iTunes Cover Art and Finder.

[rjmCreative]

Hello all,

I've been researching this issue and it's driving me crazy. I am quite a perfectionist when it comes to my music and how it is stored. For some reason in the finder, a lot of my cover art isn't being shown however in the iTunes folder it is shown there. I have not tried downloading or retrieving cover art in any way.

Am I making this hard on myself or should I just not allow iTunes to organize my music files?

I don't see what the problem is. I am sure the cover art must be stored somewhere in the meta data but I don't see it. I've lost all hope and I am going to give up if no one here can help me.

Even when I copy the music from the itunes folder to my desktop, the cover art still doesn't appear. It only appears in it's native locations (iTunes folder).

Any help is appreciated. I know there are posts on this specific topic but they are outdated and there are no solutions.

Also in the image, finder is on the left and iTunes folder is on the right.

THE REASON I am trying to be organized is so I can transfer my music easily across platforms without worrying about the metadata being lost no matter what software I am using to play music.

 

[mactumors]

iTunes keeps the artwork in a separate folder and does not embed it in the metadata of the actual music files. It's odd that it ever shows up in finder at all.

Running this script will embed the artwork in the actual files so when you move them around they will keep their artwork:
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=embedart

I assume apple does it to save space. If you embed the artwork, you are storing the image multiple times; once for each song on an album.

 

[rjmCreative]

Makes sense to me. I actually stumbled upon that site just as I was falling asleep last night and completely forgot about it.

My real concern is transferring my music to my girlfriend's iTunes on her computer. She wants all the same settings as mine has such as genre and other ways you can organize music.

Can I just copy the music folder over or should I copy my entire Itunes folder over? I am not worried about purchased things from iTunes conflicting because most of mine was bought elsewhere or imported. (except for TV shows)

Also: Can I delete cover art in the individual artists folder? I have been keeping them as a backup when transferring because the cover art wasn't remaining attached.

Any help is appreciated as always!

 

[Partron22]

It's odd that it ever shows up in finder at all.

It does for tracks with embedded artwork. iTunes may not embed artwok into tracks, but neither does it remove it if its already there.

I assume apple does it to save space.

It also increases speed of artwork disply and reduces disk usage to store artwork in a db by album.