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Adding Album Cover Art to iTunes

by on September 12, 2005


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.

{ 30 comments }

Mel July 15, 2009 at 8:14 pm

I tried it. It worked for two albums, but it’s not working for any of my other albums. Any suggestions?

dink June 25, 2009 at 9:02 am

instead of dragging you can double-click in the artwork area to pop-up file selector dialog

mohak June 1, 2009 at 10:42 am

THX so MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

casey May 17, 2009 at 9:45 am

thank you soooo much!!!!! it was really irritating not having art for some cds.

dan May 14, 2009 at 9:30 am

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 April 7, 2009 at 10:49 pm

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 March 26, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Thankz A Million, this really works no jokes!!!

sam January 21, 2009 at 2:25 am

thnx it worked
just used google images

Brenden January 11, 2009 at 8:40 pm

OMG THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!! OWE U SO MUCH FOR THAT INFO!

Ronae December 25, 2008 at 5:32 pm

omg thnks it actually works and you don’t even have to download anything!!!

Matthew December 25, 2008 at 7:36 am

Thank you so much! I couldn’t have figured this out with your advice!

none September 28, 2008 at 1:40 pm

try allmusic.com cant think of a better resource.

Morgan September 7, 2008 at 6:23 pm

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 February 10, 2008 at 3:19 pm

It do not work with IE 7, but works fine on Firefox 2.
Thanks !

Fernando Monteiro February 10, 2008 at 3:19 pm

It do not work with IE 7, but works fine com Firefox 2.
Thanks !

sasquatch January 3, 2008 at 10:50 pm

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 December 20, 2007 at 5:36 pm

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 December 18, 2007 at 9:15 pm

http://albumart.org/
Here’s a good resource for finding those album covers.

rjb August 16, 2007 at 7:13 am

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 October 4, 2006 at 5:59 am

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?

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