Now that both the iPod nano and regular iPods have color screens to display album cover artwork, I decided to learn how to add cover art to my iTunes collection. Songs purchased at the iTunes Music Store already come with art, but not those ripped from CD or purchased at eMusic (or elsewhere.)
I had fooled around with doing this once or twice before, but didn’t find it intuitive. So to save you the trouble of figuring it for yourself, here’s a short tutorial.
1) Open iTunes and select an entire album (using the shift or control key to select multiple songs) and then right click to open the “Get Info” dialog box.
2) Open a browser window with the album cover art you want, and click and drag the image over to iTunes. Hover over the iTunes button in your task bar and the “Multiple Song Information” box will pop open.
3) Now simply release your mouse over the empty Artwork panel and click OK. Then respond “Yes” to “Are you sure you want to change the artwork for multiple items?” question.
Tilly says
Thanks so much hun ^.^ I hated that boring music note x
Lucy says
Thank you so much for this info! Helped me a lot, beats having to download a load of files that supposedly ‘does it automatically for you’
Megan says
Thank you for helping me fine tune my husband’s new Nano in time for Christmas!!!
James says
Awesome, thanks a lot. I have to admit I was quite skeptical at first, but it works well.
Mark D. says
Poor li’l Ziggy. It must be a terrible existence being exponentially smarter than everybody else.
Thanks for the info, Barbara. It used to be simpler in earlier iterations of iTunes, with the “Drag Album Art Here” box in the main window, but I couldn’t figure it out for v.9.
Ziggy, I agree we’re being dumbed down, but you are a tool.
ziggy says
yes, thank you, this is not new information to me – i think anyone would be able to figure this out on their own, but im not disappointed as i know most people are complete idiots.
i have a problem, and since the internet is flooded with these BASIC tutorials, i wondered if anyone writing them had any idea of how to troubleshoot a real problem.
i go into the multiple item information box, i double click the artwork space, and select the .jpg, it displays it, and then when i press ‘ok’ nothing happens in the main library. this doesnt happen for all, or even most albums, just a very few.
no offense to the mouth breathers that didnt know about adding their own album art, i know some people are simply too involved with makeovers and wondering why machines cant be “smarter”.
“omg omg omg!!1! humanity is slowly becoming completely retarded, but i need my hilary duffZ cds crappy art!!”
Alex says
OMG!
Thankyou so so much! It worked for me, because i had album artwork i didn’t want, and i could delete it and replace it with artwork that i did want!
Alii ..xal says
hey i cant find theget info bar help !! thanks alii x
lisa says
It won’t save! And I don’t know why! Even if I try to change the genre. Help?
Haja Peer Mohamed H says
It worked fine for me. Thank you so much for sharing this information!
Mel says
I tried it. It worked for two albums, but it’s not working for any of my other albums. Any suggestions?
dink says
instead of dragging you can double-click in the artwork area to pop-up file selector dialog
mohak says
THX so MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
casey says
thank you soooo much!!!!! it was really irritating not having art for some cds.
dan says
thx a million I just wish itunes was smart enough to be able to get the cover art itself even if you don’t purchase it through itunes even when all or most of the meda data is there…
Susan says
THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH! this worked for many of the tasks I had previously done… one by one. I have many opera CDs and frequently the genre is wrong or the Itunes puts a different title on the 2nd disc. This and the artwork tip has saved me hours already!!!! thank you. Mille Grazie!!!!!!
Cardo says
Thankz A Million, this really works no jokes!!!
sam says
thnx it worked
just used google images
Brenden says
OMG THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!! OWE U SO MUCH FOR THAT INFO!
Ronae says
omg thnks it actually works and you don’t even have to download anything!!!
Matthew says
Thank you so much! I couldn’t have figured this out with your advice!
none says
try allmusic.com cant think of a better resource.
Morgan says
I figured out a workaround to get album images thanks to Nick’s recommendation of http://albumart.org/
Find the image you want and save it as a JPG onto your desktop. I then opened Word and inserted the image into a document so that i could copy the image then pasted it into the “Get Info” section as the original poster describe. On the little info tab that pops up, select album art and then right click to allow for the paste. Worked great!
Fernando Monteiro says
It do not work with IE 7, but works fine on Firefox 2.
Thanks !
Fernando Monteiro says
It do not work with IE 7, but works fine com Firefox 2.
Thanks !
sasquatch says
Maybe this is new, but you can drag + drop images from websites! No need to actually download the files, and it seems to work with ease. Where I had problems with local files, I just found the same image online and dragged the image from Firefox into the appropriate iTunes field. I’m running WinXP and iTunes 7.5.0.2.0, if you were having troubles.
surfychik32 says
yeah i’ve tried this many time with lots of different songs but THEY JUST DONT WORK! Like even with the album in the bottom left of the screen it says “Drag Album Artwork Here” i do that, itunes freezes for a second and then the album wont appear!
PLZ HELP! oh yeah a good site with albums is amazon.com
Nick says
http://albumart.org/
Here’s a good resource for finding those album covers.
rjb says
To mark, and anyone else who comes across this… Amazon is a good source for getting album covers, but sometimes artists put the image on the CD.
Mark says
I tried that, it kinda works. The only problem is that the artwork is pretty blurry. I guess the original image is too small. How do I find web sites with clearer images?