album art not importing

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Search the forums for software that finds the artwork for CD's you import or someone else can help and post it, as I don't recall the name 🙂

I don't know where Windows Media Player stores the artwork or if it is associated with the songs. If it is not in the file then you may just need to manually transfer them 😟

btabz

Mike, I totally agree.. I have a CD collection of over 1000 CDs and the iPod made it perfect for me to enjoy that collection anywhere,.... all the ads I saw for the photo made think, why not save the extra bucks and get the album art in there too.. then I start ripping..
I had used other media players in the past all using the www.allmusic.com site for info. iTunes uses www.cddb.com instead. honestly just the presentation of these two site when you click you will see the difference, it is no wonder the iPod cant get the art work, cddb doesn't have any!!!!
cddb is a very unprofessional and juvenile site to say the least, I cant count how many times the artists names were in the song entries and vice verse.. very sad that a major co like Apple cant do some research and choose an info gathering site that has come class.
either way, im left to got the www.allmusic.com site and save the LP art to my computer and then tag it myself.
although i am 80% happy with my iPod purchase, this has been one of my biggest complaints (that and that i couldn't get an additional 60g add 🙂 )

So are you saying that ITunes does not import the artwork of any CDs that you rip (your own CD collection). So in order to get my 400 plus CDs into my IPOD with artwork I would have to manually find the files on line and paste into the Get Info. All this no matter what setting or file format?

Yep.

Thanks for the help, but i am not looking for additional software tools have to manage the artwork seperately, I would expect that Itunes can copy the artwork during the rip just like Windows Media Player does. Doesn't seem like a far out expectation.

You can have all the expectations in the world. Doesn't change the facts of the matter.

Windows Media Player gets the album artwork because Microsoft went to a lot of trouble and set up a deal with AMG specifically to be able to use their datasets for importing and other such stuff. It goes to the internet and retrieves info from windowsmedia.com, which is a Microsoft webserver hooked to AMG's database, essentially.

Apple went with Gracenote instead, which has a much more limited amount of data (which they stole from the rightful owners of that information in the formation of the company).

Short of it is that iTunes does not automatically get album art from anywhere. iTunes can't even get track names unless you specifically use iTunes to rip the CD. If you rip the CD elsewhere, import it into iTunes, iTunes can't go lookup the track info on Gracenote. WMP can do that just fine.

In many ways, Windows Media Player is far superior to iTunes. Don't act so shocked.

If you must use iTunes, I highly suggest getting a program called Tag&Rename. It will let you lookup albums after ripping them and it will get the album art from Amazon. Tag&Rename will then allow you to add the art to the files in a way that is fully compatible with iTunes. It works pretty well.

I just have a giant mess on my PC thanks to Itunes and the logic of putting each artist of a song as the governing hierarchy of folder and file storage. Rather than keeping the album in tact in 1 friggin folder!

For albums where each track is from a different artist, select all the songs in that album, do a Get Info, and turn on the "Compilation" flag. This will put them in the "Compilations" folder instead of each Artist's folder, and thus keep the album intact in one folder.

My current solution is to use WMP to rip music in MP3 format, and then add those folders to ITunes and then manually copy paste the art work from the WMP folder to the ITunes Library.

A slightly simpler way is to get Tag&Rename from http://www.softpointer.com . This program can lookup albums on Amazon and download the album art for them, one at a time. It's very useful. Then you can rip your albums with iTunes or whatever, use the above trick to put the albums into single folders, and get the album art from Amazon. Much easier than using a weird WMP/iTunes combo deal.

Do you know what other functions the "Keep ITunes Music Folder Organized" executes?

The only thing that does is allow iTunes to rename/move files around in the folder defined as your "music library" (preferences->advanced tab) as it sees fit. With that off, it won't move or rename files. The names will be used on importing tracks from CD or purchasing tracks from the music store, or on adding new tracks to the library (if "Copy added music to iTunes library" is enabled), but after that they won't get renamed or moved without the Keep setting enabled.

The Compilations folder is a good compromise, IMO. I like having things sorted by Artist, but I also like to keep Albums together.

When I first imported my library, I had to set a lot of compilation flags too. What I did was just to go down the list of albums and start setting them one by one. It didn't really take all that long, even with 600+ albums. This was even further sped up when I noticed that most of my compilation albums had the Soundtrack Genre on them. 🙂

Oh, and you only have to do it once. The compilation setting is stored in the file's tag. So once you set it, it'll still be set even if you rebuild the library. 🙂

I think I know what you are talking about...you add artwork to an MP3 file but when you sync it with iTunes the artwork does not appear. Is that it?

if it is, then you found a bug in iTunes 5.0 that cost me HOURS.

The work around is:
Delete the mp3s from the library
Sync your iPod.
Add the files back to the playlists.
Sync the iPod, again.

Now the MP3 files will have the artwork showing.

I guess no one at Apple bothered to test this version of iTunes 5.0.....

just as a note..

www.allmusic.com IS AMG (All Music Guide)
and www. cddb.com IS Gracenote.