Incorrect album art displayed on almost every track

[erlian]

The same album art from 2 albums in my library was somehow applied to almost every song. One of the album covers is in the first priority slot, the second one is in the second priority tier. Then, the actual artwork, if it exists, is in the third slot.

I've tried selecting multiple tracks and editing the artwork out that way, but it seems to delete all of the artwork when I do this, even if the actual artwork was in the third slot.

Does anyone have any ideas about the cause and/or any fixes for this? Album art is really important and helps me identify songs, and it's so frustrating having the same art displaying on every single track.

[frankz]

If you hover over the images in the tag editor, it tells you where they're stored.  These are likely folder.jpg / Cover.jpg (etc) files that exist in the same location as the affected files.

Go to Edit->Edit Preferences->Tags(1)...artwork storage and make sure everything there matches where your art actually is and how you want it.  Then put those stray images where they belong.  If most of your files are not organized, I'd recommend embedding the art rather than defaulting to folder.jpg (etc).

[erlian]

Thanks to your input I think I figured it out! In my Musicbee Library -> Music folder, there were 2 stray .jpgs called "cover" and "folder" exactly like you said. I guess on the occasion that I accidentally chose not to embed the image, these files were created, and for some reason certain tracks took on these images as their album art by default. I guess the lesson here is to always embed the art and never bother with creating separate files?

[frankz]

Thanks to your input I think I figured it out! In my Musicbee Library -> Music folder, there were 2 stray .jpgs called "cover" and "folder" exactly like you said. I guess on the occasion that I accidentally chose not to embed the image, these files were created, and for some reason certain tracks took on these images as their album art by default. I guess the lesson here is to always embed the art and never bother with creating separate files?

If you're not going to organize your files into a folders on your drive (like <Album Artist>\<Album>\<Disc-Track#> - <Title> or something similar), then embedding is probably the best option.

[captain_paranoia]

I guess the lesson here is to always embed the art and never bother with creating separate files?

I never embed artwork in tracks; a waste of space.
Every album is in its own folder (with the same structure suggested by frankz), and the artwork in each is called 'folder.jpg' and 'back_cover.jpg'.
I've not found a media manager that doesn't automatically find the artwork for my music when I import it; MusicBee, MediaMonkey & Twonky have no problem.

[frankz]

I'm actually in the process of removing my embedded art in favor of larger folder based art so I do not recommend embedding art in general. But if your files are not organized into album folders, embedded is really the only viable option.

[captain_paranoia]

I'm actually in the process of removing my embedded art in favor of larger folder based art so I do not recommend embedding art in general. But if your files are not organized into album folders, embedded is really the only viable option.

MediaMonkey's AlbumArtTagger plug-in will extract embedded artwork automatically... Plus lots of other handy artwork tasks. MB is better at finding artwork and tags from the internet, though.

As for the organisation thing, that's where the auto-organise function comes in. Provided your files are correctly tagged...

[Gradius]

Yeah I've found tracks that arn't organised into per-album folders tend to lose their art really easily. Got songs with their album art embedded, but if I rescan for any reason they just default to the art of the first track in the folder or to whatever one Windows generated its annoying invisible folder.jpg from.

In general organising into folders makes it work much better. Having a single linked bit of cover art is also gonna A. reduce the file size compared to 20 tracks each with a 2MB image embedded in it, and B. make it easier to swap that cover out for any reason (i.e. you find a higher quality image).

[frankz]

Yeah I've found tracks that arn't organised into per-album folders tend to lose their art really easily. Got songs with their album art embedded, but if I rescan for any reason they just default to the art of the first track in the folder or to whatever one Windows generated its annoying invisible folder.jpg from.

If any of your songs have embedded art and could possibly ever be in a folder with an image in it, it's probably best to have "embedded" be your first artwork choice to avoid this.  It'll skip to the next option if there is no embedded art, so there's no downside (unless you have some files with incorrect embedded art, which I imagine is a rare situation).

[IIKLYDEII]

If you hover over the images in the tag editor, it tells you where they're stored.  These are likely folder.jpg / Cover.jpg (etc) files that exist in the same location as the affected files.

Go to Edit->Edit Preferences->Tags(1)...artwork storage and make sure everything there matches where your art actually is and how you want it.  Then put those stray images where they belong.  If most of your files are not organized, I'd recommend embedding the art rather than defaulting to folder.jpg (etc).

Thank you so much. I was disappointed that all my art was wrong. Now it's all back to normal