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How To Add iTunes Artwork To MP3 ID3 Tags Using iTunes

onetipaday.co.uk — iTunes 7 will automatically search the iTunes Music Store for artwork, and if any is available it will add it to your files. The problem is though, iTunes doesn ’t add the artwork to the actual ID3 tag within the file that is read when other applications play your mp3s, so the artwork is only visible to iTunes. Read how you can change that...

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  • daurkin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5page is gone.
  • daurkin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Updated link:
    http://www.onetipaday.com/2006/12/06/best-way-to-add-itunes-cover-art-tunesleeve/
  • theodorecarras, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Anyone know of a way to automate this?
  • RedFoxEvan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Isn't this old?
  • Fishy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14The problem with doing this though is that it is adding that image file (~100-200kb) to each song increasing the overall size of your music library. This might be of some concern to users with low hard-disk space.
    • HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Yeah. And if you copy the music to your iPod, the images go there too. No more "5,000 songs in your pocket".

      Which is why my music still doesn't have album art.

      I wish Apple would find a better way to do this. I shouldn't need 30 copies of the album art for the album I just ripped just because it has 30 tracks.
    • meamog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Actually, Apple's way only stores the file on your drive once... but doesn't attach it to the songs. They did find the better way, but it's only for their software.
    • dagospelman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The thing is, if you use other importers the artwork isn't as good and if you use the automatic tool in iTunes it doesn't add artwork to the tags - this 'trick' gets around that.

      Please bear with me while I get my site up and running again. I've never experienced being on the digg homepage (very scary) and I was totally unprepared for this!
  • btor, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1itunes 7 sucks so bad... i mean i cant even turn off the gapless "feature" .
    had to go back to the earlier version..:(
    • haydesigner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sounds more like user error instead of software bug.
  • yensed, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4I swear, I about screamed when I seen this. I just spend 4 hours updating all my album art for my Zune using the Zune software. Then after reading the article, I realized using itunes would actually be tougher and more time consuming.
  • EricJD, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I thought this was a no-brainer..
  • WiZZLa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Good article... if you have either a small library OR you want all the files to have the same image. Otherwise, expect to sit there for hours doing a copy-paste routine.
  • FatherG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anyone have a solution for Winamp or any other external app that can (somewhat) do this automatically?? The last time I used itunes it nuked all of my old id3 tags and it's a pain in the butt using Sonicstage (For my psp).
  • oakj423, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2good cnet video about this:
    http://reviews.cnet.com/4660-10165_7-6679699.html?tag=nl.e501
    • ericnmu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It has nothing to do with importing itunes art into the tag.
  • petejonesrn, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6Who would possibly use anything but iTunes to organize/play music while sitting at thier computer?
    • hotdamn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3People who prefer Winamp or Amarok?

      not me, however :)
    • shredswithpiks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4people who enjoy small non-intrusive apps to play music in the background while they do something else on the comp?
    • NewChar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4iTunes is a resource hog and it lacks a true play queue/now playing list.
    • adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Winamp user right here. I was using it to manage my shuffle for a long time, but I just got a nano and haven't checked to see if it will work.
    • aaronm67, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2itunes for me is typically around 100mb. Adding music is awful, and it leaves the player completely unusable for quite some time, when I will often see 100% cpu spikes. Opening iTunes takes FAR too long and takes way too much CPU. Just switching a song often causes a CPU spike. Any time I open iTunes without my external hard drive attatched, it decides that my music library is actually stored in "C:/Whatever the ***** they think it should be/" so when I actually plug in my external hard drive, I have to wait another 5 minutes while it "reorganizes" my files. Finally, Apple decided to integrate their "restore ipod" function into iTunes.

      iTunes combined with the absolute ***** performance of my iPod have pretty much turned me away from Apple products.

      http://theappleblog.com/2005/12/13/itunes-database-issues/
      Summarizes why a lot of the speed issues in iTunes occur.

      ...so I guess there are a few reasons why people don't use itunes? Maybe because they want to use a program that's not ENTIRELY a piece of *****? Honestly, the only reason I see to use iTunes is the compilation grouping feature, which I can't find another media player that supports. I have decided to live without it for now.
  • scottious, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5It's nice to have the artwork tagged to the file, but iTunes downloads bitmaps of the artwork that are typically about a 1MB. So if you add 1MB of album art to every 3MB MP3 file... that's going to increase your music collection size quite a bit.
  • hellbus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you have a Mac, you can just download the artwork, then use the "Embed Artwork" Apple Script. It seems to do a nice job.

    http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts13.php?page=1#embedart
  • GuJu, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2i just manually put all of them in

    SEROISLY iTUNES IS THE ONLY MUSIC PLAYER THAT CAN ACUTALLY ORGANIZE
    • stalefries, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17I LIKE HOW YOU MANAGED TO DO ALL CAPS, EXCEPT FOR THE "i" IN iTUNES.
    • ferndave, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5I LIKED "SEROISLY" MORE.
    • sw0rdfish, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2maybe he accidentally turned on Caps Lock? I do that all the time... stupid hands.
  • element17, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Album Cover Finder can locate the artwork from Amazon and automatically add it to the ID3 tags and also add a jpg to the folder where the album files are located (if needed). The process is automatic if you use the Fill Entire Library feature. Album Cover Finder will only work with an iTunes Music Library but once the artwork is embedded it can be read by most music apps.

    http://www.albumcoverfinder.com
    • JoshuaWood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks for the pointer to this program, I just purchased it, and it is by far the best $11 I spent this year! (sorry for the lame new year's joke, but it's currently downloading 850 albums right now, I'm Psyched!)
    • pengu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0too bad amazon has ***** artwork.
  • adammerkley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Neat trick.

    But I'm getting sick of importing my podcasts into iTunes, just to add the artwork before I upload them to my server. Anyone know of a freeware alternative for Windows that'll let me add artwork to an mp3 in a way that iTunes will see it?
  • schisamo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Check out Tag&Rename:
    http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

    I've been using this software for editing my ID3 tags for years now. It can pull tag data directly from FreeDB and Amazon (including cover art). It also can edit all major file types including all of Apples own aac (m4a) files including mp4, lossless m4a and protected m4p.
  • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The iTunes downloaded artwork is typically very, very large, which I find annoying. The Amazon.com art is generally between 30k-60k at most, and while it doesn't look quite as good all the time, it's not like I'm printing this stuff out or anything. I'd rather use Amazon's art.

    Tag&Rename makes it incredibly easy.
  • jackmacokc, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2how is this news? rtfm people!
  • RadicalEdward, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd rather itunes give you the option of embedding it, it looks better to have downscaled artwork than upscaled, that way no matter what the artwork is displayed on it would look good.
  • timo1023, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Why do this? I thought that keeping the artwork separate allowed for faster loading?

    The only 3 places I actually play my music are my iTunes (computer), iPod, and XBMC, which pulls the artwork and album info from the internet by itself, so not embedding the artwork into my files is very convenient for me and saves a lot of hard drive space (artwork from the ITMS is pretty large).
  • colr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1http://www.duggmirror.com/

    Uhm, that didn't work?
  • SicKn3sS, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Story is about Apple, buried for spam.
    • tomi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Comment posted without use of brain, buried for idiocy.
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like mp3Tag (not the freeware one, the maniac tools version). It grabs the artwork from Amazon or a few other sites, perhaps not as HQ as iTunes, but it is very fast. If you have a lot of albums to image-tag it is a godsend.
  • tomi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2digg effect for the win. =/
  • sw0rdfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How are people still digging this, if the site is down? LMAO.
  • beaner2011, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow... it's a tip is it, that while global library operations in iTunes affect the library, file tag editing changes... gasp... the information in the file tag? You don't say? :p

    Even if you're at one with the iPod sheep, j.River Media Center (www.jrmediacenter.com, $40) works a treat - automatic artwork download (and mass embedding into file tags), much more flexible tag editing, higher-quality audio capability in Windows and much more power combined with a support forum where the developers actually hang out in.
  • EggoTrip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Site is up again -

    Personally, I use the Doug script linked above. This is good to know though in case I want to apply artwork without the script being installed.
  • shamam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like mpfreaker for adding artwork. It'll also update your tags and add lyrics, if it can find them. However, it's $20.

    http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/14020
  • ERICwithanH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I guess I was hoping for a couple-click solution to update an entire music library, which I hope I find when I visit some of these other sites people have dug.

    Anyone who has been using iTunes for reasonable amount of time is well aware of the "Get Info" dialog and could accomplish this this without the help of an article.
    • ascott9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was thinking the same thing. Does anyone know how to make this a couple click process?
  • jb978, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1well since i do not have an itune account - no credit card - itune NEVER finds artwork for me. buried.
    • pepe7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Stop whining. You don't need to open up a credit card acccount per se. Your bank can provide you with a limited amount/pre-paid Visa/Mastercard debit card for just such purposes. Welcome to the 21st century.
  • badtz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If anyone can find a way to do the opposite, that would be great! I would not like to add them into the ID3 tag, but into the directory iTunes stores it in so it shows up in iTunes.
  • drWhiet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The problem with this tip is, that even if you add the artwork
    into the id3 Tag itunes always uploads the .jpg file from your hard
    disk to the ipod album library. Therefore its a waste of disk spave
    (ok i have a 60GB) but anyhow .. Other players mayby show the
    embedded artwork. Does anyone has a cure ??

    And if you want to try out another great
    free programm try Album over Art Downloader which also downloads
    the covers from 3 sources (for free that means without a itunes
    account) t http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/
  • dvdipodbiz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Tired of DRM-protected file formats like WMA, M4P, AA, M4B, MP4, M4V and WMV getting in your way? Tunebite records your copy-protected music, audio book and video files as they are being played and saves the recordings as unprotected audio (MP3, OGG and WMA) and video (WMV and MP4) files you can use anywhere.

    http://www.dvdtozuneconverter.net/remove-drm-crack-removal.htm
  • fabhik, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I know two programs can convert protected iTunes to plain MP3 with IDs tag
    the one is NoteBurner(http://www.noteburner.com) which uses virtual burning to burn virtual audio CD in WMP and then remove the DRM
    the other is NoteCable(http://www.notecable.com) which uses virtual recording to record the DRM nmusic and then output in plain format
    According to my test, NoteBurner works faster but more complicated than NoteCable.
    NoteCable is quite easy to use and it is suitable for those computer beginners.
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