iTunes: Best way to get album art? I'm happy to pay!

[alexjholland]

Hey

I have around 110Gb of music, which is perfectly organised, that I moved over from Windows around four months ago.

For some reason the artwork didn't survive the move (I attached it all in the Zune software). I ran the iTunes album artwork finder, but there's certainly 100 albums it hasn't found artwork for.

I need high-quality artwork for all my music; that will stay properly attached/embedded to it.

I'm quite happy paying for an app, bearing in mind the lost work-time (self-employed) it would cost me to do it all by hand.

Any ideas for a program that will find considerably more artwork that iTunes, in high quality - and ideally embed it too?

Otherwise it's an entire Sunday afternoon one day for me!

 

[Cap41]

I ve read about software that can help. But nothing seemed to be perfect. I was in a similar boat. i just googled artwork and did a few each time iwas on the computer until caught up.

 

[ScottNWDW]

I basically just looked up the albums on google or amazon and copied and pasted the best quality album art over to iTunes. I did a few albums at a time until I had them all.

 

[Jolly Jimmy]

Manually is the best way to do it. There are apps that fetch artwork automatically, but there's no way they get everything 100% right, so you'd have to check and correct manually anyway.

 

[jpetticrew]

Make yourself a smart playlist in iTunes in which "Has Artwork" is set to false, that way you know exactly what doesn't have any artwork. Then Google your butt off. It shouldn't take more than a few hours to chug through 100 albums.

 

[NameUndecided]

I got CoverScout in a software package deal about a year ago and I think that it's pretty great. A lot faster than doing individual Google searches for each album when you have a huge collection, and it's got an appealing and simple interface.
See the videos on the product website to see if it appeals to you. There's still some interaction and a bit of time involved (to me, it would be annoying if it just downloaded the found cover art to albums automatically), but it's saved me a whole lot of time when I've needed it on large collections.

 

[saberahul]

110GB... wow! I have maybe 2.1

 

[GGJstudios]

I prefer manually adding high-quality artwork from sites such as Album Art Exchange. It's much better quality than iTunes downloads. Yes, it takes time, but it took years to develop my collection, ripping, cleaning up tags, adding artwork, years and lyrics, etc. The end result is worth it!

 

[alexjholland]

That custom playlist tip worked nicely; I can now see I have around 270 albums. Might take a while - but do-able!

Once I've added the artwork in iTunes, is it automatically permanently embedded to the music? If not, how can I make this happen?

I ask, because I did this all once before in the Microsoft Zune software before I converted - and much of that artwork disappeared when I moved over!

 

[Nermal]

If the artwork is available from Apple but isn't pulled down automatically, then you can still grab it manually. Navigate to it in the Store and then right-click and choose Copy Link and open the "preview" page in Safari.

Next, right-click on the thumbnail image and open it in a new tab. Change the dimensions in the URL to 600x600 and presto, you have the big version.

Edit: I just read your other question. If you drag the artwork on manually then it'll be embedded in the file. If you use iTunes' auto-download feature then it doesn't appear to embed the artwork (I lose it when I copy it to my phone, for example).

 

[And1ss]

Google and select image size to whatever you want.

 

[blue22]

not any more...

If the artwork is available from Apple but isn't pulled down automatically, then you can still grab it manually. Navigate to it in the Store and then right-click and choose Copy Link and open the "preview" page in Safari.

Next, right-click on the thumbnail image and open it in a new tab. Change the dimensions in the URL to 600x600 and presto, you have the big version.

I just tried this and that doesn't seem to work any more