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Individual cover art for each song within compilation album?

Good Afternoon America,


my increasing pleasure with "Eleven's" aesthetic has lead me to a minor but puzzling deadlock short of perfection:

When i attach illustration images to each song of a self created compilation album, either

one song's cover art replaces the album cover - or the latter kills all individual song images

a n d combines artist- and song names on the first line of the song info or even deletes the artist name.

"Various Artists" takes their place then below (analog to album info; but leaving that blank there makes no diff).

Images are 600x600 .jpg.

I turned the info box inside out (to no avail) but might have missed the trick nevertheless and

"Eleven" might in fact manage both at once: Album cover a n d its individual song covers.


Did anybody out there went beyond this luxury problem with kindness to share her clues?

Appreciate your attention:

J J

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.1.3, iTunes 11 on Windows7 U

Posted on Mar 2, 2015 2:13 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Mar 2, 2015 2:31 PM

You can associate different artwork with each song - just right click on the song, select the Artwork tab and use any of the standard methods - Add Artwork button, drag-and-drop image file from Windows Explorer, copy to clipboard and then paste (Ctrl-V or right-click paste works in iTunes 11, Ctrl-V only in iTunes 12). However, when you view the album in iTunes it will only display one image (I think that it is automatically the image for disc 1/track 1, or the first track that has an associated image). When you play the album in iTunes or on an iPod, the image should change to the one for each individual track.


There is, though, no concept of an "album cover", i.e., an image that's associated with the album rather than its constituent tracks. If you try and associate an image with the album (right-click > Get Info > Artwork) this will replace the images associated with individual tracks. It is possible to have more than one image associated with a song, though this is not really a useful function since there is no capability in iTunes to display the alternate images except in the Get Info editor.


For the other issue, iTunes will always automatically display "Various Artists" for the album when:


  • tracks have different Artist values,
  • the Album Artist value is blank for all tracks, and
  • the "Part of a Compilation" flag is set for all tracks.


You can also manage compilation albums by setting the Album Artist to a common value for all tracks (this can be anything you want) and unsetting the "Part of a Compilation" flag. The latter is really necessary only with older iPod models that don't recognize the Album Artist tag. The other effects of doing this way are that:


  • compilations will be sorted based on the value you set for Album Artist (or, if desired, Sort Album Artist) - if you use the method based on the "Part of a Compilation" flag compilations will always be listed at the end of your library, assuming sorting by Artist.
  • if you've configured iTunes to organize your library, compilations will be stored in iTunes Media\Music\album_artist\album_title - if you use the method based on the "Part of a Compilation" flag they will be stored in iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\album_title
2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Mar 2, 2015 2:31 PM in response to Jay J Hill

You can associate different artwork with each song - just right click on the song, select the Artwork tab and use any of the standard methods - Add Artwork button, drag-and-drop image file from Windows Explorer, copy to clipboard and then paste (Ctrl-V or right-click paste works in iTunes 11, Ctrl-V only in iTunes 12). However, when you view the album in iTunes it will only display one image (I think that it is automatically the image for disc 1/track 1, or the first track that has an associated image). When you play the album in iTunes or on an iPod, the image should change to the one for each individual track.


There is, though, no concept of an "album cover", i.e., an image that's associated with the album rather than its constituent tracks. If you try and associate an image with the album (right-click > Get Info > Artwork) this will replace the images associated with individual tracks. It is possible to have more than one image associated with a song, though this is not really a useful function since there is no capability in iTunes to display the alternate images except in the Get Info editor.


For the other issue, iTunes will always automatically display "Various Artists" for the album when:


  • tracks have different Artist values,
  • the Album Artist value is blank for all tracks, and
  • the "Part of a Compilation" flag is set for all tracks.


You can also manage compilation albums by setting the Album Artist to a common value for all tracks (this can be anything you want) and unsetting the "Part of a Compilation" flag. The latter is really necessary only with older iPod models that don't recognize the Album Artist tag. The other effects of doing this way are that:


  • compilations will be sorted based on the value you set for Album Artist (or, if desired, Sort Album Artist) - if you use the method based on the "Part of a Compilation" flag compilations will always be listed at the end of your library, assuming sorting by Artist.
  • if you've configured iTunes to organize your library, compilations will be stored in iTunes Media\Music\album_artist\album_title - if you use the method based on the "Part of a Compilation" flag they will be stored in iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\album_title

Mar 20, 2015 12:33 PM in response to hhgttg27

Thank you for your detailed info.

Indeed i got now individual song/episode-associated graphics besides the respective joint album art in s o m e cases - but

in others admittedly not. By no means.

I placed a small mp3 file as "Image holder" at No. 1 pos. with the cover art; leaving the real album content blank of order numbers.

As i said: In some cases i couldn't nail this special "song" on first pos.. Beyond my wits, how iTunes detects those as fake, sorting them stubbornly in the

aft section.

Regards

Individual cover art for each song within compilation album?

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