Help Weird Music Player issue with album art

[Slacker20]

I use MediaMonkey to edit all of my mp3 files so that all my artist, album, year, track number, album art, etc is correct. Today I added an artist (Dub_Fx) with 2 albums and one single to my Droid; the single's album art showed, as well as one of the albums, but the other album's album art isn't showing at all, but I used the exact same method for all of the files. Each mp3 has an imbedded image file saved to the tag, each of them 350x350 images, and none of the mp3 files are protected either. Other programs on my computer show the album art correctly (and I've deleted the images from my computer, just to make sure they were saved to the tag and still show properly), but for some reason it won't show for that one album on the Droid's music player. I've even tried changing the album art to something else, copy over to the Droid, change the album art back, rewrite, and still nothing at all. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
~Slacker

 

[Slacker20]

No one has ANY ideas?

 

[nycebo]

Search is your friend: http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid/17947-missing-album-art.html

 

[Slacker20]

I did search, and read through many other posts, but like the post you linked, most of the problem with others is that they are attempting to use iTunes or WMP, neither of which add album art to the ID3 tags themselves.

I use MediaMonkey, which embeds the images into the ID3 tags themselves, but for some reason ONE of the 3 albums I tried adding isn't showing album art. All my other mp3 files had the album art added to their tags using MediaMonkey and show up on the Droid, it's just this one album...

 

[nycebo]

Ah, totally see what you're talking about. You ripped three albums exactly the same, one of which didn't show the album art. Totally a pain. Your issue is even more perplexing than the issue I was having with WMP and album covers (which still irks me though I have learned to live with it). I just think that Google's media player is poorly thought out and developed. No genre item. Poor sync with iTunes and Windows Media Player. I guess Google just expects the Market to resolve the issues for them. Rant over....

As for your problem, does the problem persist when you delete all traces of the missing cover art mp3s from your computer and Droid, rerip the CD, and then sync it back to the Droid? When you look at the MP3 properties in an advanced tag editor, do you 'see' the cover art?

 

[Slacker20]

Yep. Deleted the files from my Droid, tried changing the album art to something else in MediaMonkey (which shows in other media players with the original image deleted and nowhere on my computer), but nothing would show for that one album on the Droid.

By the way, the single (showing album art) and the album without album art (Everythinks A Ripple, not showing album art) were bought and downloaded from the artist's website, and the other album (Live In The Streets, showing album art) was downloaded by other means...

 

[nycebo]

Slacker, I'm at a total loss. It's pretty frustrating. Wait, one quick question: are the files read-only?

 

[Slacker20]

Shouldn't be, cuz I not only added album art to the tags but also edited all the artist, album, year, and track info. I'm editing the mp3 files with MediaMonkey then copy/pasting to my sdcard/Music folder using Windows Explorer: the same process I've used for my entire music library.

 

[Slacker20]

Well in an attempt to download a paid app in Android Market and realizing my Google Apps email account, despite having Google Checkout setup, won't work, I had to completely wipe my phone to factory settings in order to remove my Google Apps account from the phone. Since I had to reinstall all of my apps anyway, I figured I may as well just reformat my SD Card while I was at it. I'm not sure if it was reformatting the SD Card or if it was wiping my phone, but all my album art is working again. I made no changes at all on my computer, just copy and pasted the exact same mp3 files back over.

Whatever it was that caused the problem in the first place I'm not sure, but it's all working again.

 

[nycebo]

Glad to hear that things are working well for you. Maybe it was just reformatting the card. I would hate to think that wiping the phone is the solution. Such a hassle.

 

[PurpleSkyz]

I registered just to help anyone having this problem.

I too had you exact same problem. All my mp3s where retagged and the cover art EMBEDED in the mp3 itself, but the album art DID NOT SHOW UP inside the android player.

I stumbled on your post, and FORMATED THE SD CARD, and resynced my music.

Problem fixed, so no need for anyone to go wipe their phone, format your SD only.

kkthxbbq.

 

[Slacker20]

I registered just to help anyone having this problem.

I too had you exact same problem. All my mp3s where retagged and the cover art EMBEDED in the mp3 itself, but the album art DID NOT SHOW UP inside the android player.

I stumbled on your post, and FORMATED THE SD CARD, and resynced my music.

Problem fixed, so no need for anyone to go wipe their phone, format your SD only.

kkthxbbq.

Thanks for the confirmation!

 

[AndyP2002]

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 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.