Album Artwork revisited

Question

Same old problem. How can you manually add a single image for the whole album (as iTunes does when downloading it from the iTMS) rather than simply embedding it in every track file?
AFAICT, the short answer is you can't, but I hope it will change.
However, I have found a partial solution.
When artwork cannot be downloaded from the iTMS or it is the incorrect image (a common problem), find the image you want to use (or make your own) and embed it (i.e. paste it into an artwork display box) into the FIRST track that is listed for that album (which may not be 1 if e.g. that is missing). Actually, it may work with ANY single track, I only tried it with the first track.
This artwork will now display as the artwork for the WHOLE album when you view the album in iTunes as CoverFlow, or the one that lists the tracks beside the artwork (middle option). The bottom left corner of the screen actually shows what is in the file however, so that will only show the image for the track into which you pasted it (unless it was an iTMS download, in which case it shows for all tracks, even though it is embedded in NONE of them).
So, for the most part, iTunes now has the capability to display the correct artwork for all tracks of any album for which it cannot be downloaded from iTMS, yet still only storing a single copy of that image and not wasting the space of duplicating the data in every track for that album.
So far, so good. It is worth noting also that the actual track mp3 files take on the icon of any embedded artwork, so those that are 'empty' will still show the generic MP3 icon. Unless of course you have been able to download the artwork from the iTMS, in which case the icons of all the tracks will be set to that image. Clever stuff since the actual image is stored entirely somewhere else.
Ok, so how does this work when syncing to the iPod and playing on an Apple TV?
Of course, correctly downloaded artwork from the iTMS shows up correctly all the time, for all tracks (for which the Album Artwork has been downloaded) and at first it looks like the alternative of simply adding an image to the first track has the same effect, but it's not all roses. But please remember, it's not the quality to which I am referring. It is WHERE the image data is stored - in a separate folder if it's downloaded from the iTMS, or embedded in the actual file if you added it manually.
On the Apple TV, select an artist and all the albums show their artwork, even those with it embedded in ONLY the one track. Play ANY track and the artwork displays as it should. You cannot tell the difference between Album Artwork downloaded from the iTMS and images you have pasted into a single track (maybe not the one you are playing).
On the iPod unfortunately it's a different story. Viewing the albums of any artist shows the correct artwork for each album, even those with it embedded in just the one track. The Beatles is a good test here since there's NO chance the artwork can have come from the iTMS. Play the first track of one of these albums and the artwork is displayed as it plays, jump to the next track and it's blank. Of course, my first tracks contained the embedded artwork so I guess the track that does display the artwork is the one that contains the image data.
The issue here is that the Apple TV is able to make the same association between tracks of the same album and hence display artwork embedded in a single track for ALL the tracks of that album as iTunes does. And it works as a good alternative when you cannot download Album Artwork from the iTMS. BUT, the iPOD fails to do this when you are playing the album. Do the programming teams not talk to each other?
So, embedding the artwork in a single track is currently a partial solution. Let's hope the iPod developers catch up, or even better if they provide the ability to manually add Album Artwork by the same method as if it were downloaded from the iTMS.
As always, if anyone knows how to manually add iTunes style Album Artwork, I'd be delighted to know.

Answer 1

Sorry if I wasn't entirely clear in my previous post. Storing the same artwork in EVERY file for the album, i.e. duplicating the same data multiple times, is simply not an acceptable solution. If you want to keep the music in sync with an iPod for example, it is important not to waste storage space. In fact it is my belief this is exactly why Apple devised their Album Artwork storage strategy.
One album should have ONE piece of artwork associated with it (or several if they're different), applicable to ALL tracks of that album. Anything else is dumb.