iTunes versus Reality

[pseydtonne]

I realize I'm going to have a shit-fit when I have to organize things on iTunes. This is why I avoid dealing with it.

I scammed all of the stereo remasters of the Beatles albums a few months ago. I also got copies of all of the monaural remasters, but I haven't thought about putting those on my MP3 player. I finally have the space to put all of that luscious Beatling on my much bigger deck, so I got going.

I don't blame iTunes for not wanting to find album artwork when every title has "(2009 Stereo Remaster)" as a suffix. So I cleared that suffix off the tracks of disc 1 of the white album (real album name: The Beatles). Now it read "The Beatles Disc 1". When I hit the "Find Album Artwork" button, iTunes still couldn't find anything.

I tried changing the title to "The Beatles" and set those files as disc 1 of 2 -- still no artwork found.

I tried "The White Album" -- still no artwork.

Yo, it's a frickin' white sheet with the words "THE BEATLES" embossed near the bottom right! It's one of the most iconic pieces of minimalism from the Twentieth Century! Your company stole its name from this band -- is that the reason you can't map these files to their artwork?

Obscure bands I loved from my childhood? No problem. The god danged white album? Problem.

Rubber Soul? Same problem. What? It's Rubber Soul! Norwegian Wood, for cryin' out loud! I am not talking about some new-fangled bootleg. This album is 43 years old and sold millions of copies.

By the way, iTunes: why do you choose this non-picture from something called "songs from the superunknown" every time I try to put the proper cover art onto the tracks for Soundgarden's Superunkown? Why must you override with the wrong thing? To whom can I speak about this?

Comments

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

If you select all the tracks and then 'Get Info' you can use the notepad function to copy and paste the image from an internet source, and it'll write the image to the appropriate directory, allowing you to do an end run around other people's bad or mistaken image entries.

It's manual and slow, but guaranteed to give you the right art.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I should clarify that that's if you select all the tracks for the album, not all the tracks on the playlist. :)

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I've been doing that for many albums, but thank you for pointing that out. I just hoped I wouldn't have to do this for something this popular. I have to find the album art for Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra's "Ska Me Crazy" but I expect that.

Getting the artwork myself has an interesting advantage: I can pick nicer resolutions of pictures. I found a reworking of the the cover for Help! where the zooming-outward version of the word "Help!" fills up the top half of the picture. This may not be accurate to the original album cover but it looks a lot better on the tiny iPod screen.

In contrast, this morning I ripped six CDs and added them to the stack. I was able to find album artwork for each without trying.

I still have a problem where one album (Soundgarden's "Superunknown") keeps giving me this incorrect album cover even when I delete all artwork and paste my own replacement. I wish I didn't have to spend so much effort on a decent but not great album.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

The Superunknown error is weird.

I frequently substitute the artwork if it doesn't look right :)