How to insert album cover art on music files?

@glupson,

’Once all the covers are done, you may notice that The Beatles and the beatles are filed separately and may end up in different folders. That is just a made-up example, but I want to say that arranging the library becomes a year-long chore and you may be tempted to straighten it out. It took me longer. If you have lots of classical, I feel for you.’


It is a tricky business.

After you’ve made sure the song and artist titling is correct and consistent, (and have done a backup) you still need to watch out for a few things.

You need to decide how many genres you need (male, female, pop, rock, rock n roll, classical, children’s, electronica, folk, soundtrack is about the minimum I can reduce it to).

Then there’s the year of release (or year it became a hit or when you first became aware of it) which can vary from US to UK.

If you happen to use the the otherwise excellent VLC media app (which provides a drag and drop means of getting music onto an iPhone) you might find a few artwork issues in list view. It also seems to ignore your genre divisions and creates its own.

Is it all worth it?

Definitely!

To think you can carry around a vast library of all the music you’ve ever liked to enjoy at your leisure is something that would have left previous generations incredulous.

And some people thought the Sony Walkman cassette was a big deal.

Whatever next in this age of ’miracle and wonder’?

The missing artwork at the beginning of the albums is now there. Must of been a delay thing while upgrading the file.
I only added the artwork, the rest of the album info is not worth the effort to me.

ozzy

cd318,

"Then there’s the year of release (or year it became a hit or when you first became aware of it) which can vary from US to UK."

Interesting options I had mostly not thought of. I put a year when material was recorded, if known. If not sure about that, I put when it was released. Is the year of release in U.S.A. and UK a common issue? I have no knowledge but would have guessed they follow each other very closely.

glupson,
Isn't that a lot of extra work?
Do you find it to be helpful?

ozzy

glupson,

I think the US and UK charts have always been a little bit different, end of year release dates could vary somewhat, especially for acts that weren't so well known outside their region.

Sometimes the US and UK charts would converge but then at other times they seemed to bear little resemblance. It obviously mattered more to UK acts whether they made it in America than it did to US acts whether they made it in the UK.

I used to follow the charts avidly between the late 70s til the late 90s and so many of those songs act as memory joggers. 

It's good to have accurate song data as it also helps with playlist compilation and lately I'm increasingly becoming fond of playlists that help establish mood.

For example if I feel tired, then playing some hard rock can be just what the doctor ordered. Or if I'm feeling nostalgic I can hone in on one particular year.

I even once tried to put the songs into month order as opposed to merely years, but that didn't turn out so well. Besides the effort to do so would be enormous for well over a 1000 songs!

Some people like albums whilst others prefer to stick to singles and making their own compilations. I'm definitely in the latter group as there's hardly a dozen albums I'm happy to play start to finish. I played Dark Side of the Moon the other day and soon found my attention wandering...

Anyway, the great thing is you only need to do this once.