No, F***off unless you're better at it than itunes:
What on earth is the point of these services if they're so low tech. that all they're doing is grabbing on to a basic detail of your library?
Don't question my taste in music, but when did Wilson Pickett record Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance? Albert King's Adagio for Organ & Strings, oh, I get it ALBinoni, the first three letters are the same so that must be the right cover!
I went to a great deal of trouble, when I first got a Squeezebox, even scanning or photographing my older and more obscure albums to get it right, on opening media player on purchasing my new PC, I would have thought that my option was to click a box if I wanted to download media information from the internet, not unclick one.
I've had to delete the lot and re-load from my back up, but it's still confused.
I'm only using Media Player because its DLNA links to my Sony DVD player and that, in general, works as well as my WD media player did.
Just a rant!

Not only that but it seems to insist on have 4 copies. Two small the same and two large the same. And they're low res too so most useless for me.

Does this stop it under Tools->Options?

Library Tab - Uncheck - Retrieve additional information from the Internet

Privacy Tab - Uncheck - Update music files by retrieving media info from the Internet

You can always do a global search for the files to get rid of them rather than having to restore from a backup.

I would LOVE to see an application than I can:
- Feed some folders/files containing music files (99% of which are mp3's)
- Have the program check online for album/cover art on a per file basis
- Lets me select which cover I like on a per file basis and have that cover saved into the mp3 file.

That's it! I don't need it to do any more than that! Heck, I would even pay for such a program!

The closest I got was using iTunes, which did my first two points, but only saved the cover art into its own library, not into the mp3 file itself which made it useless for other applications/devices (like my Sonos). This may have changed in the last year or so, haven't checked. I tend to avoid iTunes like the plague.

I anybody knows of a program which can do this, IMO simple task, please please please let me know! (but I guess this is one of those thing you'd have to create for yourself. The problem is I can't program myself out of a wet paper bag. )

The closest I've found so far is MusicBrainz Picard. You'll need the Cover Art plugin.

99% of my album art downloading is done by dbPowerAmp when my CDs are ripped, it does a great job of getting good album art.

I believe I already had a look at that, but it wasn't entirely what I was looking for since it's very album oriented and I also have a lot of tracks ripped from cd singles. I'll have another look at it though, maybe it's been improved. Thanks!


Sounds good, but unfortunately, I did most of the ripping (if not all) already and really have no urge to go throught that tedious process again. Thanks for the mention though.

Yep, I'd got most of my collection before album covers became a possibility, most I dragged and dropped in Tag & Rename, other than that, as I say, I've scanned or snapped the more obscure and deleted.

If you already have all the covers downloaded via iTunes, find a program that can take the covers and embed them in your music. On the Mac you can use a simple AppleScript. In Windows I believe there are a few third party programs to do this with the iTunes-downloaded covers.

Have you got any links to such a script Bruno? Even to the Applescript version? (I have a few friends who own a Mac, if all else fails I guess I could ask them to have a look)

For Windows: iCoverArt

http://www.maximized.com/shareware/icoverart/index.htm

For Mac OS: AppleScript to run while running iTunes.

Thanks Bruno! I've now got a few things to try...

itunes to me is a historical bad experience thst was similarly superb at cocking up my tags, I no longer have an ipod, even less an i phone, pad or mac: itunes is never coming near a PC of mine again!
Even when I had an ipod, I used Winamp and found it to be much easier.
I've now got the whole collection nearly back in order: I'm just pondering why the five Clyde Mc.Phatter tracks that I own say that they're by Ella Fitzgerald, a singer whom I've never liked: Presumably she is holed up in a priesthole somewhere around my hard disk!

iTunes doesn't add any of the visible tags itself to your music.


I don't like iTunes very much, but it's still the only option for Mac OS to do any of this stuff. I also use MP3Tag for Windows.