Why is album artwork in iTunes such a trainwreck?

[MattG]

Is it just me?! It seems to be one of those things that they just can't get right.

I've got a Mac Mini at home, as well as an iPhone and iPad. For work, I've got a MacBook Pro, and a Windows PC. Between all the devices, no matter how hard I try, the album artwork just doesn't stay synced. I'll add some music to one of the computers, I'll try to have it automatically add artwork and if it can't find it, I'll add it myself. I'll give it a while (sometimes days), and sometimes my other devices will catch up and download the artwork, sometimes they won't. Then other times, stuff will just disappear. Artwork will be there for a while, then later on I'll look at it and it's gone, when I know it was there before. Or, sometimes individual songs in an album don't have artwork, even though it was all added at the same time, and the artwork was originally applied to the album as a whole.

As I type this, I'm looking at my iPhone. There's an album that I added to my home computer the other day (imported CD). The album artwork is there on my computer. On the iPhone, it is not. These are both iCloud enabled devices. Shouldn't it show up???

Why can't they get this right?

[DePaulBlueDemon]

In October, I spent several nights manually updating the album artwork in my iTunes library. Took me several hours, and it was neither pleasant nor easy. Just last night I realized that iTunes 11 has reverted the album artwork back to the original, crappy low-res mess I had before. I almost threw my computer across the room. I'm not happy.

[chaosbunny]

I don't use iCloud but an usb cable to sync my devices (I connect the iPhone to the computer anyway to load its battery). It's really easy and I have never had a problem with it. Copying stuff from my Mac Pro to my laptop also is fast and easy over my local network.

[MattG]

Originally Posted by chaosbunny

I don't use iCloud but an usb cable to sync my devices (I connect the iPhone to the computer anyway to load its battery). It's really easy and I have never had a problem with it. Copying stuff from my Mac Pro to my laptop also is fast and easy over my local network.

Even like that, I have issues. I typically dock my iPhone to sync as well. Still mismatches.

[JoeBlow74]

Originally Posted by MattG

Is it just me?! It seems to be one of those things that they just can't get right.

I've got a Mac Mini at home, as well as an iPhone and iPad. For work, I've got a MacBook Pro, and a Windows PC. Between all the devices, no matter how hard I try, the album artwork just doesn't stay synced. I'll add some music to one of the computers, I'll try to have it automatically add artwork and if it can't find it, I'll add it myself. I'll give it a while (sometimes days), and sometimes my other devices will catch up and download the artwork, sometimes they won't. Then other times, stuff will just disappear. Artwork will be there for a while, then later on I'll look at it and it's gone, when I know it was there before. Or, sometimes individual songs in an album don't have artwork, even though it was all added at the same time, and the artwork was originally applied to the album as a whole.

As I type this, I'm looking at my iPhone. There's an album that I added to my home computer the other day (imported CD). The album artwork is there on my computer. On the iPhone, it is not. These are both iCloud enabled devices. Shouldn't it show up???

Why can't they get this right?

Itunes does not embed album art into each song. Itunes downloads the album art and puts it in a file called Album art. When you play the song in Itunes, it shows the album art along with the song. If you want Album art embeded into a song file, you will have to find an app that embeds album art.

[MattG]

Originally Posted by JoeBlow74

Itunes does not embed album art into each song. Itunes downloads the album art and puts it in a file called Album art. When you play the song in Itunes, it shows the album art along with the song. If you want Album art embeded into a song file, you will have to find an app that embeds album art.

I'm not doubting that's how it's supposed to work, but I assure you, there are times when I'll be playing an album in iTunes, and on some songs the album art displays, and on some it doesn't.

[brightjc@me.com]

On a slightly different note why is it that with iTunes 11 on a mac, the TV series that I have more than 1 series of are grouped together which is ace and really tidies up my TV Series screen but whichever series/season I'm looking at it always shows the artwork for series/season 1?
They really should sort this out.