Why can't I manually add artwork for some albums?

I have just started having the same issue. I even tried to restore to the last version but after the restore, I still had the newest version of iTunes. I knew I shouldn't have updated my iTunes without checking the message boards!! When will I ever learn? 😢

What format are the files in? You can't add artwork to .wav files. iTunes will also fail to add art to files that are read-only or for which it doesn't have the appropriate security permissions. (Your account and system need full access rights).

tt2

If iTunes can find a match between your .wav album and one in the store it can associate downloaded store art with the album. There is no other way to connect art with .wav files.

For your mp3 file that won't take art right-click on it and then select Show in Windows Explorer. Right-click on the file and click Properties. Check the file is not marked as Read Only. See the security tab for details of access rights. If that doesn't fix things then examine the file with mp3val.

.wav files take up a lot of room, and can't store art and other tag information. You might find my script ConvertFormat useful. If you opt for Apple Lossless encoding you should be able to halve the size of the files while not losing any audio quality, or you can choose mp3 or aac at 320k or 256k if you are happy with the results and want to be able to squeeze even more tracks onto your devices.

tt2

mp3val is perfectly safe and will detect & repair errors in mp3 tag structures. Alternatively you can try right-clicking on the file in question and using Convert ID3 Tags > None a couple of times then Convert ID3 Tags > v2.3. You may then find you can add art.

tt2

I am using iTunes 10.6.1 on a new Mac and having the same artwork issue. While manually copy/pasting JPG artwork via any method (one at a time in the large artwork pane, all album cuts at once, etc.), it appears to work. However, when you move to another song in the playlist and click back to the song with the new artwork only a "solid black image" fille the artwork pane. This is the same exact issue apple caused in a previous update of iTunes (i think during the 9.x era). You'd think they would test this basic functionality.

I had this problem and it drove me nuts but I finally worked it out.

For some reason the albums that would NOT accept their artwork had tracks in itunes that were aliases, not the actual song file itself. No idea why.

But as soon as I found the 'original file'/folder for the album, I deleted the alias files, reimported the 'real/original album/tracks and all was great.

So make sure your rogue albums are not using aliases to play

Good luck

Phlip

After much searching. And after much frustration! I have found the magic solution! Add artwork to the WAV files that iTunes does not recognize. No more grayed out artwork tab. You will, however, need to re-download the music file from the CD

1) Insert Music CD

2) When iTunes pops up, Exit iTunes

3) Next, either access the CD file from "Finder" or the "CD Disc Icon" on your desktop

4) Double click the CD

5) Drag all songs to your desktop

(I consider myself an audiophile, so note: these will transfer as AIFF files, not WAV. AIFF is stilll a lossless format. There is absolutely no compression here.

6) Click the song on your desktop. And wallah. If you go to iTunes, get info, and you now have the option to add Artwork!!

Optional: Goto Finder, then search iTunes. Click through until you get to your music folders. Then create new folders for each new CD that is downloaded. All music now resides in your your iTunes folder. You can drag the files directly to the newly created folder as well and eliminate the step to your desktop.

Having same issue with iTunes 10.6.3 on some (but not all) songs I burned from CDs. In my case all of the song meta data for these tracks is read only. Other songs recorded using the same settings and formats let me edit meta data and attach pictures without issue.

File permissions look fine, iTunes isn't pointing to aliases, and I'm using m4a format, so WAV isn't an issue.

I just discovered an alternative way to convert existing WAV files to AIFF files without re-downloading the CD. This assumes the file on your MAC is a WAV file and does not have artwork.

1. Goto iTunes -> Preferences -> Import Settings

2. Select "Import Using" filed drop down menu, and select AIFF encoder

3. Got to iTunes library and highlight the song(s) you want to convert to AIFF files

4. Goto the menu bar at top of iTunes and select Advanced -> Create AIFF version

You will now have 2 files of the same song. The original WAV and an AIFF version.

You can now add artwork to the AIFF version.

I then delete the WAV version. Again the point is you don't have a lossy formatted song.

If you need to download from a CD, you can download this directly as an AIFF file by following the steps above. Do not download as a WAV.

Sorrry for giving a more round about way of getting to the same place in the previous post.

To Granite Apple,

If you do want to download to a lossy file, such as m4a, I would suggest trying to convert the m4a format to the standard Apple lossy format, which is AAC. You can follow the same steps above, but instead of choosing AIFF, choose AAC.

I've found a way that seems to work for me;

1) Create an MP3 file (I used 'Audacity') that is 2 seconds of silence. Keep this file as a template that you can edit the tag of again and again using something like 'MP3Tag'.

2) For an album of interest, take your 2 second MP3 file and edit the tag with album, artist and artwork in question.

3) Add the album folder to your iTunes library (it will pull in the mp3 file and .wav files).

4) Select the .wav files in iTunes and right click to choose 'get info'. Then fill in the album and artist, and set the track numbers. That seems to be enough to tie the .wav files to the MP3 file when it all gets indexed.

5) Adjust the track number of the MP3 file to be the last track of the album.

6) Sync the whole album (with the MP3 file) across to your device (Ipad in my case).

This works for me, presumably because the software looks in every file for some artwork and finds what its looking for in the dummy mp3 file, and applies it to all files withe same album and artist file names.

... or something like that.

I'd still recommend switching to Apple Lossless, but that's a nice trick. 🙂

tt2

The reason I'm stuck with .WAV;

My CD player has a USB port for reading in digital audio, so I can have the convenience of a media player but still use the quality DAC, amp and speakers to get the best sound. The only lossless format the CD player will work with is .wav. It will work with mp3 etc but why go for a lossy format when storage is cheap? It's a shame that many people might grow up not knowing how good music can really sound when not compressed and played through proper hi-fi.

Anyway, what I do is use a bit-perfect ripping app to make a perfect copy of the CD, sort the artwork as described above, then I can use the ipad as a jukebox to squirt bit-perfect audio through my hi-fi. In theory it should be better than playing the CD since there will always be read errors when reading and playing in real time.