iTunes - iPod artwork issue

**flynnhicks03** · 08-31-2009, 09:50 AM

Does anybody else have an issue with iTunes putting the wrong album artwork on the songs on their iPod? I've got a couple: On Stephen Malkmus/Stephen Malkmus, I get some geeky looking gray-hair parted down the middle guy named Paul Stevens, or something like that; and on Marvin Gaye/What's Going On, I get Star Seach's Greatest Hits. Not a big deal. When I think about it at home, I just need to delete the current artwork and have it try to find it again, but it's kind of funny. I was curious if this happened to others, too?

**Angie** · 08-31-2009, 09:52 AM

Originally Posted by flynnhicks03

Does anybody else have an issue with iTunes putting the wrong album artwork on the songs on their iPod? I've got a couple: On Stephen Malkmus/Steven Malkmus, I get some geeky looking gray-hair parted down the middle guy named Paul Stevens, or something like that; and on Marvin Gaye/What's Going On, I get Star Seach's Greatest Hits. Not a big deal. When I think about it at home, I just need to delete the current artwork and have it try to find it again, but it's kind of funny. I was curious if this happened to others, too?

Did you buy the songs/albums directly from iTunes, or did you do the "search for artwork" thing with a song you've bought elsewhere? If it was the latter, I think iTunes isn't always super-smart about finding the correct album artwork.

In other news, it saddens me that Star Search has a market that will buy its greatest hits.

**flynnhicks03** · 08-31-2009, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by Angie

Did you buy the songs/albums directly from iTunes, or did you do the "search for artwork" thing with a song you've bought elsewhere? If it was the latter, I think iTunes isn't always super-smart about finding the correct album artwork.

In other news, it saddens me that Star Search has a market that will buy its greatest hits.

I did the search for artwork thing. I think it started when I added these songs to my wife's Touch. Up until then, Malkmus and Marvin had the correct artwork, I believe.

**Angie** · 08-31-2009, 10:02 AM

Originally Posted by flynnhicks03

I did the search for artwork thing. I think it started when I added these songs to my wife's Touch. Up until then, Malkmus and Marvin had the correct artwork, I believe.

Honestly, I think the Touches themselves have some weird issues with artwork. I pre-ordered mine when they were first released, and I've had to restore it twice because it just randomly deleted all of my artwork.

**jdoggivjc** · 09-01-2009, 07:58 AM

You can always go back and fix this yourself. In fact, I generally pick my own album artwork myself (since I'm still a sap that purchases CDs and within 5 minutes of getting home I rip the MP3s). What I'll do is go to Amazon.com, search for the album, copy the artwork for the album on that site, go back into iTunes, select each and every song that belongs to that particular album, go to the file properties, and paste in the album artwork. Seems to work for me.

**Angie** · 09-01-2009, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by jdoggivjc

You can always go back and fix this yourself. In fact, I generally pick my own album artwork myself (since I'm still a sap that purchases CDs and within 5 minutes of getting home I rip the MP3s). What I'll do is go to Amazon.com, search for the album, copy the artwork for the album on that site, go back into iTunes, select each and every song that belongs to that particular album, go to the file properties, and paste in the album artwork. Seems to work for me.

This is what I often do, as well - the Touch just seems to glitch on occasion. It may just be mine, or just the really early ones, but artwork can get scrambled.

**Clone96** · 09-01-2009, 08:32 AM

This is what I found out works. Do a Google image search of the CD. 98% of the time you can find what you're looking for. If that doesn't work and you have a scanner or one of those all-in-one printers, you can scan the cover of the booklet in and then edit it to fit. In all the years of using Itunes, I've only had to do this about four times.

**mustangcy** · 09-01-2009, 08:54 AM

Wait a sec...you telling me if I put an album on my ipod that I didn't buy from itunes I can still search and apply the artwork? For free?

**Bader** · 09-01-2009, 09:00 AM

Originally Posted by mustangcy

Wait a sec...you telling me if I put an album on my ipod that I didn't buy from itunes I can still search and apply the artwork? For free?

Yes, the artwork itself is embedded in the mp3 (or m4a or aac or whatever format) encoding.

In iTunes, right click on the file(s) you want to add the artwork to and click on Edit Info (or similarly named menu item) and you should be able to insert an image you have strored on your computer as the album artwork.

Note that iTunes has a very funny way of managing the file tags and sometimes will and sometimes wont actually write the data back to the file. So if you ever have to uninstall iTunes you might lose any and all formatting you've done to your library.

**Angie** · 09-01-2009, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by Bader

Yes, the artwork itself is embedded in the mp3 (or m4a or aac or whatever format) encoding.

In iTunes, right click on the file(s) you want to add the artwork to and click on Edit Info (or similarly named menu item) and you should be able to insert an image you have strored on your computer as the album artwork.

Note that iTunes has a very funny way of managing the file tags and sometimes will and sometimes wont actually write the data back to the file. So if you ever have to uninstall iTunes you might lose any and all formatting you've done to your library.

You can also usually (note that I said "usually") just right-click in the image window in the lower left (assuming you display cover artwork) and paste. You can also change the names of your albums, etc. It's a myth that iTunes is strict about managing your music.