Although the program is extremely user friendly and provides the ultimate music listening experience, there are often problems that seem to frequently come up with the software. Usually there are compatibility issues with mp3 files not downloaded directly through the iTunes media store. So when people download the iTunes software and attempt to import their mp3 files they usually find all kinds of problems.

**Attention**

If you are looking for a quick and easy solution, just download a copy of Rinse…

Often times they will experience the dreaded problem of missing iTunes album artwork. Since we don’t always gather our music files directly from iTunes or other online music stores, the songs aren’t always labeled correctly and the cover art is often missing.

This has really became a frustration for many when they are expecting to see the sweet cover flow view that is always advertised on TV. Like the saying goes “you can’t always believe everything you see on TV”. Off course Apple is going to advertise the program without missing album artwork so you think that is what you’re going to get. Unfortunately most of us just see a bunch of blank albums and have no idea how to fix this problem.

Here is some information provided by Apple’s support page…

Symptoms

When importing a CD or adding new song files to iTunes, the album art may be missing and iTunes may not automatically download and add the album artwork.
Products Affected

iTunes 7 for Mac, iTunes 7 for Windows, iTunes 8 for Windows, iTunes 8 for Mac
Resolution

Resolution

Check that iTunes has been configured to use this feature. You can enable this feature in iTunes Preferences:

1. Open iTunes Preferences
Mac: Choose iTunes > Preferences.
Windows: Choose Edit > Preferences.

2. Click Store.

3. Select the “Automatically download missing album artwork” checkbox.

iTunes will only download album artwork for songs that it can find in the iTunes Store. iTunes will check each song in your iTunes library and attempt to match it up with a song in the iTunes Store. If the data matches, iTunes will download the album artwork from the iTunes Store and add it to the song in your iTunes library. If iTunes does not find a particular song’s artwork in the iTunes Store, you will not see an alert message. iTunes simply does not download artwork for that song.

Note: You must have an iTunes Store account and have logged into the account on the computer you are using.

There are several different methods of finding missing iTunes album art but most of them require tons of time and monotonous work. Things like doing a Google image search for the album, copying the image and than somehow importing it into iTunes. The problem here is you basically have to be a computer genius to use this method and half the time you won’t even be able to find the art work your looking for.

As an avid music listener and downloader from multiple sources I was always experiencing this unfortunate problem. Than one day I became fed up with the problems I was having with iTunes and searched the web for a solution. Within about 10 minutes I found Rinse My Music and decided to give the program a try. It promises high accuracy and an easy method to get iTunes album artwork.

Being the lazy guy that I am I figured I didn’t have much to lose by giving Rinse a try. When all was said and done I was absolutely amazed by the effectiveness and ease of use that Rinse brought to the table. After I that I felt it was my mission to spread the word about Rinse and let others know how easy it was to solve problems such as missing album art.

As you can read in the about me page this blog was started by a couple of web savvy college students that were tired of having a messed up music collection and lets just say that getting iTunes album artwork was one of our biggest problems. Once we saw Rinse bring our cover flow view from a complete train wreck to perfection we were completely amazed.

So if you are asking yourself, How do I find iTunes album artwork without giving myself a brain aneurysm? All you have to do is fork out $39 for a copy of Rinse and your cover flow will be restored to near perfection. Its really that easy.

Being a college student and web developer I always see opportunities to blog about great products related to the college market and the program was no different. I’d say I see at least 20 people a day using iTunes on their laptops and thats not to mention the hundreds of others with iPhones and iPods. But honestly every time I see someone put their music into cover flow mode there is always missing iTunes album art, every time.

I know how frustrating this can be because I dealt with it first hand until I discovered RinseMyMusic the ultimate iTunes clean up program. Now whenever I cruise through my cover flow view I get a nice comforting feeling seeing everything in perfect order. Maybe I just happen to be a little O.C.D. but I know I’m not the only one because whenever I mention the topic of missing iTunes album art at school there is usually someone that chimes in and is experiencing the same problem.

You might ask yourself, Why did iTunes make it so difficult to find iTunes artwork? Well the answer lies in their dominating nature. Apple wants it’s iPod users to download their songs from the iTunes store and the iTunes store only and that is why they make so many compatibility issues with other third party mp3 files.

Creating so much difficulty for people when it comes to importing these third party mp3 files causes more people to just say screw it and buy their songs through iTunes. Well personally I say Hell No to that and there is no way I’m paying $.99 a song. P2P sharing, trading burned cds with my friends, torrent sites, and a few other secret sources are how I get my music and I’m not about to stop. At the same time I wasn’t about to stop using my iPod because of it. So I trusted the RealNetworks technology to take care of the job and it did just that, found all the iTunes album art I was missing. And now I can’t help but just feel satisfied when I scroll through my album art and see them all there.

As I was writing this article I did some research to see what kind of tips and programs people had out there to take care of this problem, but unfortunately I could not find anything legitimate. I actually spend quite a bit of time finding album art for my iTunes library manually before I used Rinse(Tidysongs) and found the majority of my albums.

When you think about the amount of time that goes into replacing missing album artwork by hand its ind boggling and spending a few bucks on a program to do the job for you really isn’t so bad. Take it form me after having the companion take care of the process it is definitely a load of your back. Most of my friends think that I buy all of my music from iTunes because I have all the album artwork for my library.

With the amount of music I listen to there is no way I could afford all of my songs through iTunes and I definitely couldn’t give my songs album art by hand. I actually had a friend in school tell me about a free way to find missing album art. He said he just did a quick Google image search for the album he was looking for and re-sized the photo to the appropriate album art size. Here is a link to Google image search so you can check it out…

Use Google Image Search for Album Artwork

http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi

After you re-size the album image you can somehow import it to your iTunes songs. His explanation made no sense to me but your welcome to try and figure out a free way to get the job done. Or you could just download a free copy of RinseMyMusic and see what you think, for me it was quite the headache relieved.

The bottom line is if you have a large song collection than most people just don’t have the time to find missing album artwork by hand. Most of us don’t even have enough computer savvy to do the process on our own. Thats where Rinse really comes to the rescue and gives you a low cost solution to a relatively simple but time consuming project.

Thank you for stopping in and I hope you enjoyed this post and if you would like to learn more about Rinse, you can read this Rinse iTunes Review and read more about the program as well as download the free trial version. When you download the free trial they give you 50 uses of the get iTunes album artwork feature so you can get a feel for the program.

Good luck finding that iTunes album art and I hope you don’t have to spend another minute getting frustrated with iTunes.

Download Rinse