TL;DR
Media Monkey > iTunes. May have to pay for it though,...or not.
Yeah,....iTunes won't find everything. I used to google search image files for the album artwork that iTunes couldn't find and manually enter it into the right click "Get Info" tab "Artwork". Super clunky way of doing it especially when the "Get Album Artwork" function nets me a message that reads,..."iTunes couldn't process 176 items".
When iTunes can't find the album artwork for something as ubiquitous as Tool records,...ugh. The obvious reason is that Tool (and many other bands) doesn't release records via iTunes,...but that just speaks to Apples proprietary nature with iTunes. If they are only searching their own servers to provide album artwork and there is plenty of available information for records beyond what iTunes has, I find that a little annoying from a principle (and to a lesser extent a time consumption) standpoint.
With regards to this being a bit of a neurotic OCD way to treat digital music libraries. Guilty as charged. It really bugs me to see the
missing album art work eight notes, when I know there are ways to fix that. It doesn't help that a lot of the stuff in my iTunes library is contained in the "Unknown" Album causing me to struggle to find stuff I know I have.
Also spending time with my library helps me to actually experience it. Perhaps there is some music on my library that I haven't enjoyed in a long time. Maybe there is some shared music that a friend gave me that I have never listened to. It's a good way to discover things. Might not be worth the effort to you,...but it is to me.
That said I do like to save time and I find a program called Media Monkey to be a way more efficient for finding album artwork and for adding correcting and syncing ID3 tags.
Media Monkey will actually manage older iPods (won't manage my Touch [can still listen to music from it] but will manage my wife's shuffle) but the search and sort functions are much more in depth and it will allow you to search your directories and drives in a SXS (contained in a a sidebar) fashion.
Unlike iTunes you can sort by Filepath which is usually the most reliable in terms of getting albums properly lined up and that makes it much easier to manually add or edit ID3 tags, autoscript track numbers, or just download correct ID3 data and album artwork from more inclusive databases than iTunes. I believe that Media Monkey searches Amazon for a lot of that information as well.
Media Monkey won't find it all,...but it is way more inclusive than iTunes and adding ID3 and album artwork data is way less clunky than it is in iTunes.
Once you get your ID3 tags and album artwork sorted out you can sync to your library so that iTunes will recognize the edited ID3 tags and added album artwork,...that way if you need to use iTunes to manage your iPods the information will match.
For me it's a work in progress since the ID3 tags in my media library are a mess. Usually I will listen to music via Media Monkey and when something comes up that is missing album artwork,...I'll take a moment and fix it up. Didn't help that when I first started using Media Monkey I autoscripted the track numbers for my entire library (as opposed to each album) and wound up with tracks 1 thru 8,000. So don't do that.
Yes it's time consuming and obsessive seeming to get album artwork and proper sort information for all these items,...but so was arranging all my CD's alphabetically or by genre,...or even worse in the "color on the side of the jewel case so that it looked nice on the shelf" order.
Member of many clubs
.
