In iTunes, if you have a track that is missing artwork you have the ability to right-click the track and opt to automatically download artwork for it. This works well if you play the track in iTunes or an iTunes-connected device (e.g., iPod)… but if you also use the same library in a UPnP server to stream your music on your network (like Asset UPnP) then you’ll notice the artwork doesn’t show up. That’s because iTunes stores the downloaded artwork in a separate database outside the actual physical music track file, but other servers/devices expect artwork to be embedded in the track.

Luckily, with a little scripting, you can fix this.

I wrote this script to run on a Windows machine and copy the downloaded artwork directly into the track.

WARNING: THIS SCRIPT MODIFIES THE TRACKS IN YOUR LIBRARY. BACK YOUR FILES UP BEFORE RUNNING IT. That seems obvious, but just in case it wasn’t clear, there you go.

I’ve run this pretty extensively in a test environment and I’ll be running it on my 15K track library shortly. Again, though, BACK UP YOUR LIBRARY BEFORE RUNNING THIS SCRIPT and USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. If your tracks all end up corrupted, you’re on your own.

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