Album Art for Non-iTunes Songs?

Amie

Amie

Mac Convert for Life
I have some songs in my iTunes library that I've imported from my own CDs and other songs that I've purchased from the iTunes Music Store. The only songs that show album art when playing are the ones that I bought from iTunes. Is this final or is there a way to make album art appear when playing all songs, including ones that didn't come from the iTunes Music Store?

Appreciate your help,
A.
 
Yeah, you can. Select the tracks you want to add art to, and drag any JPEG file onto the "Album art" placeholder (actually, I think it'll work with any image format, but I'd use JPEG anyway, personally). Done. You can do this for individual tracks or in batches.

Keep in mind, though, that the image data will be stored just like the rest of the metadata (title, artist, etc): inside each individual mp3. For this reason, you should be sure the images you add in aren't any bigger than they need to be. I once added a 200K image to a whole large album. That wasted a lot of disk space!
 
Whoa. OK, problem with both of your posts (not on your parts, but on mine). 1) Where do I get this JPEG of album art that you speak of? And 2) I'm not at all familiar with Applescript. Isn't that were you type commands and stuff in Terminal and risk wiping out your entire system? (Granted, *you're* probably not at risk 'cause you know what you're doing; but if *I* attempted something that like, I'd probably cause my iBook to explode.)
 
The short answer is that songs do not automatically come with album art and album art is not automatically added to songs that you rip from CDs or get anywhere other than the iTunes Music Store.

You must manage album art yourself, just like ID3 tags and the like, for any songs other than those that come from the iTunes Music Store.

As stated before, both Amazon and Buy.com have album art available -- simply find the song in their respective "Music" sections, and click on the album art. Both sites open a new window with a full-size pic of the album that can easily be dragged/saved to your desktop and then into iTunes.
 
1. Google's image search usually yields good results (in my experience). Drag the image from Safari to your desktop, and from there to iTunes. Or, like lurk said, you can look at online stores.

2. AppleScript isn't like Terminal. There's very little risk. The language is very clear, so you can't delete your whole hard drive unless you very specifically tell it to (whereas "rm -rf /", which would delete your whole HD in Terminal, is hardly clear or specific!).

Also, RGrphc2 linked to a specific script. You don't need to type anything at all. Just run the script, and it'll do its thing.
 
lurk said:
One easy thing to do is just look up the album on amazon and drag and drop the album cover to where you want it.
Click to expand...
Drag and drop? Yeah, I guess that would be easier than clicking on the photo, saving it as a JPEG to my desktop, going back to iTunes and clicking on the song, clicking Get Info, clicking Add Art, then pulling the photo into the album art box. Which is what I've been doing for the past two hours for more than 100 songs. :eek:
 
Thanks, guys, for all your help and suggestions!

By the way, I looked into Clutter, which someone recommended to me (either here or in a different Mac forum), but I decided against downloading it after reading about it. It's basically just a bunch of windows of album art on your desktop. Talk about clutter! Now I know how it got its name. No, thanks. LOL
 
I use fetch art and does quite a good joob for me too but I tend to use two other sources if and when needed allmusic and cduniverse which do provide album covers in a size that fits iTunes fine.
 
Fetch art also keeps a copy of all the images in your libary aswell, and so if fetch art does put the album art into the song file itself that can be deleted.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top