Can't manually add artwork to iTunes?

Try this. Click on the album folder (music, albums). Right click on the first track, and click "open in windows explorer". Highlight all the album tracks using the shift key, go to properties, and if the "read-only" box is checked, uncheck it, click apply, then OK. Then try to add the artwork in the usual way.

I just fixed this in iTunes 12, OS X El Cap.

The problem, as described above, was that I had .WAV files. I could navigate to the Artwork tab and add artwork there, but it would never show up and if I went back to that tab nothing was there.

I selected all of the songs in the album, right-clicked and used "Create AAC version" which gave me two of each song. I then deleted all of the WAV versions which were the first of each pair. That left me with the same album but with all AAC files instead of WAVs.

Voila... added the artwork and it stuck. Thanks fiend.

Hello!

I went online to see if someone had the answer for this too, but when I didn't find an answer after looking through this thread, I figured it out myself (At least it fixed my problem).

Go to the album folder outside of iTunes, select the songs, right click, properties and uncheck the ''read-only'' box!
And there you go - just enter iTunes and perform the usual procedure! 🙂

(If you want to be sure that they've changed you can always import the albuum to iTunes again)

Hope this helped!

Two things:

1. There is a bug (and has been for several releases of iTunes) so that if you select more than one song from an album, and click on File/Get Info/Info>Artwork, sure enough, there is no artwork showing. However, if you check each track, the artwork is there on every one.
2. If you select multiple songs (i.e. a complete album) but one song is missing the artwork, then the artwork will not show up. In this case, check each song, to make sure they all have the same artwork.

When adding artwork to an album, make sure you do so to every song in the album. To do that, select the complete album and when you click on File/Get Info/Info - you see this box:

... but if you select a single song, you need to click on File/Get Info and you will see a different selection of tabs, including one for Artwork. Click on the Artwork tab :

... and you see this:

...notice that in my first screenhsot, the artwork is missing. It shouldn't be - that's the bug!

Ah!

Is the album in .wav format? On the Summary pane, under the "no artwork box", look for the Kind: Does it say WAV audio file?

• An audio file in WAV format cannot have artwork associated with it, so that's why there is no Artwork tab.
• The "info" only states "No Artwork Available", because there is no artwork. An MP3 file with no artwork would have the same box on the Summary pane.

I'm getting something broadly similar. Some albums just won't display artwork no matter what I've tried.

1: Album with fully-functioning artwork

2: Album without artwork but adding it manually works OK.

3: Album that won't add artwork.

Note blank space on the right.

4: Info for multiple files for type 3.

Double-click the "Artwork" box, add a .jpg and you get this.

5:

Click "OK", though, and nothing happens; the display is as per picture 3. Go back into "Get Info" for multiple files and the "Artwork" box is blank again. Selecting and completing the "Album Artist" box makes no difference either.

Selecting a single file, however, gives you this:

6: Single track "Summary" tab

and this:

7: Single file "Artwork" tab:

Clicking "OK" has no effect on the screen shown in #3. I've checked the file properties from Windows Explorer and they're not Read-Only. Nor is the parent folder. The "Part of a compilation" checkbox on the "Info" tab is not checked, so it aten't that.

I'm guessing that something is telling iTunes that a particular album can't have artwork but I am ****** if I can figure out what. There's nothing obviously different when viewed with a third-party tag editor either.

Any thoughts gratefully received...

Hhhmmm!

In your first post, you stated that the artwork appeared in the Artwork box, but when you clicked on OK, it was no longer there. Where was this box, on which pane? As far as I know, Artwork cannot be added to the artwork box on the Summary pane; but you also said that there was no Artwork pane (which is where it would normally be added).

So I'm confused.

If the songs on the album are not in .wav type, then there must be something else about it (them) that prevents the artwork from being added. What is in the following fields (on the Summary pane) for any one of the non-artwork files:

• Format
• Channels
• Bit rate
• ID3 Tag
• Sample Rate
• Encoded with?

The only two other possibilites that I can think of at the moment are that the (song) files are corrupted in some way or that one track on the album is different to the rest, thereby causing an issue.

What work for me is:

• don't drag artwork on the cover image area (wherever: info screen when right click on album or in the info pane of a song)
• instead: chose info (right click) for an album, delete the current album artwork and than chose the "add .." button and chose an artwork file on your harddisk.

It seems that using the add-function, proper changes are made within whatever-reference itunes file where adding through dragging doesn't.

Further info:

- I use iTunes 12

- I used to drag artwork instead of using the add-function

- After updating iTunes Match old artwork was reinstalled

Hopes it works for you, Good Luck & Regards.

iTunes is so buggy and frustrating. I finally gave up, and resorted to a command line tool (the excellent mp4v2 library). Here's how to get it to work.

1. Install HomeBrew, if you haven't already (see http://brew.sh, which contains the following one-liner which you can paste into your Terminal):

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

(all on one line)

2. Install mp4v2:

brew install mp4v2

3. Add the art to your mp4 file:

Say you have a file album_art.jpeg in your Downloads folder, and your mp4 file my_music.mp4 in your iTunes music folder, then you run the following in Terminal:

mp4art --add ~/Downloads/album_art.jpeg ~/Music/iTunes/my_music.mp4

(that's all on one line)

Would image size of jpeg have a hinderance on adding art? I'm trying to drop my own art work in my own album. A few years ago it wasn't an issue. Tried everything in this feed and another. Except the Homebrew thing. No going that far for some artwork . Using most current iTunes 11.3.

I've been using iTunes / Mac for a decade and it has not been more frustrating. Dragging and dropping artwork used to be rarely an issue, regardless of what i was adding artwork to. . I Appreciate everyone's troubleshooting help, but i'm chalking this up to bugs...unless anyone has any other suggestions. Mavericks has given me mostly headaches since it's release on many fronts. Pardon me. Had to vent.

Additional: It seems that the foregoing only applies in the "Songs" view; select "Albums" or "Artists" and manually-added artwork as apparently not added in the "Songs" view shows up 😕 It's also possible to add artwork to the albums that show up like picture 3, though again this doesn't appear in the "Songs" view.

More confuzzled than ever...

the fiend's suggestion worked for me. It seems if it's not an mp3 file, you must "create mp3 version" and then add the artwork to the mp3 version. My file was .mov - audio only - saved from ScreenFlow. Thanks fiend!

Almost all the formats that are compatible with iTunes (exceptions include .wav and - I assume from your example - .mov) can have artwork embedded in them. Unless the initial imports are in one of these "exception" formats, you don't need to convert to mp3 (and doing so from any other lossy format will reduce audio quality) just to associate artwork. It may be worth looking for a 3rd party utility that can extract the audio data from a .mov file without re-encoding it.

Quite by accident I found that in "Songs" view, clicking "View" then "View Options" and selecting "Always Show" will display artwork for everything in the "Songs" view. Obvious now I know it's there, but...