iTunes Transition

The upgrade to iTunes 8 did hold a slight headache. As soon as the system restarted with the upgrade to iTunes 8, a bunch of folders and files appeared in the trash. I looked through them but nothing was discernable. Then came time to launch iTunes 8 and check out the new Genius playlist/recommendation function.

I was shocked upon first inspection: most of my album covers had now disappeared. Not only were custom imports gone, but so were covers for songs and albums purchased through the iTunes music store! I quickly figured out what those mysterious folders and files sitting in the trash were.

Collecting most of the covers back to the library was a snap, though. I selected all tracks and choose “Get Album Artwork” from the contextual menu. (A simple right-click over an song title from the selected tracks will work.) Many of my previously missing artwork returned. For those few that did not, a few more steps were needed.

The remaining tracks that did not have artwork available to it, which prior to the update did, were easily returned by getting info. I right-clicked on the wayward track, choose “Get Info” from the contextual menu and suddenly the artwork reappeared. A ten minute chore in total for a 10 GB library.

For those of you with larger libraries or with little patience for upgrade glitches, I’d recommend waiting for the 8.0.1 release which should fix this bug.