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How to fix your iTunes artwork
I recently learned a little trick that helped me to fix the artwork that was associated with the songs in my music collection. Over the past few years, I've used a number of different artwork importing tools, with varied results. Although for the most part everything was fine, I began to find that the images that were coming up for some of my songs were completely incorrect. At first it didn't concern me too much, but when it reached a point where one in five songs had the wrong album art, I started to get annoyed. My first thought was that since iTunes now affords the ability to automatically import high-quality album art images, I might as well take advantage of that fact. So I finally jumped through the hoops that Apple makes you jump through (namely, signing up for an iTunes Store account with a valid credit card - no matter, since I don't intend to buy anything), and I was finally able to check the little option to automatically download missing album art. Of course, although this will help me gather up the missing bits, it does nothing to fix the ones that are currently wrong.
No matter, I though, I'll simply use the right-click option (I'm a Windows user - I'm not sure what the Mac equivalent is... something like Command-Shift-CapsLock-Tab Click while patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time - okay, sorry... that was uncalled for) to clear downloaded album art. Feeling proud of myself for thinking of it, I promptly highlighted my entire music collection (might as well fix 'em all at once, right?), and chose Clear Downloaded Artwork from the context menu. Unfortunately, here's what I saw:
Crossing my fingers, I clicked the Clear Downloaded Artwork button, only to find that the vast majority of my album artwork (including the wrong stuff) still existed. Crap. Now what?
I couldn't believe that there would be no way in iTunes to clear embedded album artwork from an MP3 file. It took some digging, but I finally figured it out. Maybe I'm the only person that is interested in this particular feature of iTunes, but it took me a while to find it, so I'm writing it up here in the hopes it helps someone else.
The secret is to choose Get Info from the context menu, rather than Clear Downloaded Artwork. This doesn't seem entirely intuitive, but trust me on this one. Try it with one song, if you like, just to see what I mean, but I promise it also works if you select a bunch of songs. If you select one song, simply click on the Artwork tab (the last one), highlight the image and click the delete button. If you're selecting a group of songs, it will ask if you want to edit information for multiple items (choose yes), then you get a more generic dialog, that looks like this:
Notice the checkmark in the checkbox beside the big Artwork box. I did that for you - you're welcome. So here's the deal, and it's the part I had the hardest time wrapping my head around, but it works. The trick is to check this box, like I just did here. When you click OK, having this checked will remove all associated album artwork from the songs you selected.
Depending on how many songs you had selected, this can take a bit of time, since it's chugging through all of your songs removing the image from the song file. But when you're done, you've got a nice clean set of song files, and iTunes will now dutifully download the appropriate artwork for each file as you play it. Of course, now you can right-click and choose "Get Album Artwork" for the set. In my experience that will work for some of the songs, and it's worth doing... but you'll want to leave the option checked to automatically download missing artwork, just in case it misses some.
Comments
45
Subscribe to commentsramalamaDec 11th 2006 6:03PM
Jeff Benson wrote: iTunes has the facility to embed album artwork directly into .mp3 files. I've been using that feature for years.
Actually, Jeff, that went away with iTunes 7. And is why I still use 6.
Also, found at www.softpointer.com an Explorer extension that enables editing tags from Microsoft Explorer, including the ability to add album art directly to any music file from the file's property page. Called AudioShell, it is fantastic. A great way to get those unnamed tracks into shape before adding to the iTunes library.
EvertonDec 1st 2006 6:21PM
actually jeff i'm right. if you let itunes add the art it doesnt add it to the tag. if you add your own artwork via itunes it does add it to the tag.
Everton
Steve MillsDec 1st 2006 8:35PM
Well duh! How long have you been using iTunes? That's how you change any of the tags for multiple tracks. For a single track, Get Info->Artwork (command-i, command-6 on a Mac), tab to select, delete.
And yes, right-click works on Mac. Has for years, and unlike most of the right-click menus I've seen on Windoze, the Mac gives you a true contextual menu without the clutter of menu items that are currently disabled.
KickahDec 2nd 2006 1:35AM
Everton is right, artwork *automatically* added by iTunes is *not* embedded in your MP3s, and so it's only useful in iTunes. Artwork manually added to songs does get embedded, though. I use MPFreaker to automatically get art instead.
notusingwindowsDec 2nd 2006 2:24AM
Wow, what a huge timesave....NOT!! I could of told you that get info and checking the box would get rid of artwork since iTunes 2. What a huge timewaster. Maybe you should hold down SHIFT-COMMAND-CTRL while you take your head out of your ass moron.
RPJDec 2nd 2006 2:14PM
Just to help clear up the confusion: this works because you are effectively telling iTunes to add "null" artwork to every file you've selected. By "null" I mean no artwork at all, hence why it goes through and clears *all* artwork for the selected files, be it artwork that's embedded in the file itself or been downloaded by iTunes.
MikeDec 2nd 2006 4:35AM
Re:
18. Are you using Vista? Or is that XP with a theme. Either way, I like. Could you please let me know how you got windows to look like that. (Unless the procedure involves right clicking, I use a mac mouse...)
Posted at 12:25PM on Dec 1st 2006 by Eric
Ironically, he's using the Zune theme for XP, available from -- of course -- Microsoft.
I have it installed myself.
David RickardDec 2nd 2006 5:11AM
It's very simple - the artwork downloader works MUCH better if your songs are named properly! If your tags are a bit out, it gets confused. For example, 'Green Day' and 'Greenday' will confuse it a bit, as will having 'The' in front of a band name where it officially isn't (and vice-versa). I had it download totally the wrong art for some tracks. The track data it uses when ripping CDs (from CDDB) doesn't really tie up well with the data they use in the iTMS. Case in point, I imported a CD of Yusuf Islam's new album, but because CDDB had it in differently, it wouldn't get the art until I cleaned up the tags. Bit silly, but hey, if it gets decent art for me, I don't mind!
AJDec 2nd 2006 12:27PM
For the record, Macs have been able to right click for years.
andrewDec 2nd 2006 12:28PM
now that i got my artwork fixed up, i need lyrics! any programs to do that?
Donkey KongDec 2nd 2006 6:31PM
nice tip :)
WaltDec 2nd 2006 11:03PM
Thank you. Some months ago, I used some freeware app to download album art. What it actually did was jumble the art work so that about 100 of my songs had the WRONG ART WORK. Very frustrating.
Again, I thank you for helping me sort this out.
www.itunescovers.comDec 3rd 2006 11:36AM
Check this out to download new and up to date iTunes CD covers: http://www.itunescovers.com
PghSkierDec 3rd 2006 12:46PM
I finally decided to make the switch from using Anapod to iTunes because I could never be certain artwork would transfer correctly using the former. I had been using an old version of MP3 tag studio to do most tag editing, while using Abander tag control so as to add artwork to every file. I've also been normalizing everything with MP3 Gain.
What is iTunes doing? Suddenly, artwork is stripped from tags (sometimes all, sometimes just a few files within an album folder), new art files are added, but not always, as some are only within its own file structure. Now my collection looks beautiful on iTunes, but is ruined for use with any other player.
Luckily, I keep read-only copies of everything elsewhere. I started off in UberNet, you see.
EvertonDec 3rd 2006 2:02PM
Actually Jeff I'm right. If you let iTunes add the art it doesn't add it to the tag. But, if you add the art yourself via iTunes then yes it does add it to the tag.
EvertonDec 4th 2006 12:55PM
#34 - read #21
#29 - try musicbrainz picard to get lyrics. I think it adds the lyrics as well as the correct tags if they are available
William AlexanderDec 21st 2006 3:17PM
Hey - regarding the mac trick for the right click - it's control click - but here's a question: How do you type an em-dash on a PC? On mac it's option+dash - what is it on a PC? Yeah how you like that!
Gary MunnDec 22nd 2006 12:45PM
I had given up trying to use Itunes to download MP3's to my phone. Is it possible to use a more user friendly program??
JoelDec 23rd 2006 10:01PM
Thank you SO much! I was getting so frustrated with incorrect album art that I couldn't figure out how to remove. You da man.
AmmonyteJan 9th 2007 1:20PM
All I want to do is is remove or turn off the nag box to download ablum art. I have all the alum art downloaded already, I don't want an iTunes store account, oh and being treated like a grown-up and given the choice of items to install would have been nice.