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

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

azlondon — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:29:23 -0800

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]

By: einarorn

einarorn — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:34:31 -0800

Not helpful for you, but for people on a Mac, there's an Apple Script that does this

By: phaded

phaded — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:35:06 -0800

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.

By: Void_Ptr

Void_Ptr — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:49:43 -0800

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.

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:16:02 -0800

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.

By: einarorn

einarorn — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:25:02 -0800

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.

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:32:09 -0800

Or just modify the script... should be a matter of changing an "is not" to an "is" in an obvious "if" statement...

By: Ookseer

Ookseer — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:15:19 -0800

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.

By: Superfrankenstein

Superfrankenstein — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:27:02 -0800

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/**]

By: rokusan

rokusan — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:31:19 -0800

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.

By: your mildly obsessive average geek

your mildly obsessive average geek — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:34:41 -0800

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.

By: azlondon

azlondon — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:22:40 -0800

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.