iTunes media folder question

I've noticed that in my iTunes Media folder that some of my albums are split into two separate folders: one for the .mp3s and a folder for the .jpg of the album artwork. Why does it do this? Can I stop it from happening? It kind of bugs me. This might be a normal thing. Before Lion, i kept all my music files on an external hard drive and didn't really pay attention/use to the media folder.

Sorry if this has been posted before, I didn't do a thorough search on this.

GGJstudios said:

When you download artwork from iTunes, it stores it in a separate folder. If you manually add album art to songs in your library, it stores the artwork in the .mp3 files themselves. I manually add artwork of higher quality than iTunes will download, by searching via Google or using sites like Album Art Exchange.

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I have never downloaded the album art from iTunes and always dragged and dropped the artwork. would this cause it as well?

It also just dawned on me that, in a.rar file i have downloaded, the image (.jpg) for the artwork is already in the folder. when I put the album file in to the media folder, could this cause the album folder to split into two folders?

GGJstudios said:

Where exactly did you drag and drop it? It shouldn't create copies of artwork in separate folders, unless you actively make it do so, such as using a script from Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes, which is a great resource for managing your iTunes tags and files.

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drag and drop or copy and paste into the "drag artwork here" area

GGJstudios said:

That won't create the separate artwork folders you're seeing. Have you installed any apps to help you manage artwork or metadata or other iTunes-related apps?

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Nope. I do it all manually.

while we're at it, my album artwork won't show up on the songs on my iPod while in iTunes. They work fine on the iPod, but they don't show up on my iPod on iTunes.