I have recently been pretty anal about keeping my iTunes organized, including the album artwork for each song.

I have had the album cover displaying properly while playing in iTunes but I discovered that a number of my songs were displaying the album artwork instead of the default mp3 icon while some songs were not displaying the album art, and instead had the drab default mp3 icon when viewing in Windows Explorer.

I discovered the easiest way to make sure that the ID3 tags for each file (the tags that tell the computer what to display such as song title, album, track number and of course album artwork). For some reason some audio programs, such as iTunes, display the artwork (iTunes keeps artwork in a seperate folder) but some programs don't show the album artwork even if you right click on the mp3 in an audio program (such as winamp) and view the ID3 tag data. If you go that route Winamp will show that the proper album artwork is displayed and registered in the ID3 tags; however, it isn't completely stored properly unless the icon for your mp3 file displays the album artwork instead of the default mp3 icon.

Here are two pictures to illustrate the point:


Here you can tell what my audio files looked like in Windows Explorer before making the changes (not resizeable).


Here is what my audio files now look like after applying the changes (not resizeable).

Here are the steps you need to take in order to make certain that the ID3 tags are written correctly. This is assuming you have the latest version of everything (iTunes).

1. When viewing main iTunes window, Press CTRL+A or Edit>> Select All in the menu.
2. Right click
3. Choose Convert ID3 Tags...
4. Check the first option (ID3 tag version:
5. In the drop down menu choose v2.3
6. Click OK (that will convert the tags of all selected songs to version 2.3. We use v2.3 because version 2.4 doesn't display the album artwork over the default mp3 icon) (click image below)
   

To make sure all songs in your iTunes get the album artwork into the tags we need to do two more things.

For multiple songs from the same albums:

1. Press ALT+G to display album artwork
2. Play a song from the album
3. Right click on the album artwork (this is providing that you have downloaded the artwork from iTunes automatically)
4. Click COPY (see below)
   
5. Select all songs in the album
6. Right click on the songs you just selected, which will bring up a list
7. Select GET INFO at the top
8. Right click on the section that says Artwork
9. Select PASTE (see below)
   
10. Click OK

That will past the artwork for all songs in the album.

Now, if you have just one song from an album you just right click on the artwork being displayed as the song is playing, select COPY then right click again and select PASTE. That will paste the album artwork into the ID3 tags permanently and you should have a Windows Explorer folder of mp3s that look like my second photo.

If something didn't work out for you, email me (which can be found on my About page) and I'll be glad to help.

Happy Listening!

Labels: computers