Music Player Album Cover Artwork

[oldAGE]

OK... years into and I am still having funky issues with artwork or album cover using the native Music Player. I don't mind the function of the music player and I don't feel like changing. One thing that is truly annoying is the randomness of the album cover artwork. Sometimes it shows up and sometimes, it's replaced by the silly generic covers provided on the native app.

Here is what I am doing.... I am an old man so before iTunes was even a glimmer in Apples eye, I was ripping my music one way or another. Along comes my first iPod and eventually iTunes. The mess that PC environments and iTunes originally had changes over time. Along that time, I slowly fix my files, rebuild my iTunes music folders, and synch my artwork. Finally, over the past few years, I rip exclusively using iTunes application on my PC and most of the old issues go away.

Cut to past and current Android products. Love that I simply plug in my S3 (and it's predecessors) and simply drag my music - be it song, album folder, or artist folder (and all subsequent albums and songs) - and drop it into my Music Folder on my SD card. Can't be simpler and controllable (vs. "synching"). My problem is simply that sometimes I have accurate album covers displayed on my phone for some music and "not" for others. No rhyme or reason.

 

[mesocyclonic]

Have you tried some of the apps for album art in Google Play? Several are suggested in this thread: http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-galaxy-s-iii/205224-stock-music-player-album-art.html

 

[archer23]

I was having the same issues syncing from Windows Media Player to Google Play Music. I was ripping high quality to my PC, then syncing, and for some reason some of the stuff wouldn't show up. I found this video and that pretty much solved all my problems.

How To Add Album Art On Google Play Music (for Android) - YouTube

I would try the clearing the chache part (watch the whole video first) first and see if it will read the file and find the artwork. Then if that doesn't work, follow all the steps in the video.

 

[oldAGE]

thanks guys... this was mostly helpful. Album Art Grabber also has a manual function where you can download cover art that is not in their database and put on your SD card in your Gallery... then use the SDCard find function to load it into the local Grabber DB. Nice feature. Archer - for what it's worth, clearing the DATA as per the video actually fixed about 50% of my problems. I had the magic "disappearing Art work" issue from days gone by and clearing the data did help and then adding Grabber brought me to missing about 10 covers. Thanks again guys. I would have liked to have fixed this permanently rather than using apps but, hey... that's how it goes.

 

[DjBeddy]

Hi did everything in the video but am still missing some covers
:'(

 

[TypoCorrecto]

I inserted just my microSD into my computer, then transferred the music to the card and all the album art was where it was suppose to be when I opened Play Music. The album art would for some reason not transfer correctly when syncing the phone with the computer.

 

[Andy_P2002]

Hello, I hope it's acceptable to drag up such an old topic, but it exactly mirrors my problem.

I realise it's not the end of the world, but I'm finding it INCREDIBLY annoying that I can't work out what's going wrong.

Basically, when I first transferred all my music from PC to my Android phone I had quite a lot of missing cover art and I had to work out a method to get it all sorted.
I'll run through that first, as others might find it useful...

First, I decided to ensure that the art is embedded in every mp3 file, I don't trust any "album art" files or folders that other programs such as iTunes have created.

To do that, I actually do use iTunes (even though Apple have made it as awkward as possible with every software update!).

1. With the chosen album showing in iTunes "songs" view, I click and drag to select every track in the album.
2. I then right click and select "Clear downloaded artwork" from the pop-up menu.
3. I then download the artwork from anywhere on the web, trying to find a small version or if I can't I quickly create one - around 60x60 pixels is good enough for my purposes, you might want it bigger for an Android tablet.

4. Next, I right click on all the tracks again in iTunes and select "Get info", you'll see a small "artwork" box on the first tab. (For some daft reason, that doesn't appear if you only select ONE track).
5. Finally I drag the cover art file I downloaded into that box (from a windows Explorer window into the iTunes window).

When you do that, you should see iTunes working and if you have the "size" column displayed, you may see it get a bit bigger for each track as the art gets embedded.

As a secondary check, I use a program called "mp3Tag" to prove to myself that the art is actually embedded into every track file.

SO, that's my solution and it works well 99% of the time.

But now my tale of woe.

I'm left with just ONE album that simply REFUSES to show it's artwork on the Android phone.
It's fine on the PC in every program I've used
I've tried deleting the art and embedding the cover from a DIFFERENT album which does work with that album
I've tried deleting the whole album and re-importing it from the PC.
I've tried deleting it on the PC and re-ripping it from the original CD
I've removed and replaced the cover art time and time again.
And finally I tried everything in the video above and even reformatting the SD card - no change.

Now you're probably about to say "Just download an app, that'll sort it", but I did that once before and it automatically ran through EVERY album I had and replaced a lot of the art I'd carefully prepared with stuff it found on the web that was WRONG (such as re-release or compilation covers when I'd used the originals. or US versions when I wanted the UK cover.

Also I shouldn't need an app. What' I'm doing should work.... I just want to know WHY it's not working on this one album, for my own sanity.

 

[AxlMyk]

I read 2 paragraphs of this, scrolled down to see how long it was, and gave up. Don't feel like reading a book right now.

AC App on SGS3

 

[Noah_J]

"SO, that's my solution and it works well 99% of the time.

But now my tale of woe.

I'm left with just ONE album that simply REFUSES to show it's artwork on the Android phone."

I have the EXACT same problem. I've been trying to get album art for an album for so long and it refuses to budge. I've taken the same steps you have. Completely re-writing all the tags and what not.

Ideally what I want is for my entire music library to exist on my hard drive and from there I simply copy the entire library to my other devices. Then, when I want to add music, I add it to my hard drive and then from there copy the whole library to other devices again.

And yes, the album art grabber works, but not for all the devices. For example, if I get the album art on my phone, it won't make it onto my tablet because I copy from the hard drive. I even tried copying an album for which I got some art from the phone to the tablet and it didn't work.

Also, I shouldn't have to use an app for it. The art is 100% embedded into the mp3s, both Windows Explorer and tag editors confirm this.

My Phone is an LG G4 and I'm using the stock music player (other music players also don't work).

TLDR: I've got art embedded onto my mp3 files and my music player won't recognize it. An app won't cut it either. Why doesn't it show up.