Steps to acquire cover art for individual songs

[wedmiston]

I have many random one-off songs not associated with a complete CD. What are the best steps to locate the correct cover art for each. hen I use th internet search it often pulls up odd covers. Please walk me through the steps.

[nozy50]

For so far i have also the same problem .
The program let you only search for "Album" & "Artist".
It should be possible to search for "Title" & "Artist", only then you'll get a Single cover.
There is no possibility to change this in the preferences.(or i can't find it).
For now i have to change, for every individual song, the album name into the title name.
Only then the Internet Search will (mostly) find the correct Single Cover.
But this a lot of work, i'll hope that the makers of MusicBee will change/correct this in the next versions.

succes,
and Greetings from Holland

[VX]

I had very similar problem. Please, move the topic to the wishlist section on the forum.

+1 for the suggested improvement.

Until it's done, I suggest to use the Tag Scanner (http://www.xdlab.ru/en/), which IMHO is currently more effective in such a cases. You can configure it to work as a external tool in pair with MusicBee and use it when MB tag update doesn't provide satisfactory results.
To do so, just go to: Edit / Preferences / Tools /External application and locate the Tagscan.exe.

Use the Tag Processor tab in Tag Scanner to update single files with missing covers and tags. The Amazon service is most effective for me, but you can try the other Internet Service Provides (http://musicbrainz.org/ is not supported though).

For more info see my posts in this topic:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=65d110f74cf9e414b45c1022bd16281b&topic=2412.0

BTW, Steven has made some very useful changes in MB 1.2.4033 Tag Editor, so let's hope we won't need any extra utility to update missing tags and covers in future releases of MB.

[VX]

Just search for the artist and song title in a good music store. Copy and paste desired covers to the Tag Editor in MB. More info in the topic: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=2475.msg12562#msg12562

You can not only search for missing covers, but also for lyrics and tags in the way described in the topic.

The more great music sites you bookmarked, the faster you will find what you are looking for   

[Steven]

just so you know i am implementing searching for images automatically by artist/title when the album is blank

[Steven]

this searches by artist/title when no album is defined
http://www.mediafire.com/?lp9jz73vj8hm41h

[wedmiston]

What are the steps to acquire it in the updated version?

[Anti]

Old thread and old version.

Just to clarify, this is the latest alpha version as of today:
http://www.mediafire.com/?n737lv3evvyxzs0
This is the latest weekly beta as of today:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sgv935en79en6k6

I've never had much luck with the internet tagging. However, here's how to do it:

1) for a single track
· highlight the track in 'album and tracks' or 'detail' view -> right-click -> edit
· right click the album art placeholder iin either the tags tab or the artwork tab -> search internet

2) for an entire album
· right-click an artwork in 'album and tracks' view or 'artwork' view
· There could already be artwork there that you want to replace, or it could be a grey placeholder if there is none.
· Choose 'search internet for picture'
· You could also choose auto-tag by track -> update missing artwork

Note for a partial album, it is better not to use internet tagging. Instead:
· choose a track that has artwork
· bring up the tag editor
· right-click the artwork -> copy
· close the tag editor
. highlight and right-click target track(s) -> paste artwork

As stated, I tend just to either use the above method when I've already got some tracks with artwork,
or  if I'm doing a whole album I use google image search in Firefox and copy/paste.

Note that adding artwork can occasionally be a little flaky. Sometimes you need to refresh (F5) manually after adding or pasting. Sometimes you need to delete existing artwork. Sometimes you thought the current artwork was embedded but somehow it was linked, so you need to delete the 'folder.jpg' file. Sometimes it takes a restart of MB to update it. Sometimes pasting into one dialogue doesn't work, so you have to use another one (ie. there are three different places where you can paste artwork). Sometimes playing a track whilst adding artwork interferes with the process. etc. I mean, it works and is a lot more stable than, say, MediaMonkey, you just might have to play about with it a bit.

[Steven]

The Paste Artwork command was only just fixed for refreshing the panels in the very last update
the only outstanding issue with artwork updating i am aware of is if you update artwork using the tag editor or paste artwork and the track is playing, on that condition only if you edit the song again it will say the artwork is still missing but it will update as soon as the song has finished

you could also try the album auto-tagger which also works for individual songs and allows interactive searching

[wedmiston]

very helpful - one last detail. I am always confused as to which options to select when associating the artwork with the song. It often happens that it becomes the "default" album cover for many other songs and not just the one. Can you walk me through the steps to make sure I limit one cover with one song. maybe also if i want it for a whole album?

[Anti]

There are two methods of applying artwork. Firstly, you can embed it (into filetypes which accept embedding). This is where the artwork becomes part of the file itself.

The second method is 'linking' whereby a link is inserted into the file, and the link points to an image which is kept separately somewhere on your hard drive. Linking is supposed to save space, since you only need one copy of the image per album (whereas in embedding, the image is copied into every track). Also, some obscure filetypes don't allow embedding.

OK, suppose you have a file structure:
music\<artist>\<album>\<tracks>
You would probably keep linked artwork for the album here:
music\<artist>\<album>\folder.jpg

Why did I call the artwork 'folder.jpg'?
Because that is the current standard that allows music software to behave in the same way when people swap or transfer music.

Now, if you have linked artwork for just one track in an album, the album tracks without artwork will display the folder.jpg file if this file exists in the same directory. Why? Again, it is a standard behaviour of music software. This may explain why you are tagging one file and seeing the artwork proliferate to other tracks.

I suggest searching for all instances of 'folder.jpg' in your music directory's subfolders, deleting them, and use embedding instead. You could also use the option: preferences -> tags(1) -> artwork storage -> do not show folder.jpg artwork.

Now, artwork tagging allows for a primary picture and additional others. The point of this is so you can save scans of entire CD covers and booklets. However, personally I delete all extra artwork and ensure each track only has a primary image and that the 'picture type' is set to 'album cover'. I also ensure that the images are a maximum of 500x500 pixels (ie. few kilobytes in filesize). Finally, the only option in 'preferences -> tags(1) -> artwork storage' that I have ticked is the first one ('embed picture in the music file').

Note that you cannot apply artwork at 'album level' as such; you must highlight all the tracks in an album and apply the artwork to the tracks.

[wedmiston]

Anti - A fabulous response that very clearly lays out the underlying operations of how artwork works in MB. I also appreciate the suggestions for how to work with it moving forward. two follow up:

1. It sounds like embedding is a better option - but will the extra memory required really amount to that much to be meaningful? We are talking about pretty small images.

2. I think my other issue has to do with having some folders containing songs from multiple artists instead of just one, so the image is being linked (as you stated quite well) to a song by Fleetwood Mac and also Santana because they may be sitting in the same folder. I'll probably need to walk through them manually to clean and reorganize as required.

On the same topic of tagging - the old ARTIST vs ALBUM ARTIST question. Is there any easy, automated way to fill in the ALBUM ARTIST field?

Is there a "best method" for managing filenames? I recently discovered MP3tag (so I could manage my FLAC files copied and converted to Mp3 for use on my Sansa Clip+) and this field is blank (as it likely is when I show the songs as FLAC's through Musicbee.

[Anti]

1.
I think embedding is a lot cleaner and easier than keeping a separate library of artwork files.
If you keep your filesize to 300x300 pixels, each artwork will be about 0.05Mb.
So for a collection of 10,000 tracks: 0.05x10,000 = 500Mb of artwork, which in this day and age isn't much.
Note that 10,000 mp3 tracks will be around 50Gb, so an extra 500Mb for artwork is only 1% of that.

2.
I'd do that in internet explorer. Search for *.jpg in your music directory and delete them all.
Then go through musicbee's main panel correcting tracks without artwork (or use the tagging tool).

3.
I tend not to leave album artist blank, but that's just because I've had bad experiences with other players in the past.
There is a plugin which will copy 'artist' to 'album artist' (amongst doing other things).
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=3833.0

However, the most important thing is to have the 'artist' tag correct for each track, and fill 'album artist' with something like "various" on your compilation albums. I don't use 'various' myself - I collate my compilations using album artist tags like:
Compilations
Compilations (Indie)
Compilations (Classical)
Compilations (Jazz)

4.
In my opinion, directory structure and filenames aren't important if your tags are done well. The only requisite is that the path & filename for each track is unique so that Windows doesn't overwrite files. I use a very flat directory structure, and a long filename:
<album artist>\<artist>- <album>- <disc-track#>- title

I've seen some people just use <artist> - <title> for their filename, which means that they've got to have a deeper folder structure to prevent duplicate filename conflicts. Whereas I prefer to be able to go to my Zappa folder and see everything I've got at once, in one folder.

[wedmiston]

I have been using Tagscanner for the past day and find it very useful. When I "refresh" tags with more data, including a new embedded artwork, I'm assuming after I click SAVE it becomes part of the original FLAC file (I'm working with the originals) and when I create a new Musicbee library later, all the additional data (including cover art) will appear?

I like you're suggestion on the filename configuration - Tagscanner seems to be able to make the designated changes for my entire music collection in one action once set up. Question - it gives me the option to "Restructure files on disc based on tag information" and also "move files to new root folder." Am I correct in understanding that this would essentially build an entirely new music folder and recategorize all my music based on these parameters?

I understand your approach with the longer filename <album artist>\<artist>- <album>- <disc-track#>- title vs just <artist>-title; is that solely so you can just dump everything into a single folder rather than have a "tiered" structure of artist/album/songs?

[Anti]

> Am I correct in understanding that this would essentially build an entirely new music
> folder and recategorize all my music based on these parameters?

Yes. But you can do all that in musicbee too using: tools -> file organiser

Personally I'd test any organisation format out on a few albums first.
Then I'd go through the entire collection manually 500 tracks at a time.
Finally, I'd set up: preferences -> library -> music library -> auto-organise music library files

> is that solely so you can just dump everything into a single folder rather than have a
> "tiered" structure of artist/album/songs?

Yes. If I have to browse my collection in Windows Explorer for some reason, I find it easier to have a shallow, simple structure.
Also, I like having the filename tell me everything I need to know about a track just by looking at it.