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How To Add iTunes Artwork To MP3 ID3 Tags Using iTunes

Tony Williams — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 11:45:50 +0000

With iTunes 7, Apple added better support for album artwork. Previously iTunes wouldn’t automatically add artwork if you imported your own tracks. Now with iTunes 7, the program will automatically search the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) for artwork, and if any is available it will add it to your files. The problem is though, iTunes doesn’t add the artwork to the actual ID3 tag within the file that is read when other applications play your mp3s, so the artwork is only visible to iTunes.

I’ve discovered a very quick way of fixing this, which will add the iTunes artwork to your track’s ID3 tag. I prefer using iTunes to add the artwork rather than an external application, as (i) it’s quicker, and (ii) the iTunes artwork is much better quality.

To add album artwork using iTunes do the following:

Find the album you want to add artwork to
Select all the tracks in the album you want to add the iTunes artwork to the ID3 tag
In the bottom left-hand corner click on ’show/hide artwork’
Right-click on the artwork image that is displayed and select ‘copy’
Now right-click on the tracks you’ve highlighted and select ‘Get info’
In the pop-up box that right-click in the artwork field and select ‘paste’

Once you’ve done this iTunes will now add it’s high quality images to the albums ID3 mp3 tags, which will mean that other mp3 players and apps will now be able to display the artwork.

Top 10 FREE MP3 Utiliites That Money Can’t Buy

Tony Williams — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 18:17:48 +0000

I can’t remember the last time I played a CD – in fact I’ve given away most of my CD collection to a friend who had no music. All of music is stored on my computer, which I play either on my iPod or I stream onto my Xbox 360.

One of the problems with a large digital music collection, is that because so many sources have been used to add music (ripping CDs, downloads, bittorrent, iTunes etc) your collection can quickly get quite messy and unless you’re really on the ball with keeping your mp3s nice and tidy, then you can end up not being able to find the track you want to play as its not tagged correctly so you don’t even know which artist is singing a particular song.

Well, never fear. Here are The 10 Best FREE MP3 Utilities That Money Can’t Buy, that will allow you to get the most out of your music collection.

1. MusicBrainz Picard

MusicBrainz Picard is great if you have a really messy music collection. The latest version of Picard incorporates acoustic fingerprinting which will help you identify and tag unknown tracks, so at least you will now know what you are listening to! Tagging your music correctly is vital if you want to add artwork to your mp3s.
More: Musicbrainz Picard

2. The Filter

The Filter is a great iTunes plugin that automatically creates playlists when you select a few songs and click on the big black “F” button. So, rather than randomly browsing through your music collection The Filter can build playlists in seconds to fit your mood.The Filter is particularly great if you have a big music library, or you’ve downloaded a lot of music and you never get around to listening to it all. Now you can create playlists on the fly everyday for free in seconds.

More: The Filter

3. TuneSleeve

iTunes 7 makes a decent attempt at adding artwork, but it can’t add artwork if the ID3 tags are incorrect and it also doesn’t add the artwork to the ID3 tag which will mean the artwork won’t be displayed if you use anything other an iPod, or if you use another mp3 application.

The best way to add artwork without a doubt is TuneSleeve, which is the #1 app for adding artwork to iTunes music. TuneSleeve not only has a very intuitive interface allowing the best artwork to be selected or searched for, but it also adds the art to raw ID3 tag in the mp3 file so that all players can see the artwork.

More: TuneSleeve

4. itunesexport

iTunes is great at creating playlists and managing music, but what happens if you want to use those playlists in WMP or you don’t use a iPod? iTunes Export is the answer as it allows you to export iTunes Playlists to the standard .m3u file format, which nearly every other mp3 player uses. This great free tool lets you decide what playlists to export, and whether or not to include protected files.

More: iTunes Export

5. BadApple

Are you one of those ’special people’ who don’t have an iPod and use a different mp3 player? Well if you are, but you still want to use iTunes which is the best music player around, then this great little application could be the solution. BadApple is a free plugin that allows you to sync your iTunes library with any MP3 player. It works with many popular players including Creative Nomad, Dell DJ, Oakley Thump and Archos.

More: BadApple (link is in German – sorry!)

Best Way To Add iTunes Cover Art – TuneSleeve

Tony Williams — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:01:22 +0000

iTunes is a great application, but the way it handles certain processes will create problems in other areas. Take for instance the way it adds artwork. Until recently, iTunes didn’t and then recent versions of iTunes only add artwork to its own database not the raw mp3 file so that other players and applications can see your tracks in all their glory.

I’ve just discovered what for me is the best free (as always!) application to add album artwork to iTunes. TuneSleeve not only has a very intuitive interface allowing the best artwork to be selected, but it also adds the art to raw ID3 tag in the mp3 file so that all players can see the artwork.

Key features:

Being able to work with albums, not individual songs. We’re talking about album artwork after all, aren’t we?
Being able to choose what artwork I want among all possible results found on the internet, because the CD cover for an original edition is not always the same as the 20th anniversary special edition.
In addition to automatic searching, being able to launch an external search in my browser and manually choose the artwork I want by dragging it from my browser to TuneSleeve.
Being able to download artwork for my entire library or a specific playlist.
Being able to exclude songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store, since they already come with good quality artwork.
Being able to exclude songs that already have album artwork, as I might already have spent some precious time manually finding and dragging album cover images for these songs.
Being able to replace existing artwork with the downloaded artwork or to add the downloaded artwork to the existing one, because the software might find a better quality album art than the one that is already there.

What more could you ask for? One word of warning, before you get started. To get the most out of this application you need to ensure that your mp3 files are tagged correctly. The best guide to doing this can be found here.

If you want to dive straight into getting artwork, then download TuneSleeve here.

How To Make All Your MP3s Play At The Same Volume

Tony Williams — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:18:51 +0000

Isn’t it annoying sometimes when you are playing back mp3s and the you have to keep dashing for the volume control because the playback volume can differ dramatically from track to track. This can occur particularly for older CDs that weren’t recorded in a modern studio. Although some mp3 players like iTunes try to fix this using ’soundcheck’ to make each track play back at the same volume, they don’t tend to work very well.

The best way of achieving a constant playback volume is to use MP3Gain. MP3Gain adds extra information to the tags within the mp3 file to ensure that all tracks have the same volume. It does this by using an algorithm to calculate how loud the file actually sounds to a human’s ears. It also does this in a lossless way so it doesn’t impact the quality of your music files, and the modifications are fully reversible if you don’t like the results.
To use MP3Gain on your music collection do the following:

(I) Download and install the latest version of MP3Gain

(II) Once installed select the following options:

Options -> Add subfolders
Options -> Preserve file date/time
Options -> Don’t clip when doing Track Gain Options

(III) Now click on ‘add folder’ or ‘add file’ in the header to add your music files

(IV) Now you need to apply gain. There are two ways of doing this. You can either analyse each track (‘Track Gain’)individually to increase/decrease the volume to your target level. Or, you can analyse each album and apply the gain to the whole album so that the albums average volume hits your target level. I prefer applying ‘Album Gain’ as Artists often deliberately make some tracks louder or quieter. If you don’t tend to listen to complete albums at a time then ‘Track Gain’ is for you.

Track Gain: If ‘Track Gain’ isn’t displayed on your toolbar, click the drop-down next to ‘Album Gain’ and select ‘Track Gain’. Then click the ‘Track Gain’ button and let it run (note: for large libraries this could take a while).
Album Gain: If ‘Album Gain’ isn’t displayed on your toolbar, click the drop-down next to ‘Track Gain’ and select ‘Album Gain’. Then click the ‘Album Gain’ button and let it run (note: for large libraries this could take a while).

(V) Clipping: If you are lucky, then you won’t need to do this last stage. “Clipping” is when the music hits max volume and gets distorted. This can be present in a file before the gain was calculated, and sometimes applying gain can introduce clipping.

If any of your tracks have a “Y” under the ‘clip(Track)’ or ‘clip(album)’ columns then click ‘Modify Gain’ in the menu bar , and select ‘Apply Max-No-clip Gain for Album‘. This will physically apply the album gain changes to the file(s).
One final note. If you are a iTunes user, I would recommend turning SoundCheck off. Not only does MP3Gain do a much better job, if you use Soundcheck on files that were already in your music library and you’ve just applied gains, iTunes calculations will now be out. If you’re determined to use SoundCheck, you’ll need to reimport your files again and let iTunes do it’s initial analysis (WARNING – YOU WILL LOSE PLAYLISTS, RATINGS AND PLAYCOUNTS!)