In this post i’m gonna show you how to add album art to mp3 music files. Many people don’t know how to add custom images as album art to their favorite songs. Learn how to add album art both in Windows and Mac through simple steps below.
What is Album art?
Album art is a small picture that appears in the front of a music album or mp3 to identify the type of song or the genre of the song. Album art is the digital form of the album cover (the sticker that is pasted in front of audio CD’s).
Where does album art comes from?
Album art is usually set by the creator of the song or by a company that manufactures the CD of the mp3 files. Album art may either represent the manufacturing company or the movie in which the mp3 song is a part of. With the help of Album art we can easily identify the movie of the song.
Sometimes the audio files don’t have album art, in such conditions the music player automatically search for available album arts in the online database and set the album art if it has found any matching results. In addition, the Music Player periodically scans your Player Library for songs that are missing album art images. If it can match a song that is missing album art to an entry in the online database, the Player will download the missing album art.
How to Add Album Art to MP3 using Windows Media player?
You have to find an image to make it the album art for an MP3 file you choose. You can either use Google Image Search to find appropriate album arts matching the song or you could add a custom album art such as your image for the favorite songs.
Follow the steps to add album art using windows media player;
- On Windows, Click the Start button and Click All Programs, and then click Windows Media Player.
- If the Player is currently open and you’re in Now Playing mode, click the Switch to Library button in the upper-right corner of the Player to open the library.Browse to the album that is missing art.
- Find a picture that you want to use for album art (the picture can be on your computer or on a webpage), right-click the picture, and then click Copy.
- The original picture can be in any of the following formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.
- In the Player Library, right-click the album art box, and then click Paste album art.
A copy of the picture is embedded into each of the songs from that album. The copy of the picture is automatically scaled to the appropriate size and converted to the JPEG format before it is embedded in the file. The original picture file is not modified.
How to Find Suitable Album Art ?
Here are a few good sources of downloadable album art when your media player of choice doesn’t find it.
Album Art Downloader (Windows)
This small software covers a lot of ground, querying an array of both big-name (Amazon and Google Image search) and smaller, indie-ish sites to grab album covers. The resolution varies by the source, of course, but you can usually grab at least one 600×600 image of most any album you can think of. Grab the latest version of Album Art Downloader here. Windows XP users may be prompted to install the .NET 3.5 framework if they haven’t already.
How to Add or Change Album Art in Mac OS (iTunes)?
Frustrated with the number of albums you haveve got that don’t have the proper album art? Well, as you may know, there is an easy way to search for missing album art— You can do that by choosing File> Library> Get Album Artwork in iTunes.
With this method, iTunes will go through your entire library looking for missing album covers; if you only need a couple of items done, you could also right- or Control-click on an album and choose Get Album Artwork instead to save yourself some time.
In both case, you’ll be required to sign in if you’re not already.
That’s great and all, but what do you do with the albums that iTunes can’t find artwork for? It’s safe to say that this ain’t pretty:
And neither is this, which is what iTunes thought this album cover should look like.
Anyway, let’s go find some proper art, shall we? What you’ll need to do is search the Web for the album, and then once you’ve found the correct cover image, right- or Control-click on the picture and pick Copy Image from the contextual menu.
Then open iTunes and find the album that you’d like to add the image to. Right- or Control-click on the album and choose Get Info…
…and click “Yes” on the dialog box to confirm that you want to edit multiple items.
Afterward, you’ll make sure you’re on the “Info” tab (or on the “Artwork” tab if you’re only adding the cover image for one song), and you should see a box in the lower-right corner labeled “Artwork.”
Select that box to highlight it:
Then press Ctrl-V to paste in your copied artwork.
When that’s done, click OK to confirm your changes, and all should be right with the world. Well, with the world of that particular album’s art, anyway. Doesn’t this look much, much better?
Why is album art missing sometimes?
The Media Player might not download album art from the database in the following situations:
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You aren’t connected to the Internet when ripping a CD.
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You’re connected to the Internet, but the online database is missing album art (or there’s no media information at all) for the CD you are ripping.
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Your system administrator has prevented your computer from downloading items such as album art from the Internet.
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You ripped the CD using a program other than Windows Media Player; doing so might prevent the Player from finding a match in the online database.
Finally, if the online database contains incorrect album art for a CD, the Player will download that album art.
So these are all the ways to change or add album art in Windows as well as in Mac OS respectively. If you have got any doubt ask me through the comments below. You can customize your mp3 files by adding your own custom album art because now you know how to add album art to mp3.
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