iTunes album covers

Dolby

Dolby

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I'm guessing the answer to my question is Steve Jobs felt his way was best and there are incompatibles again between Apple and everyone else - but I'll ask anyhow ;)

I've just brought all my media to my local machine as previously on the network, it was too slow to access. With this, I decided to actually give iTunes another chance and import a brand new library.

I now notice a fair amount of album covers are missing - BUT if I open in Windows Media Player they're available. WMP can go online and find the few that I don't have, but then iTunes can't see it.

I'm guessing it was a strategic option again :/ How do I get my album art top show in iTunes?
 
If you use something like Mp3Tag to add covers, iTunes will see them. iTunes uses the standard space in ID3v2 tags (for mp3 files anyway). Otherwise, just add the covers using iTunes. WMP shows very little of the covers I use, while iTunes and Foobar2000 (and Mp3Tag) show them just fine.
 
iTunes will find you album covers if you log on with a US Store account... Just right click and select Get Album Artwork.
 
And the few you can't solve with above advice - copy jpg, select all songs in album in itunes, right click Info, paste in cover square.
 
I have MP3tag and that's how I do it ... but that's 30,000+ tracks that I need to find.

Windows Media Player see's 90% of them already. And for the remainder, I right click and select 'Find album info' - and it comes back with the cover. However, iTunes doesn't see it.

I don't have a US iTunes account - but on the accounts it will only work if the item was imported through iTunes - which none of mine are anyway.
 
Dolby said:
I have MP3tag and that's how I do it ... but that's 30,000+ tracks that I need to find.

Windows Media Player see's 90% of them already. And for the remainder, I right click and select 'Find album info' - and it comes back with the cover. However, iTunes doesn't see it.

I don't have a US iTunes account - but on the accounts it will only work if the item was imported through iTunes - which none of mine are anyway.
Click to expand...

Not sure 'bout that last part... With a US Store account it'll look for the info on any track in your iTunes library, whether bought from the store or dragged into the library.

PS. When you get that iMac, get CoverScout 3... Does the searching and tagging for you.
 
Nuro said:
If you use something like Mp3Tag to add covers, iTunes will see them. iTunes uses the standard space in ID3v2 tags (for mp3 files anyway). Otherwise, just add the covers using iTunes. WMP shows very little of the covers I use, while iTunes and Foobar2000 (and Mp3Tag) show them just fine.
Click to expand...

I'm the opposite :/

WMP shows most covers and iTunes shows nothing. Automatically finding them via WMP is quick and easy - but then iTunes doesn't see them. iTunes will see them if I go through MP3Tag - but they're not automatic.

If both use the standard ID3v2 - why the issue?
 
Dolby said:
I'm the opposite :/

WMP shows most covers and iTunes shows nothing. Automatically finding them via WMP is quick and easy - but then iTunes doesn't see them. iTunes will see them if I go through MP3Tag - but they're not automatic.

If both use the standard ID3v2 - why the issue?
Click to expand...
Simple there are some discrepancies in the interpretation of the "standard" and support for for it, summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3 hence there are solutions that try to best cover or the discrepancies -- none unfortunately are perfect.
 
Last edited:
Ok.

I'm not winning.

Is there anyone here that I can maybe send an MP3 and see if it shows on their side?

Manual is too slow
 
Many ...

But I can send one which reads in WMP, Windows Explorer and AFAIK embedded ... but won't show.

My uncle is an Apple person and when I showed him screenshots of everything but iTunes reading, he said he didn't look right. Hoping someone on here that knows more about tagging can help?
 
I just copied 4 different albums from my Windows machine to my MacBook and iTunes named and inserted album automatically. It did everything perfectly. However, last night I copied a Norah Jones album across and iTunes did not recognize it. I got the album art from Google/Amazon and right-clicked on the album>get info> and then filled in the artist name etc. Then iTunes sorted it out. I'm going to test a few more albums and see what happens.
 
The problem is not with iTunes but with how WMP reads the covers. WMP when you import a cd it gets its cover from allmusic.com and downloads a folder.jpg file and places it on the folder where the album is. So the cover is never written to the id3 tag of the album, its just referenced to the folder.jpg file.

iTunes on the other hand writes the cover on the actual mp3 file and that cover lives and dies with the song. Personally I prefer the iTunes route as you are always guaranteed that the song will have the cover unlike the WMP route where if you move the mp3 from the folder then the cover gets lost.

If you do not want to download the covers from the net you can just reference them to the musicFolder\folder.jpg file (its a hidden file by default). Also the file is a low resolution file which if you stream your music to your tv the file gets really pixilated.
 
Install Winamp
select your entire collection,
right click
Send to
Auto-Tag

depending on the size of your collection, just leave it for an hour (or ten).
save
exit
start I-Tunes.

Voilah.
 
I'll give that a try when I get home ...

Thanks for the tip!
 
One issue with this way, is that it reads it the same way as everything else .... so loading Winamp shows just about all my music has covers :/

I don't have an issue with the tags, so I can right click and select fetch album art - but you can't do this in a batch ... it's one by one with 2,200+ albums
 
Dolby said:
One issue with this way, is that it reads it the same way as everything else .... so loading Winamp shows just about all my music has covers :/

I don't have an issue with the tags, so I can right click and select fetch album art - but you can't do this in a batch ... it's one by one with 2,200+ albums
Click to expand...

You can do all at once. In iTunes click view>as list... then ctrl-a and right click and get album artwork....
 
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