Just a quick post to shed some light on an issue some may be having with their iTunes album artwork. The last time I moved my entire iTunes library from one computer to another, I noticed some of my artwork didn’t show up. On doing some research, it seems that ever since iTunes 7, it actually stores the artwork in a separate library file, and doesn’t attach it to the actual music files themselves. While there are some programs like TuneUp that our very own Dave Sack reviewed that will go through your entire collection and change that, an easy and free way to make sure the artwork is attached to any new song you import or purchase is this:
1 – Right-click on the track, and click Get Info
2 – Click on the Art tab on the far right
3 – Click on the artwork once and Control-C to copy (Command-C on Mac)
4 – Press Delete, which will erase the artwork you see
5 – Press Control-V (Command-V) and paste the copied art back in
6 – Press OK
This painfully simple process will actually attach the artwork to the file tag so the artwork will now travel with the file where ever it may go.
Also, if you’d like to embed artwork for an entire album, just select all of the tracks, right-click and go to ‘Get Info’, then paste the artwork into the ‘Artwork’ box… your artwork will be applied to all of the tracks.
Or you can use our previously reviewed TuneUp to fix larger libraries:
You can find the review here: http://hijinksinc.com/2010/07/05/hijinks-reviews-tuneup/
That’s true, thanks for pointing that out. I revised the article above to reflect that fact.
The above method is just a free alternative to taking care of the artwork… obviously TuneUp would also take care of track naming, etc.
No problem! The free way is fast and easy for a CD or two, but a huge pain in the butt when you have multiple thousands of songs to sort.