYING SONGS IN IPOD, LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS!