How to Obtain Missing Album Art on the iPhone

One of the most unique and aesthetically pleasing features on the iPhone is the "cover flow" music application. This feature allows you to flip through your music library by viewing the covers of each album in your collection, similar to the way you would in a jukebox. To fully appreciate the "cover flow" application it helps to obtain any missing album art for all of the music on your iPhone to replace any blank spots. This process is easy and can be completed within minutes by following a few simple steps.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Open iTunes and click on the tab labeled "Music" in the side panel. This will display all of the music currently stored within your iTunes music library.

2. Click on "Advanced" in the top menu bar and choose "Get Album Artwork" from the drop-down menu. This function will automatically obtain and update missing album artwork for any music that is stored within the iTunes database. Using this feature should allow you to update a large portion of your music library's artwork, but unfortunately there are likely to be inconsistencies between your library and Apple's catalog of music.

3. Copy and paste album artwork from any website that sells music, such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble (see Resources below). This can be somewhat tedious when you are working with a large music collection, but if you prefer a specific version of the album artwork, this is probably your best bet. Once you have copied an image of the album cover, select the entire album in your music library, right-clicking and choosing "Get Info" and pasting the image into the box labeled "Artwork."

4. Download a free program to obtain missing album artwork that the iTunes "Get Album Artwork" feature can not find. Most of these programs are not officially licensed by Apple and will not be supported in the case of a system failure or virus related to downloading them. Still, there are some programs, such as iTunes Art Importer, that you can download for free and will do the job well without any major technical issues.

5. Download and install iTunes Art Importer (see Resources below). Open the program while you have have iTunes open with all of the music in your library that is missing album artwork already selected. Click on the magnifying glass icon, instructing the program to retrieve any missing artwork from Amazon's database, which tends to be much more comprehensive than the Apple database.

6. Review the list of options for album artwork that iTunes Art Importer retrieves for you to make sure that everything seems to match. Click on "Auto-Import Best Guess" to import and update automatically all of the songs you have selected. This feature works very similarly to the "Get Album Artwork" feature in iTunes.

7. Finish by syncing everything in your iTunes library to your iPhone. This will automatically add any new music with its corresponding artwork as well as update any albums that already appear on your iPhone with the artwork that you have found.

Tips & Warnings

• Save yourself the hassle of obtaining missing album art by downloading music directly from Apple's iTunes Store. The album artwork is included with all purchases.

Resources

• Download iTunes Art Importer software
• Find album artwork at Amazon
• Search for missing album artwork at Barnes & Noble

[rzaidi]

on 10/4/2008 TuneUp is a great iTunes plug-in that finds cover art...http://www.tuneupmedia.com ...should definitely be added to Resources...it does way more too (clean all metadata, concert notices)