iTunes album art.

Apparently Apple needs me to give them my credit card information just to create an iTunes Store account to download album art.

Damn it MBP, you make loving you difficult.

 

You can do it manually, it's not THAT bad , I find that the iTunes store have a pretty high chance of getting the wrong album cover

 

Ahhhh, this is annoying, yes.
Even my Ubuntu machine gets album art by itself for free.
I actually just manually added all album art that I needed for the MBP, I only have a few GB of MP3s on that, my desktop has the big database (100+GB).
You can manually add album art by selecting the album (I recommend selecting all the songs in an album) and then dragging the cover art to the Album Artwork box in iTunes lower left corner.
I use a widget call AmazonArt to find the artwork, it takes the selected album in itunes and searches amazon for artwork, then I press set as artwork in itunes and voila, not ideal, but works.


Any better solutions, please comment!!!

 

Yea you're better off just manually dragging it to the placeholder. I found iTunes to be horrible in importing and downloading album artwork.

BTW coriolis, how could you leave out Konata

 

'Cmon, you spend big bucks for the MBP but you can't give up a free credit card number, lol?

I got no problems with a wrong cover or two, easily fixed as pointed out. I have 1500 albums..my problems are with Gracenotes who total do not check album track info for accuracy and spelin’, this service is not free for Apple.

 

Yes, next time I'll just fish out one of my "free" credit cards. Do you give your credit card number to people when you have no intention of purchasing anything from them?

This service is apparently free from everyone *but* apple. You seem a bit too up Apple's rear so I'll just ignore you from now on.

 

Och, must have touched a nerve there. I "gave" Apple my card when I bought my laptop, no offense there..

 

You can buy an iTunes gift card from a local retailer, and create an account with that. Although you're out $20 if you don't intend on buying any music.

 

I'll agree with Ichigo on this one, you can get this service on all other systems for free.

I for one live in an area not served by itms. So I have no option. I can't (to my knowledge) set itunes to a different server for album checking and cover art. In almost all other respects I really enjoy the program. As a longtime winamp poweruser (partly because winamp is the only one to reliably work with low latency audio drivers, partly because the medialibrary in winamp works) I was not looking forward to switching in that respect. Then iTunes on mac turned out to be perfectly capable, if a little light on the options.
Just a few more settings of this kind, and iTunes would be perfect. ITMS integration is terrific, if you have ITMS in your country, for us in other parts, we need an option.

 

Well, my point was if you used your card for purchase of a $1,900 notebook, is it that big a deal to do a free register with iTunes with same card and company?

You do not have to buy anything, yes, but you do get to download free itunes, some good, some really bad. Of course, nobody wants to use a card if they can so depending on location and preferences, you have other options, no?

When I download album covers from iTunes they go to an iTunes cover folder, where if you download from other, the album art is embedded in the song file. This may be an issue for some or not depending on type of collection.

Cheers

 

But again, the service is not available everywhere. ITMS only exists in a few countries, if you live outside that area you can't even buy access (well, you can but it involves silly and roundabout ways which a normal customer shouldn't have to think about)
Why not have it do "It seems you do not have ITMS service set up/available in your country. Would you like to connect to these free services (out of Apple inc.'s control) for these features?"
That would be the Apple "it just works" way. The current way is the Apple "lock everyone in and screw them" way which some part of the company sadly seems to favour...

 

Yes, there are other services out there that do that...so if you really can't stand signing up an iTunes Store account, then try those out.

And personally, I think you're overreacting a little...you're just setting up an iTunes Store account, and its not like Apple will charge you for the album artwork. Its like saying its unjustified to have to register to post on a forum.

P.S. Cori, I found that happened a lot when iTunes 7 was first released , but I find its actually really good nowadays.

 

There's really no reason why I should be compelled to give a CC number for a service that I'm never going to use.

All of my songs had album art in WMP11 since they're imported from a Vista machine. Most of them should have been embedded into the mp3 files. I don't know what iTunes' problem is, but it didn't import many album artworks at all.

 

A forum is different - some control over the users is necessary. Also, you're not registering financially sensitive information to access most public forums (ironically, the Apple forums are an exception to this). I doubt the majority of posters to forums like NBR even enter their real contact information.

In principle, there is absolutely no reason anyone should have to enter financial information for free services unless there are other reasons necessary for that service - such as identity verification. This is not the case here with album covers.

In practice however, to an individual consumer, there really is no difference. We can go by the assumption that Apple will not abuse our CC information, sell it to 3rd parties, or get their servers hacked and data stolen. If any of the above does happen, we're also reasonably assured of having ways to prevent and recover any damages we suffer. Furthermore, if you bought anything from Apple online (such as a MB or MBP), it's highly likely you already have an Apple account and Apple already has your CC information.

That said, for all the trouble we put up with, it'd be nice if the album cover downloads worked a bit better.

 

Well said. As far as security, your at way higher risk losing your card to the waiter at the restaurant.. or the odd laptop at monster.com

 

Well, that's your choice to use or not but the problem is not iTunes, it's Gracenotes - the service that Apple pays for to supply the tack info.

If we can get over the album art, the track info is a bigger problem. If that is misnamed then you get wrong or nothing for album art. We need to be able to option iTunes to use free CDDB as in Media Monkey.

 

I meant that some albums are present from when I transferred them from the Vista machine. Others (most) aren't. It seems random.

Track info isn't a problem for me.

So does anyone have a solution for me? Because right now, I can't find anything that actually does what I want. Aside from drag&dropping album art for each individual song (shift selecting all songs from one album won't even work), what other options have I?

 

You do not need to input your credit card information to create an iTunes Store Account. All you need is a Redeem Code, if you can find one.

I created a new thread with the method I used to accomplish this: How to Create an iTunes Store Account without a Credit Card.

 

Fancy, Xander .

 

Hmph. The redeem code is only for US customers.

Of course, I still got the account. Brilliant.

It's definitely very cool of you to have figured this out. Thanks.