Zune Thoughts: Embedded Album Art: It's The Right Thing To Do

I'm a very visual person, especially when it comes to music (how's that for a strange statement?). When I'm deciding what music to listen to, I tend to use Windows Explorer and browse through thumbnails images of my album folder rather than use the text list inside the Zune desktop software. There are probably a lot of people like me, because the Zune desktop software has an album art view that accomplishes the same purpose (ditto for iTunes).



The Zune desktop software approach to album art is very limited though - it creates a folder, and drops a few JPEGs into that folder. The album art is associated with that folder, not the files inside it. This presents several problems, namely that once you remove the songs from the folders, you have no more album art. Album art inside folders makes for some spectacularly messy instances as well - when I enabled pictures in the Zune desktop software, and let it scan away, it picked up an extra 15,000 or so images, all album art. My list of photos should be of photos, but because the Zune desktop software doesn't have any threshold for image file size (it does for audio and video), it picks up every single image. My Xbox 360 had the same problem - when I browse photos over Windows Media Connect, it picks up all my music album art, making for a confusing mess. Here's an example of how the current system makes for a sloppy state of affairs.