How to get an iTunes playlist that only contains files with artwork?

July 12, 2007 12:29 PM

How do I create an iTunes playlist that ONLY contained music for which there is artwork associated?

I know how to download/attach artwork in iTunes, but I still have a lot that do not have any artwork associated with it and Coverflow looks barren.

In the interest of [1] making Coverflow look pretty and [2] creating a smart playlist that contains the ones that I need to work with, how would I set this up?

[If it matters, I'm on Windows]

posted by azlondon to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Not helpful for you, but for people on a Mac, there's an Apple Script that does this
posted by einarorn at 1:34 PM on July 12, 2007

As far as I know, there isn't a way to do this with a smart playlist, which is fairly aggravating. TuneSleeve is a good way to add artwork to albums that don't have it, though.
posted by phaded at 1:35 PM on July 12, 2007

I know this doesn't directly answer the question, but if you want to quickly populate Coverflow, you might want to try this: select your entire library, right-click, and click "Get Album Artwork". It may not get everything, but it will likely get most of your stuff.
posted by Void_Ptr at 1:49 PM on July 12, 2007

If you're handy with a Windows scripting language that can talk to iTunes (e.g. Python, C#, JavaScript, Visual Basic), you might be able to do it with a script, just like it's possible on a Mac. I don't have the new iTunes SDK though, so I can't check for you.
posted by grouse at 2:16 PM on July 12, 2007

Oh, the script that I linked to creates a playlist with tracks without artwork. To get a playlist with tracks with artowrk, I guess you could just create a smart playlist that included every song, except those on that playlist created by the script.
posted by einarorn at 2:25 PM on July 12, 2007

Or just modify the script... should be a matter of changing an "is not" to an "is" in an obvious "if" statement...
posted by kindall at 2:32 PM on July 12, 2007

I ran up against this the other day. Since the iPhone uses coverflow to display albums it was pretty dismal to look at my music, since much of it is import, indie and short run music trying the "Get Album Artwork" didn't gain me anything.

I couldn't find a way to do it.

So I spent a couple hours one night with google image search/Amazon taking care of my most favorite artists and albums. And the stuff that I couldn't find I with to Flickr and picked interesting photos for entire unmarked genres. That part only took half an hour (maybe 2000 songs). It's not perfect but it looks much better now.
posted by Ookseer at 3:15 PM on July 12, 2007

Maybe too labor intensive, but: if you don't use the star ratings, you could give each artless track, say, two stars, then create a smart playlist for two-star tracks. [My Rating/is/**]
posted by Superfrankenstein at 4:27 PM on July 12, 2007

There are more innocuous tags than the star ratings to use in Frank's suggestion, but it's a good idea... try the "Notes" tag, for example. Just select all the no-artwork albums, Get Info, and type [no artwork] into the notes. Then make a smart playlist that excludes that value.
posted by rokusan at 6:31 PM on July 12, 2007

It's not quite a playlist, but it is a list.

A Utility called iTunes Store file validator (for windows) can analyse your iTunes library for missing artwork.

Once it's finished, it will generate a HTML page with a list of all tracks without artwork, as well as convenient Google links for each album.

Fix an album, run iTSFv .. rinse, repeat.
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek at 11:34 PM on July 12, 2007

Thanks to everyone - grouse gave me a good starting point with some examples in it.

From this, I found this very simple windows-usable script and it works great. It's not a smart playlist, but you can't have everything.
posted by azlondon at 8:22 AM on July 13, 2007