I did a very good job arranging all my music in iTunes, getting album art, genre, etc…
I’m wondering why once it’s copied to my iTunes Share on My Cloud, the album art shows for some, but not all artists?
I don’t use iTunes for the most part, normally just DLNA. There are a couple of ways to deal with album art. First is to embed that art image into the song (or video) file. Second is to create an image JPEG file and call it “folder.jpg” and put it into the music or other media folder. There are probably other ways to deal with album art for music and video files but those are the two main ways.
There are a variety of software programs for embedding artwork into media files. Mp3Tag(http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) and MediaMonkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/) are two that many here use.
If one moves their iTunes library to the My Cloud it is sometimes important to ensure you move the entire library including artwork folder(s) in addition to the actual media/song folders. All too often people don’t move over the entire iTunes library and they have problems.
Also see the following thread that has some further information on dealing with media files on the My Cloud.
https://community.wd.com/t/faq-twonky-dlna-media-server-setup-use/95373
Last but not least, sometimes when things get wonky with either DLNA or the iTunes media servers, log into the Dashboard, go to Settings > Media > and do a “Rescan” or “Rebuild” and see if that fixes the issue.
Paul, et al:
These album art issues are deeply rooted back to over a dozen years ago when Apple invented the iPod and the program iTunes to accompany the device. Back then, life with digital files was simpler, and Apple did what they wanted to do to make their device work as they like, and as time went on we are now facing My Cloud devices and apps we use to access our same iTunes media files.
As mentioned by someone above, iTunes keeps all the album art in a separate, encoded folder called Album Artwork within the iTunes program folders, It works beautifully within iTunes, but once those same iTunes tracks are used away from the Apple ecosystem (like on a separate drive for other devices and on My Cloud for lots of devices and mobile apps,) the fun begins.
I first noticed the issues with album art when I copied the folder containing the music tracks to a separate drive I connected to my new WDTV media player a few years ago Some, but not all, iTunes tracks art showed on the TV. I figured out it was mostly the tracks I made from CDs that had the problem, whereas music I got from my download service (eMusic) had the art showing, even though all the albums/tracks were kept in iTunes. I learned that the art in eMusic files was embedded in each file, and they were not embedded in files created by iTunes. I figured out how to embed the art in the iTunes created files (by using iTunes program to do it) and my art started to show up on TV. This was a time-consuming project, so I just did this for some favorite albums and said screw the rest of them.
Then came along the iPad and phone, and most of the art was still being picked up and displayed on screens. I could beam the tracks with apps like Twonky to the TV and art was there.
A little over a year ago I got the My Cloud DL series NAS, and tracks streamed from My Cloud to TV or iDevices still showed the art, and since I found real problems using the My Cloud app for music, I did not use it. Instead, I used other apps on iOS and Android devices. Still, all is fine with the art.
,I was recently notified by WD they had finally fixed the stalling-music issue I had reported with My Cloud app, so I began using it again recently. Not much though; it is still a lame app for playing music. And, now I find out it is even more lame than I knew – it cannot display hardly any album art on phone or iPad streamed from the My Cloud. Many other devices and apps can show album art from My Cloud NAS that the hopelessly lame My Cloud app cannot. So I ask: is this a problem with the music track metadata embedded in the tracks, or is this newest problem the fault of the My Cloud app? One doesn’t need to be a brain surgeon to figure this one out.
At this point, I could care less if My Cloud app ever works right with music (BTW, it works great with video files) so, I just will not use it for music as before.
So, Paul, if you really want to know how to go through the torture of fixing your cover art in iTunes albums for all the CDs you placed in it, I will tell you, but you have been forewarned.
– Mike
Alternatively, if you’re using a PC, switch to a sane media manager, like MediaMonkey, and use the add-on ‘AlbumArtTagger’ to automatically embed artwork into tags, and do lots of other cunning artwork tasks. Not that you’d need to, since MM is sensible enough to store artwork in the album folder.
iTunes on a PC really is a hideous pile of steaming, megalomaniacal bloatware.
Well, I like it and it does a lot for me and have used it since my first iPod in early 2005, I agree, the program has become bloated and “dummied down” in many ways, and why I continue to use a two year old version on my Win 7. I will finally install the current version on a Win 8, get my iTunes data ported over, and then experience the current version, firsthand and see if I can live with it still.
No worries.
Familiarity is half the battle. If you’ve been using it since 2005, you’ll be familiar with it and all its foibles.
My experience is as a long-term MediaMonkey user, which lets me tell it where to find media, and where to put it, and stores artwork in a sensible place. It does what I tell it. And then installing iTunes to support an iPad2, and having it (with default settings) practically destroy my music library, and have to do things ‘the Apple way’, not the way that I want to work. I don’t like that… And MM can support the iPad, anyway, with the last remnant of iTunes providing the bespoke comms interface to allow file transfer.
And also supporting a not very tech-savvy friend who had been using iTunes, and, as a result, had ‘lost’ his music. I managed to unmangle his music library, with manual effort and the assistance of MediaMonkey, including recovering a lot of media from an iPod, undoing the file system obfuscation that iPod applies. Since then, he has been using MM, and finds it very straightforward, compared to iTunes.
I’m not alone in having a very, very low opinion of iTunes, especially running on a PC…
I also had to help an un-savvy good friend whose PC HD crashed (no backup) and took his iTunes program and files with it! He claims low interest in all this tech stuff, until something like this happens, then he comes up with the desire and skills to fix things. My job was to tell him not to despair; that his music files can be recovered from his iPod, but it ain’t easy or quick. I sent him a link to article telling of the ways and programs to use. He figured out which program should best be used, installed it and did it all by himself. Installed iTunes on new PC, got the music all back in and is back in business. (which was my intent all along.)
Actually, I’ve just about had it with technology… Dug out my old 1982 Techniques Quartz Direct Drive turntable, Klipsch KM-4’s an old NAD receive set up my man-cave listening lounge and do what I used to do… Enjoy the album art old school… LP’s!!! And if I want to hear more of the same LP / Artist, I’ll get off my butt, and flip the record to the "B"side. 
LP’s ARE better.
Bravo for you!!
I had once wanted to like LPs better, and I do compared with some of the poorly produced early CDs, but I just can’t when I compare them against LPs and the beautifully produced newer CDs of today.
For example, one of my most favorite LP albums (Focus, by Stan Getz) was always a poorly produced LP, it has lousy equalization, so shrill I had to hear past that because the performance is so good. Even subsequent copies I bought were not any better, and even the CDs I bought were just as bad. I had given up until I read the review of the Remastered Focus CD of a few years ago. I thought, what the heck ,Sony had improved on the earlier Kind of Blue album with their remastered one, so I bought the Focus CD again. It is wonderfully produced and sounds great now, just like the remastered early Miles Davis stuff does.
Early CDs were made from any ol’ tape that could be found, and in most cases it was not the original
Enjoy you music!
My suspicion is that the earlt CDs were mastered by engineers used to the effects of vinyl, which softens and warms the sound. In other words, the engineers were applying a lift at the high end to the master tapes, which, when transcribed via the vinyl recording and reproduction process, was softened to produce a nice sound.
Sample those master tapes stright to CD, and it will reproduce the high end lift. So early CDs sound bright and harsh, because it reproduces exactly what is recorded onto it.
Mastering engineers learned not to compensate for this, and create master tapes for CDs. If vinyl was also produced, it would need another master tape, or a high end lift from the master tape before transcription.
Best not to mention the utter sonic stupidity of the massive compression and clipping of the ‘loudness wars’…
Yes, all LPs were mastered as “not flat” but with the bass reduced to save on groove space and not cause the playing tonearm to fly out of the grooves, the highs were boosted too loud to compensate for crappy ceramic cartridges. Good magnetic cartridges came along and they had to boost the bass and cut the highs to create a flat frequency response so that recordings sounded natural as they could. CDs came along and had none of the vinyl record issues, and were recorded often with a relatively flat frequency response. So, yes, earlier CDs made from early tapes created for vinyl recordings did not always compensate for the vinyl issues, and so were poorly equalized.
Whereas today, remasters compensate for all the issues of the past vinyl problems (as well as other issues) and can be much better sounding than the original vinyl; especially when heard on the best hi-fi stereo systems.
Oh, and I forgot about the vinyl ticks and pops, GONE with CDs. I hated them.
