Easy MP3 Album Art Import/Export With Mp3tag

When it comes to my MP3 files I like having the album art included with it and directly embedded in the file. In Windows XP I was using a specific program to do this but it wouldn’t work in Windows 7, so I had to find something else that would do the job.

There is EasyTAG, a multi-platform program that works great in Linux or Windows, but the interface is definitely better suited for Linux as it doesn’t take advantage of any Windows-specific menu features.

After some searching I came across Mp3tag – and it’s awesome because it makes adding in album art very easy.

Before continuing, some MP3 tagging programs embed the album art in the MP3 file while others do not. I wanted one that specifically did embed. The ones that don’t simply save the image files separately alongside the MP3s (like WinAMP does.) This can cause big clutter in short order, and you definitely don’t want that.

The great thing about Mp3tag is that it works in XP, Vista or 7, is very light on its feet and easy to use.

Here’s an example of how it works:

First, have your album art ready for whatever MP3 you want to embed it to, be it a GIF or JPEG file.

When you first load Mp3tag, click File then Change Directory or press CTRL+D to go to the directory to where your MP3 files are.

Highlight the MP3 you want to add art to, right-click the cover area at bottom left, then choose Add Cover, like this:

After that, navigate to where your cover art is, open it, and it will show in the area:

After that, click File then Save tag or just press CTRL+S.

This is to date the easiest way I’ve seen to manually add in cover art for MP3 files, and believe me I’ve tried a bunch of different programs for this task. Mp3tag definitely has them all beat..

..unless anyone can find one better that’s free?

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6 thoughts on “Easy MP3 Album Art Import/Export With Mp3tag”

Mike says:

December 19, 2009 at 8:58 am

Is there an automated way to do this? For iTunes on Mac, there’s an AppleScript you can run to embed your external album art into the file:

http://lifehacker.com/5429894/from-the-tips-box-itunes-album-art-gift-ordering-and-sports-scores/gallery/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lifehacker%2Ffull+%28Lifehacker%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Patricia says:

November 30, 2009 at 4:40 am

And I use mp3Tag Pro http://maniactools.com/soft/mp3tag-pro/index.shtml . For me it’s a great quality tool.

DOS_equis says:

October 21, 2009 at 8:54 am

MP3tag in general is really great and the beta version i’m using seems pretty stable. I too, found it by scouring the net for an alternative to individually hand correcting MP3 files but was annoyed at the “album art litter” issue and the fact that you were at the mercy of microsofts metadata search engine. This app can change any or all tag info to any number of files (as long as the info is the same for all (like the “Album Artist” or “Album” tags) or do a mass renumbering of your files in an album or playlist. The only annoying thing is sometimes the metadata search in MP3tag doesn’t want to play nice and it can act a little quirky but of courese some things act the way you don’t like when using the beta version. Overall it’s a rock solid app that I would recommend to friends anytime.

sillyfox says:

October 18, 2009 at 9:31 pm

http://shopping-sharing.blogspot.com/2009/09/lenovo-got-windows-7-certified-and.html

Aaron Fournier says:

October 17, 2009 at 12:55 pm

I’m the same way! Last month I went on a crusade to re-tag all my music to make sure it was tagged correctly and had embedded album art. Originally when I tagged these, I used Windows Media Player and it’s album search service. However, I don’t really like how they tagged most of the songs and I hate that they don’t embed the album art with the file. Instead it leaves a mess within the folder that the song resides in. When I re-tagged everything, I decided to manually tag all my songs instead of using a service that would tag it for me. I used Wikipedia, Amazon, and Last.fm for album information and album art and since I used Ubuntu, I used EasyTAG to tag everything. I love EasyTAG for the most part, but there still seems to be some tag information that stays with the mp3 even after you delete the tag and redo it that shows up in Rhythmbox, which can be really annoying. I use Banshee now, but I’d still like everything to show up right in Rhythmbox. Also in EasyTAG you can’t edit the album artist. To edit that and delete any tag information that EasyTAG can’t edit, I used Mp3tag, which works great in WINE. I don’t have Mp3tag on my computer any more because Ex Falso seems to work to edit stuff EasyTAG cannot and I’d rather use programs that work with Ubuntu natively at the moment. If I ever go to a Windows environment again, there is no question I’d use Mp3tag to tag my music files. I really love it and I think you would be hard pressed to find a better tagging tool for Windows.