Adding Images To Music Files

Sometimes what seems like it should be easy, isn't quite that simple. As I transferred in my music collection, it occurred to me that only a few of the tracks had an image associated with them. Generally, this is the album cover art. When the file is played back in a portable music player with a color LCD screen, the art gets displayed with the song. I find it useful as this way it's easier to associate the album tracks to the album when there is a visual cue.

Rather then re-rippping all the tracks, there must be a simpler way. Apparently, iTunes will add in an image, but only if you have an account. As I don't plan on buying anything in the iTunes store, and besides, I'm more of a Windows guy anyway, surely there must be an alternative. I put Google to work and came up with some alternatives.

First stop was the Magic MP3 Tagger. I'm not going to belabor this, and cut right to the chase. After ten minutes of trying, I simply couldn't get the program to do much. On top of this, this was only a trial version, and they wanted some shareware payment. Sorry folks, first the program has to work before I can contribute to the effort, although in comparison this was better than what came next.

Next up was MP3Tag, which bills itself as "The Universal Tag Editor." It appears to be a quality program, and it is freeware. I threw it a few albums, and based on various databases it was able to come up with some appropriate album covers, although it frequently needed guidance. It also "fixes" the track tags and that was when the trouble started. It renumbered, and renamed my tracks. While at first I thought this should clean up things, I realized this was making a ton of mistakes. In many cases, the track was getting a name of another song from the same album! I'd rather have the right name, and forget about the art work. As the Windows file name was still correct, I had to manually edit the track tags and fix things. Clearly this was not going to get the job done.

I then decided to look for a program that was more specific to album art, and wouldn't be so eager to rename my tracks. I found the Album Cover Art Downloader. This is a freeware program that in initial use is the best of the lot. It also draws upon a variety of databases, including Wal-Mart and Amazon to come up with the album cover. It then retags the files, although in some cases not all of the tracks of the album. It also runs quickly with good stability. Best of all, it didn't rename my files or mess with the track tags.

My conclusion is that when using these programs, work in small batches, and test the results before things get totally out of hand. In this case, the more specific, less full featured program clearly was the best. Also, we have to wonder if all of this effort is really worth it...

--Jonas

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