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iTunes saves Album Artwork to ~/Music/iTunes/Album/Artwork/Cache/[some seemingly random folder name here]/

The problem is that if I move actual MP3 and AAC files from this computer (and/or iTunes database) to another one, I (assume that I) will lose the connection between those songs and the cached artwork.

Right now there is 826 MB worth of of cached images in 950+ files.

I am almost certain that it is possible to add album art directly to the media files, but I need a solution which can be automated (at least most of it) because I really don't want to do this 950+ times, and I have a lot more music to clean up in the future.

Footnotes:

  1. [Non-free solutions are entirely welcome, but please let me know if your proposed solution isn't free, and how much it costs, if you know.]

  2. I have both MP3 and AAC files, so hopefully any solution will work on either kind of files.

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  • install exiftool. The man page tells how to extract embedded images from a file. Do that with a couple of music files, and I suspect you'll find that they already have their artwork embedded. Or add an audio file, then add artwork, and see whether its size changes.
    – WGroleau
    Feb 9, 2018 at 15:09

1 Answer 1

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Check out this AppleScript from the excellent dougscripts.com: Re-Embed Artwork v.1.0. If that doesn't do it for you, you may find something else useful on that site.

Note: I haven't run this script myself and can't vouch for its efficacy, though I believe its source is well-regarded. Use at your own risk.

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  • Now that you mention it, I think I may have used that in the past. [And yes, DougScripts are excellent.] I actually thought it was a built-in feature of iTunes until I couldn't find it. But I still wonder if there are any other methods available.
    – TJ Luoma
    Oct 18, 2011 at 6:26

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