Album Art

NEWS JUST IN: Now irrelevant. Have found something called Mp3tag.

Well recently I got fed up with how little album art was on my MP3 files. This is very common, especially if you download them...from sources without much album art.

I tried a few different methods, but in the end I found a program called MediaMonkey the most successful. Its an actual media player, with more things on it than Windows Media Player. However, because of its slight lack of modifiability and large CPU footprint I wouldn't suggest using it as your default. The important part as far as you're concerned is the Album Art embedder
Once you've installed MediaMonkey (the basic version is free, but that's all you could possibly need):

In the folder-tree section on the left side, lfind the folder(s) containing your music files. Click the folder(s), and then click All. Your music files will come up.

Select the file you want to add album art to, and press Ctrl-L. In a moment, you should see the artwork and song list for the album from amazon. If it didn't fetch the right info (which happens sometimes, especially if your album's ID3 tags are wrong), clear the search field and try entering the album name manually. You can also click the search field's down arrow to see if there are any other results that match more closely.

Once you have what you want, Click the Options button and enable the item called, "Save image to tag (if possible)." This is the key step that results in the art getting embedded in the audio files (specifically, in their metadata). You'll need to do this only once; MediaMonkey will remember the preference for subsequent albums.

Now you decide if you want to use the other parts of the auto-tag feature. Specifically, MediaMonkey can also update the album's ID3-tag info: artist, album, release date, label and track names.

If you don't want these items, clear their respective checkboxes near the top of the window (but make sure to leave Cover checked). Click the Auto-Tag button and presto: MediaMonkey adds embedded album art to your tracks!
Now for the only challenging part: repeating these steps for all your albums. It could take a couple hours if you have a really large collection, but it's well worth the effort. You can also select all songs of one album in one go.

"But I can't get the right results! Shemuel, you lie!!"

Try a Google image search. Once you've found the image, copy it.
Back in MediaMonkey, select MP3.
In the album-art pane (lower-left corner), right click and select Paste. In the dialog box that appears, make sure the "Save image to tag (if possible)" option is enabled and then click OK. That's it! You're done.
If you have a portable player, delete all the songs from it and then copy over your album art-enriched tracks. Or just fire up Media Center, Winamp or whatever desktop player you use and enjoy the arty goodness.




Did I mention that this works with other music formats?

NOTE: If you have iTunes, then USE THAT. However, iTunes is so huge compared to mediamonkey, it makes sense to go for this program.

Thanks. I didn't think I would get a response.

NEWS JUST IN: Now irrelevant. Have found something called Mp3tag.