itunes wont get artwork

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itunes wont get artwork

I have the latest version of Windows and iTunes and have over a thousand CDs in my collection. iTunes refuses to get certain album artwork. I have used the Get Artwork feature and it just comes back saying the artwork cant be found. However I can click on the album and find it in the itunes store where the album cover is showing!! I have other catloguing software (music collector) that allows me to click on the artwork and find it on the Internet. Why cant iTunes allow you to either do a search to find the cover ir simply retrieve the missing artwork from its store??

iPod classic, Windows 10

Posted on Mar 2, 2018 5:52 AM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

272,871 points

Mar 2, 2018 6:38 AM in response to jimfromegginton

iTunes may fail if your details don't match exactly what is in the store, or potentially if it has more than one possible match in its catalogue. You can download and add artwork from alternative sources. Use Feedback - iTunes - Apple to suggest improvements.

tt2

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Answer 2

Mar 2, 2018 7:02 AM in response to turingtest2

Yes of course I can find the album on Amazon etc., click on the image, download it and then add it to the album in iTunes. But I would have to do this individually for every single album without artwork . With a library of around 1200 CDs I have around 100 or so that are missing artwork. I did this once a year or two ago but iTunes has a habit of crashing and resurrecting the artwork is mind numbingly long winded! I recently had a corrupt database and had to recreate it from my source data but the images in the Artwork folder that I restored from backup were not picked up

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

272,871 points

Mar 2, 2018 7:14 AM in response to jimfromegginton

Ah, I make sure that all of my artwork is embedded and keep my library backed up. See Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy for my suggested backup method.

I have two scripts that can help with embedding artwork; CreateFolderArt and EmbedFolderArt. The scripts have slightly different functions:

CreateFolderArt ensures that every album folder ends up with a Folder.jpg image which is the art that iTunes already knows about. Side effects are that if artwork has been updated in iTunes the folder art should be updated also, and if any track from the album doesn't have embedded artwork it gets embedded.

EmbedFolderArt was actually written for someone who already had various artwork images stored in the album folders and wanted them added to their tracks, but not if iTunes had already downloaded a better quality image. It creates new files of any store art with the name iTunesArt.jpg, then embeds the largest image by area in the album's folder, based on the premise that this is likely to be the best image.

In either case you could search and destroy the images in the folders after they are embedded if you don't want them.

tt2

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Answer 4

Mar 2, 2018 7:43 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks - I will have a look at these, although to be honest these are features that should already be in iTunes and I am a little concerned about having to run scrips (although I appreciate I should backup my database first!)! Users really shouldn't have to rely on third party VB scripts to enhance software because of its limitations! Having looked at the problem further your earlier answer about the name of the album has highlighted the issue. For example I have David Bowie "Hunky Dory" in my collection. This is a fairly popular album but in the iTunes store it is called "Hunky Dory (Remastered)". I have dozens like this where the album cannot be found in iTunes because the version there has "2017 Edition" or "Remastered" (or variations thereof). Why on earth the iTunes software needs an exact match on text for a lookup mystifies me! Other software I have that does similar lookups uses a system whereby near matches are shown in a list where you can select the one you want. This isn't rocket science!

Your suggestion about using SyncToy is interesting although my current backup method uses Genie Timeline and a NAS where I dont need to worry about backups as there are done automatically for me so I dont really want to have separate backup strategies if I can help it!

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

272,871 points

Mar 2, 2018 7:58 AM in response to jimfromegginton

If iTunes fetches art from the store then it is downloaded and associated with the album. If you paste in your own image then it becomes embedded. Embedded art should always show if you remove and reimport tracks, or copy them from one library to another. It is perfectly possible to manually copy store art, then paste it into selected tracks. Scripts mechanize such actions to save time and effort.

I personally dislike those sorts of versioning details being part of the album name so will always remove them, but yes, temporarily making your title match that in the store can help get the iTunes art to download. As noted you can suggest improvements but there is no telling if or when Apple might implement such so if you're determined to have your library organized the way you think it should be then you'll have to put in the work.

As long as you have a backup strategy you're all good. Restoring the last known good state of the library might have been easier than rebuilding the artwork cache.

tt2

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itunes wont get artwork

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