Bulk fix Album artwork in iTunes library for display on a Squeezebox Controller

Question

This may actually be two questions in one. I've recently bought a Logitech Squeezebox Duet and as a result have noticed that a large amount of the album artwork in my iTunes library is either missing or just completely wrong.

So firstly is there an application that will perform a mass/bulk download of artwork for an iTunes library.

Secondly the controller handset for the Duet displays the album art for the track that is currently playing (and thumbnails of album art when browsing). For quite a few albums that do have correct artwork in iTunes, the art doesn't show up on the Squeezebox controller.

Answer 1

Hm, there are such tools, but you need to look closely to get the good out of the rest. I have personally used a coupe or three over the last few years and they have all failed to fetch all the artwork of my songs (I have lot's of CD music imported to my iTunes).

Look at the Everything iCafe Forums for a good brainstorm of such applications - start here, for example:

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/threads/album-art-itunes.77273/#post-853486

Answer 2

I don't have any experience with it, but I recently saw an ad for Tune-Up. They have free and paid versions for PC and Mac.

Answer 3

I write a tool called bliss that is intended for mass organisation of the album art for large music collections. It will download art that is missing, save it to a file, embed/not embed as required. I hope it helps you.

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I hope posting this is acceptable by the rules of superuser - I looked in the faq/meta but couldn't find anything specific.

Answer 4

Regarding your second question, iTunes stores some artwork in its library database, and puts some in the meta tags on your files. Your Duet should be able to display any artwork from a file's tags, but won't display artwork in the iTunes database.

I found a post on AVforums that mentions that the Duet will check two places for artwork:

1. The file's tags, and
2. The folder the file resides in, for files named folder.jpg, album.jpg, thumb.jpg, or cover.jpg.

I believe any tool that will scan your library files and download the cover art to either the folder or the tags will work for fixing artwork in the Duet.