Add album art
Published: November 9, 2005
When you rip music from an audio CD while you're connected to the Internet, Microsoft Windows Media Player attempts to download the CD cover art or album art for you. In some cases, the album art might not be available, or the wrong album art might be downloaded.
This article explains how to add or replace album art. It also explains how to view the album art while playing a song or while browsing files in Windows Explorer.
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Adding album art automatically
If you have music files that are missing album art, you can use Windows Media Player to find this and other media information automatically.
To find missing album art on the Internet:
1. | Start Windows Media Player, and connect to the Internet. |
2. | Click Library, and then in the Contents pane, expand the All Music and Album categories. |
3. | Right-click the album, and then click Find Album Info.
When you are connected to the Internet, Windows Media Player accesses the Windows Media database and displays what it finds in the Album Information pane, as shown in the following screen shot.
If the correct album information is displayed with a generic music icon shown as the album art, then album art is not available. You can add your own album art by using the Advanced Tag Editor. For more information, see adding album art manually. |
4. | If this is the wrong album information, click the Search button at the lower left of the Album Information pane, and then enter search parameters to search the Windows Media database for other possible matches. |
5. | From the search results, select the correct album or artist information, and click Next.
The search results appear in the Album Information pane, as shown in the following screen shot.
If the album information is correct, click Finish to update the album art and information. |
If the album information you are looking for is not found, click Album not found, and then click Next to add the information yourself. After you have finished adding the media information manually, you need to add the album art manually using the Advanced Tag Editor. For more information, see adding album art manually.
Troubleshooting
By default, Windows Media Player options are set so that album art and other related media information is retrieved automatically when you rip a CD and you are connected to the Internet. If you have changed the default settings, you might receive the following error message when you click Find Album Info:
"You must change your Privacy settings in Tools, Options to update information about the audio media you have selected."
To resolve this, change the Privacy settings.
1. | On the Tools menu, click Options. |
2. | On the Privacy tab, select the Update music files by retrieving media info from the Internet check box. |
After you change these settings, repeat the steps outlined in the previous procedure to find missing album art. For more information, see To find missing album art on the Internet.
Note
If you are using a computer at your workplace, your system administrator may have adjusted other settings that prevent album art from being downloaded.
Adding album art manually
If the wrong album art was downloaded, you can add art manually by using the Advanced Tag Editor in the Windows Media Player. You can also display art files stored on your computer as album art instead of the generic music icon that is used when album art is missing.
To add album art using the Advanced Tag Editor:
1. | In Windows Media Player, click Library. |
2. | In the Details pane, right-click the item or items that you want to edit, and then click Advanced Tag Editor. (To select more than one item, press CTRL while clicking the item.)
If the Advanced Tag Editor command is not available, remove the read-only property from the file. To do this, in Windows Explorer, right-click the file, click Properties, and then clear the Read-only check box. If the music file is located in a shared folder on a network drive, ask your system administrator if you have the necessary file and folder permissions to modify the file. |
3. | In the Advanced Tag Editor, click the Pictures tab, click Add, and then browse to the picture that you would like to display as album art.
Acceptable formats include:
Although any size will work, we recommend that you keep the album art files relatively small (for example, 200 x 200 pixels), because the larger the art file, the larger the resulting song file.
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4. | After selecting the picture, click Open to add the picture as album art.
You can also add additional information about the picture type and description, as shown in the following screen shot.
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5. | Click OK to close the Advanced Tag Editor dialog box. |
Note
You cannot add art to a radio station playlist file (such as a file with the extension .asx).
Viewing album art in Windows Media Player
You can see album art in Windows Media Player when the music is playing.
To see the album art in Windows Media Player:
1. | Play the song, and then click Now Playing. |
2. | On the View menu, point to Visualizations, and then click Album Art, as shown in the following screen shot.
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Note
• We recommend that you use Windows Media Player in full mode if you want to see album art for the entire duration of a song.
• If you are using skins, you can set Windows Media Player to use the Revert skin option, so that you can see the album art initially, before it reverts to a visualization. The Revert skin option is in the Skin Chooser feature.
• Some skins might not be able to display album art.
• The mini Windows Media Player does not show album art.
Viewing album art in Windows Explorer
When you view the album folders as thumbnails in the My Music folder, the album art is displayed on the folder icon, as shown in the following screen shot.
To change the art associated with this folder, right-click the album folder, and click Properties. On the Customize tab, select Choose Picture, and then navigate to the art that is stored on your hard disk drive that you would like associated with this folder.
Note
Changing the art associated with the album folder will change the album art displayed in the Video and Visualization pane of Windows Media Player when the song is playing. However, it will not change the album art displayed in the Media Information pane in Windows Media Player.
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