Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[HPBEME]

I am a little late to the game, but I finally added artist images to MC a few days ago.

I selected all the artists in my library and chose Get Artist Images from Last.FM from the context menu. It properly applied images to 90%+ (approximately a thousand artists) in my library, and MC automatically created the artist image folder in the expected location without any issues. Even for the problem artists, it downloaded artist images… It just won't apply the image to a small fraction of my library.
 
I've tried everything I can think of…

• examined all the tags to see if there's something in the problem artists files vs artists where the image was applied without any issues (none that I can see)
• for the Image File library field, I unchecked the option to Save in File Tags (When Possible)
• remove and delete the cover art completely and then ran Get Artist Images from Last.FM  command again (no dice)
• copy/paste image file in the artist folder directly onto the now blank cover art. That works, but now the album art uses the artist image too.
• move problem artist folder completely out of the library, and then back to the correct drive and re-import everything (no joy).
• Run file conversion on the FLAC file and create another "instance" of the same files (same exact issues)
• searched the internet for programs that remove stubbornly embedded cover art, but did not find anything

This same issue came up in this topic from 2016 here: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=103495.0 , and it appears it was not resolved at that time either.

Some additional info: some files are CDs I owned and ripped, some are CDs that friends have ripped and I copied onto my computer, and some are downloaded directly from the Internet… There doesn't seem to be any connective tissue with regard to the CD source. All the problem artists audio files are FLAC, as is 99% of my library.

If anyone has come up with a workflow to completely/permanently remove stubbornly embedded cover art which then allows the artist image to show, I would be deeply appreciative.

[marko]

I religiously keep my album art inside the files, and artist art works for me in an artists view. Away back in time, the problem was, that if you built a view using "Library Field=[Artist]" it all worked fine, But...

They would not be used for expressions... so, if you built, effectively, the same view, but rather than use "Library Field", used "Expression" instead, even the simple expression of "=[artist]" would cause the internal artist image system to fail.

Due to time constraints right now, I have not tested this before posting, but that's how it was, and I was never aware of any fix for the situation.

-marko

[HPBEME]

Thanks for the feedback Marko.

I religiously keep my album art inside the files, and artist art works for me in an artists view. Away back in time, the problem was, that if you built a view using "Library Field=[Artist]" it all worked fine, But...

They would not be used for expressions... so, if you built, effectively, the same view, but rather than use "Library Field", used "Expression" instead, even the simple expression of "=[artist]" would cause the internal artist image system to fail.

I too have always saved the album art to tags for many many years now. To my knowledge, I have never used an expression to build a standard view like you describe above. I do use "blank" expressions in Theater View for the custom info panel (to create additional blank lines/space between info sections - it just looks cleaner to my eyes), but those expressions do not involve the artist field. 

So are you saying that if I had done something like that, and that once the cover art got embedded using said process, it's not possible to remove it?

In any event, the timeline of problem artists runs the gamut - from CDs I ripped nearly 20 years ago, to those that I ripped or downloaded within the last few months. There is not any obvious relationship that ties the problem artists together.

[marko]

Hi, I've just read the entire 2016 thread you posted (re-linked HERE because yours is not clickable) and I'm not sure what to say.

This post from glynor shows what's supposed to happen...

Watch this:
https://vimeo.com/157394599

Each file has an individual image file that is used to generate a thumbnail, when the file itself is viewed in a list. This is the individual file's thumbnail. The [Image File] field in MC points to where this file is located on disk. It can be either embedded in the file's tags (for file types where MC can read embedded artwork), or point to an image file on disk somewhere.

By default, when a category is viewed in MC (grouped by Artist or Genre, for example) and all of the files contained within a category contain the same image, then the thumbnail is displayed normally (refer to Chvurches in my screencast above). If all of them do not contain the same Image, then it displays a rotating "fanned stack" of the images. If you point at them and pause, they rotate (illustrated with all of the other artists in the screencast).

If you want to add images and override the normal behavior when showing a group of Artists, then you add a folder called Artists to your current Cover Art directory. You can check which directory is assigned, and change it if you want, in Tools > Options > File Locations. Then, if you add a file to that folder whose filename matches an [Artist] field value, MC will show that file instead of the fanned stack when showing a grouping of those files.

If that doesn't explain, then try to ask a little more clearly (overexplain) because I'm not getting it.

In my experience, the [Image File] tag has absolutely no bearing on the "Artist art" system/behaviour, although user "hoss" feels sure it's relevant in some cases.

I've yet to come across an audio file where either MC or Mp3Tag could not remove album art from the tags.

Perhaps you could share one of the problem files for testing?

I have never used an expression to build a standard view like you describe above.

Well, "like I described" was over simplification for demonstration purposes. For example...
When I first trialled this in theater view, using a plain vanilla "[Artist]" category, I felt it was a real, noisy mess, caused by all the artists on  'Multiple Artists' albums, so, I created an expression that pushed all the "Multiple Artist" artists into a second level you had to click through to view, whilst leaving the rest to show on the first level. You get the idea... The first thumbnail in the top left was "(Multiple Artists)" and all the rest were Artists, and I was expecting that as the end result of the expression was the [Artist] field, then artist art would work, but, it did not! I compromised and excluded multiple artists from the view altogether. I was pretty underwhelmed with the quality of the majority of the scraped last.fm images, and the wildly varying dimensions also messed with my OCD in a major way, so set about manually finding art on the internet... that little project is still ongoing

Anyhoo... for me, best way to get a handle on this is to share a problem file and see if the problem is replicated on a different system...

-marko

[HPBEME]

Okay. I figured it out.

I use album artist in a way that I don't think most people do. For the artist field, the name as ripped/downloaded (ordered firstname/lastname) auto populates the artist field. For me personally however, I simply must have artists sort by lastname first - and that is what I use the album artist field for.  In fact, I actually give that the album artist field the proxy name of "Artist Sort".

For example, for artist Chet Atkins, the name auto-populates the artist field as Chet Atkins upon rip/download. I then manually enter Atkins, Chet for album artist. A huge chunk of my library consists of artists that are simply the artist's name, manually reordered to lastname/firstname for the album artist field.  Now let's consider artists names that include their own name AND a band name.

The examples below are very similar, but are different in a specific way that results in one getting an artist image and the other does not.

• Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.  The artist field is (automatically) filled with that exact full name, but for album artist, I manually enter Seger, Bob
• Big Head Todd and the Monsters.   In this case, I use the full name for both artist and album artist, as there is no last name used in the artist/band name, so there is nothing to reorder.

Since artist and album artist match exactly for the Big Head Todd example, it loads an artist image.  But the Bob Seger example fails, as they are different values. Making this correlation was entirely non-obvious, since artist/album artist fields are also "not equal" for just a basic artist name (for example, Chet Atkins is not identical to Atkins, Chet). For whatever reason, artist images will load for that scenario, but not for artist name + band name, unless identical values are used for both artist/album artist.

Except... Wouldn't you know it, there is an exception for that as well!

I have a bunch of albums by Lyle Lovett.  For most of the albums the artist name is Lyle Lovett.  For several other albums, the artist name is Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. For ALL of these albums, I manually enter Lovett, Lyle for album artist.  In this case, MC loads an artist image (for Lyle Lovett), and when I click on that image, it shows ALL the albums (for both Lyle Lovett, AND Lyle Lovett and his large band) which is very nice. So apparently, as long as one album with an artist field of firstname/lastname coupled with an album artist of lastname/firstname, the rest of the albums can have an artist/album artist mismatch and MC will still load an image.

I think this is why in the post I linked to someone concluded that artist names with "and" or special characters in them cause problems. I have confirmed with 100% repeatability, special characters are not the issue. While the word "and" does indeed show up in most of the artist names that won't load images, it has nothing to do with the word "and" (or &) itself. It is the mismatch between the artist/album artist fields. My guess is that the person who thought that might be the cause, perhaps uses the same sorting approach that I do with the album artist field, and thus encountered the image won't load issue for artist names with "and" in them.  For completeness, I guess I should note that standard band names such as Steely Dan, the Beatles, etc. load artist images without issue since I use the same exact value for both artist/album artist.

FYI… In my initial post where I asked "does anyone know how to completely/permanently remove stubborn cover art"- that was poorly worded and misleading. I am able to remove the cover art with MC - and I did, from every single file - and then rewrote all the tags with empty image files. But even after all of that, the artist image in the artist image folder still would not load for a seemingly random smattering of artists. For this reason, I assumed that had to be some stubborn embedded cover art that was preventing artist images from loading. But as I explained above, I now know it has nothing to do with that!

My naming/sorting approach has worked very well for many many years now. However, the way MC handles artist images conflicts with my naming approach for about 5% of my library.  I have a couple of ideas for a work around that will allow me to load artist images for every single artist, but I will save that for another post.

Hopefully this little novella will help anyone else who has experienced similar issues.

[marko]

I still think you're over-complicating the issue...

The [Album Artist] field should not come into play here at all.

It simply looks for an image file in the "Cover Art\Artists" folder with a filename that matches the [Artist] field. If it finds one, it uses it. And that's all there is to it.

That's why the Chet Atkins file works.

Is there a file named "Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.jpg" in the "Cover Art\Artists" folder that MC is not utilising?

-marko

[HPBEME]

And I think you've missed my point.  I use the album artist field to sort on, and have been for going on 16 years now - I don't want to change that.

What was complex was figuring out why artist images were not loading for a small percentage of my library. Turns out it is directly related to how I sort my artists.

It is not my goal to use album artist in a "complex" way to manipulate artist images… as you said they have nothing to do with each other… except for the fact that the way I use it for sorting impacts artist images.  I was thrilled I figured out with 100% repeatability why it was happening.

[HPBEME]

Actually, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.jpg is in the artist images folder.

In my first post I stated when I did a Get Artist Image from Last.Fm for my entire library, it did… Even for those files it was not showing an artist image for. This was the start of why I couldn't understand why the image was not showing. It is through hours and hours of futzing with it that I determined that even though the image exists in the artist image folder, it won't load if you manually populate album artist with a value that is not identical to the artist field.

Except... except.. They can be mismatched for first name/last name and last name/first name scenarios - not sure why, but again, that is 100% repeatable. And that is why the overwhelming majority of my library DID populate with artist images... because of that exception.  Otherwise, I estimate well over 50% of my library would not have artist images.  As it is, only about 20 artists out of a 1000 refuse to load the artist image (that exists in the artist image folder).  And it is for the reasons that I described in my excruciatingly long post.

[marko]

I probably have missed something. If you have an artist category, you should be able to sort it any way you want, by [album artist] field or any other without it affecting the 'artist art' system.

Either way, glad you have it figured out, and if there's a bug there, it might get fixed

[HPBEME]

I probably have missed something. If you have an artist category, you should be able to sort it any way you want, by [album artist] field or any other without it affecting the 'artist art' system.

So here is my solution.

• Created a new custom field [Artist Sort] (previously I only used a proxy name for [Album Artist] via the "Display" box in library options dialog)
• Moved all my manually created [Album Artist] values the new [Artist Sort] field.
• Updated my custom views to point to [Artist Sort] (instead of [Album Artist]) as the primary display field)
• Changed sorting to use the new [Artist Sort] field

As suspected/predicted: removing the album artist values allowed artist images to populate for all artists.  I am pretty sure artist images actually reference the [Album Artist (auto)] field, as this would completely explain the behavior I was getting before. Bottom line, my library displays/sorts lastname/firstname as I desire, but now all artists get an artist image too... hooray!

FYI… A simple way to summarize all of the above: I used a new custom field anywhere I had previously used album artist.