Author Topic: Artist Biography photos - how are they queried in the search engines  (Read 3519 times)

darkred

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In the wiki it says that:
"The Artist Picture panel draws images from fanart.tv, htbackdrops.org, theaudiodb.com, and last.fm (in that order)."

( htbackdrops.org doesn't work anymore)

Could someone please clarify what search engines query is done for Artist Biography photos?
 Is it only the 'Artist' tag used, or is it a combination, e.g. 'Artist+Genre' tags?
I mean:
https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist  or
https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist+%Genre

And, are there any preferences regarding Artist Biography photos ? I couldn't find anything.



An actual example: https://i.imgur.com/rqX6ifY.jpg

Band: Jorn
Album: Out To Every Nation
Year: 2004
Genre: Heavy

As you may see in the screenshot, the biography matches ok, but that specific artist photo is of an irrelevant band, "Mayhem", a black metal one.
What query was made that fetched that specific image?
(The next/rotating photos are ok).


Using latest MusicBee 3.4.7721 on win10
Last Edit: March 10, 2021, 03:58:00 PM by darkred

frankz

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The source is Bing Images and I believe the query is <Artist>+Music or something similar.  I don't even know if fanart.tv is used for it any more to be honest, I think it's just a plain text search on Bing Images.

darkred

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I've tried all possible queries I could do in Bing Images, and that irrelevant photo is never displayed, no matter what. Maybe it's not Bing Images being used?
(I am asking because I want to understand how it works, and if there's some tag to change, that could help stop getting irrelevant artist photos.)

And, is there any option in Preferences regarding Artist Biography photos ? I can't find anything.
Last Edit: February 25, 2021, 11:03:42 PM by darkred

darkred

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Update:
I've used a tool (SmartSniff) for find (by seeing inside the TCP/IP streams) what URLs MB is sending data to, to get artist photos:


My findings:

when I start playing one of the mentioned tracks by Jorn:

musicbrainz.org
http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/?query=artist:"Jorn"&limit=1

ws-origin.audioscrobbler.com (last.fm API)
(encrypted -- can't find the URL)

bing.com
(encrypted)

fanart.tv
http://webservice.fanart.tv/v3/music/91022966-c8de-4f0c-863c-10d026f6c843?api_key=_______________________________________


The 4th (fanart.tv) has 6 hi-res artist photos, all correct (none of them is the irrelevant one).
The musicbrainz found photos are used for all artists as first choice.

The 1st (musicbrainz.org) contains various tags  (in XML), regarding the band, such as:
<disambiguation>Norwegian metal band</disambiguation>

Maybe these tag values are used in bing Images search?
Last Edit: March 10, 2021, 02:52:48 PM by darkred

darkred

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Two more examples:

example 1

Band: Obituary
Track: 'A Dying World (single)'
Genre: Death metal
Year: 2019

The biography is correct, but the artist photo is irrelevant: it's of the nu metal band, Korn .


example 2

The biography is correct as before  but the artist photo is irrelevant: it's of the different death metal band, Morbid Angel .

phred

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I don't understand your point here. MB has no control over what the provider returns. If it's not correct you should be contacting the provider. All MB does is send out the data that's in the relevant tag(s).
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

darkred

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Quote
All MB does is send out the data that's in the relevant tag(s).

Yes, but how is the query made ?
I just can't understand how these irrelevant photos come up.

If I'm not mistaken  there are no preferences regarding Artist Biography photos retrieval.


I know for sure (see my comment above) that most Artist photos displayed are retrieved by fanart.tv, and they are all hi-res, and always correct.
Is it Bing Images the secondary source that gets the irrelevant photos?


Secondly, what tags are used in the query?
The ID3 tags metadata contained in the audio files themselves?
Or tags contained in the retrieved musicbrainz XML   (http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/?query=artist:%22Jorn%22&limit=1) ?
e.g.  <disambiguation>Norwegian metal band</disambiguation>


And, finally, how is the actual query being done? Using which tags?
I've tried all possible queries I could think of in Bing Images, and that irrelevant photo is never displayed as first.
Example URLs:
https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist
https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist+%Genre
https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist+%Genre+%TrackTitle
Last Edit: March 10, 2021, 03:57:48 PM by darkred

phred

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I just can't understand how these irrelevant photos come up.
Because the Internet is a mysterious place.

Have you never gotten irrelevant information when searching the Internet?
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

darkred

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There's nothing "mysterious" about making queries in search engines.
You make a query, i.e. you enter some criteria, and get results.
If the criteria you entered are relevant, you'll get proper results. Even if not exactly relevant, but close enough.

But, if the criteria you entered are wrong, then you'll surely get irrelevant information.
In my case, all these music files are always properly tagged (Album, Artist, Genre, Year, everything).
Therefore the criteria for the search should be ok (the bio is always correct). But still I frequently get irrelevant Artist photos, and in some cases totally irrelevant.
I've tried myself all possible queries I could think in various search engines, and these irrelevant photos are never displayed.

SInce, MB doesn't have any preferences regarding Artist Biography photos retrieval, (apart from defining the location of C:\Users\user\Music\MusicBee\Artist Pictures\Thumb)
I want to understand how these queries are made, so, maybe it's something that could be avoided, maybe by some tag modifying?

And maybe, if Steven could allow configuring the Artist Photos search queries in Preferences, to customize them making them as specific as I want.

hiccup

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And maybe, if Steven could allow configuring the Artist Photos search queries in Preferences, to customize them making them as specific as I want.
What criteria would you use to improve the results if you could customise artists image search?

darkred

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Using my previous example:

for the death metal band, Obituary,
it displays an irrelevant photo, of the nu metal band, Korn.


If I the query that made that irrelevant photo is generic like:

https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist+music
i.e. Obituary+music
(which uses just 1 tag and the word "music")

I'd change it to:

https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist+%Genre
i.e. Obituary+'death metal'
(which uses 2 tags)
or
https://some_search_engine.com/?q=%Artist+%Genre+%Year
i.e. Obituary+'death metal'+''2019'
(which uses 3 tags)
Last Edit: March 11, 2021, 01:01:17 PM by darkred

hiccup

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Have you tested this?
Do you get considerably better results on Bing if you add 'death metal' instead of 'nu metal' in your image searches?

darkred

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Yes, I got better results, much better.
If the Genre is correct, I get the right results.

hiccup

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Interesting.
It's still strange why you would get images of Korn when the band is called Obituary.
That certainly won't have anything to do with genres.

darkred

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For reference, here are the tags of the files in my examples above:

Example 1:
track tags:  https://i.imgur.com/3RBYkrp.jpg
MB: https://i.imgur.com/Ny0S5SM.jpg

Example 2
track tags: https://i.imgur.com/PHna4Cl.jpg
MB:  https://i.imgur.com/TH3cdP0.jpg
Last Edit: March 10, 2021, 07:11:49 PM by darkred