Wrong genre cover arts display

[Skakner]

Hello everybody!

Poweramp build 957
Samsung A52s
Android 13

The problem is more visual than functional, but either way, if there is a solution, it would be nice!

Let's start from Library>Genres screen (photo 1).
- If I click Classical genre icon (photo 2), everything looks fine. All Classical files have "Artist - Album - Track - Title" tags (i.e.Beethoven - Symphony 3 - 01 - I Allegro con brio).
- If I click Disco genre icon (photo 3), everything looks fine. All Disco files have "Artist - Title" tags (i.e.Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive) and they also have the same Cover art.
- If I click "All Genre songs" or "Unknown album", everything looks fine (photo 4).

- If I click Classic Rock genre icon (photo 5), there is a problem (photo 5). All Classic Rock files have "Artist - Title" tags (i.e.Bad Company - Ready For Love) and they also have the same Cover art.
- If I click "All Genre songs" or "Unknown album", there is a problem (photo 6).

To sum up:

All genres with "Artist - Album - Track - Title" tagged files, looks fine.
The same problematic behavior, as Classic Rock genre, have all other genres with "Artist - Title" tagged files.
The Disco genre is the only one with proper behavior and strangely, its' Cover art appears to every other "Artist - Title" tagged genres territory.

I tried to give you as many info as I could.
Is there something that could fix the problem?

Thank you all! 

 

Edited April 8, 2023 by Skakner

[MotleyG]

1 hour ago, Skakner said:

If I click Classic Rock genre icon (photo 5), there is a problem (photo 5). All Classic Rock files have "Artist - Title" tags (i.e.Bad Company - Ready For Love) and they also have the same Cover art.
- If I click "All Genre songs" or "Unknown album", there is a problem (photo 6).

It looks like some of your music shows the Album as “Unknown” and is forcing the library to search for an album art that doesn’t match. Correct and complete metadata is essential for accurate browsing. Try filling those in, and refreshing the library database. Then what do you see?

[andrewilley]

Check that not only the Album tag is always filled in correctly, but I would suggest making sure that Album Artist is filled in too (even if it seems unnecessary when all tracks are by the same artist anyway). Then do a Full Rescan.

You may need to weed some of the already-cached images out from the storage folders too, if they are still conflicting.

Andre

[Skakner]

Thanks for the answers! 🙂

I understand that the main problem is that there is no Album tag, but given that many files are tagged only as "Artist - Title", what should I fill the Album tag with?
For example, the files of Funk-Soul genre are like that ("Artist - Title"):

Aretha Franklin - I Say a Little Prayer
Aretha Franklin - Respect
Aretha Franklin - Rock Steady
Aretha Franklin - Think
Average White Band - Pick Up The Pieces
Average White Band - School Boy Crush
Billy Garner - I Got Some
Commodores - Brick House
Earth Wind & Fire - Boogie Wonderland
Earth Wind & Fire - Let's Groove
Earth Wind & Fire - September
Earth Wind & Fire - Shining Star
Isley Brothers - It's Your Thing
James Brown - Cold Sweat
James Brown - Get Up (ISex Machine)
James Brown - I Got You (I Feel Good)
James Brown - Night Train
James Brown - Papa's Got A Brand New Bag

They don't belong to an Album. Even if I would maintain this structure ("Artist - Title") and just fill in the Album tag (using Mp3Tag), what Album name should I use and how can be assured that Poweramp will associate these files with the desired Cover? Same with Album Artist. How can be assured that the existence of Album Artist will make Poweramp to display the desired Cover?

In Settings>Album Art, there is the option "Prefer Downloaded Album Art". It means that Poweramp will display the in-folder cover. I'm hesitating though because this would mess up the whole library, even the files with proper tagging.

Bear in mind that Now Playng screen displays the correct Cover Art. The problem exists until just before the Now Playing screen (photos).

 

[andrewilley]

Not really an easy answer to this, as missing tags can cause unexpected results.

In this case, I suspect you have quite a lot of songs with missing Album tags (I do too, many of my single songs have no album data). Poweramp presumably only keeps one cached image file for 'Unknown Album', which would be displayed in the header whenever it shows contents with no album tag. Most likely that image would have been taken from the first audio file it encountered without any album tag - or that it downloaded based on that status - and that is the image which will be shown at the top of any lists containing unknown album items.

The fact that in this case all three songs in the genre-filtered version of your Unknown Album list have their own track art (possibly embedded, possibly downloaded) is a coincidence. If you look at the full content of 'Unknown Album' in the Albums Category, there are probably hundreds of different songs each with their own artwork - but only one can be chosen to represent the whole list, and that chosen image will be used anywhere that artwork is required for 'Unknown Album'. 

Andre

[Skakner]

30 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

The fact that in this case all three songs in the genre-filtered version of your Unknown Album list have their own track art (possibly embedded, possibly downloaded) is a coincidence. If you look at the full content of 'Unknown Album' in the Albums Category, there are probably hundreds of different songs each with their own artwork - but only one can be chosen to represent the whole list, and that chosen image will be used anywhere that artwork is required for 'Unknown Album'. 

I don't think it's a coincidence. Strangely enough (?), Poweramp shows correctly the embeddeb artwork of all the files with no Album tag (thousands of them). Without a single exception!

[andrewilley]

Embedded artwork will always be displayed correctly, it's loaded song by song at display time.

There is no separate Genre>Album artwork though, there is just a single image associated with the concept of 'Unknown Album', which is what will be displayed no matter how you view it and what the currently displayed songs might be.

You could change it to an Aretha Franklin cover if you want, but then that image would be shown every other time you view an Unknown Album list in the future. Maybe setting it to some generic image representing the status "unknown" might be best?

Andre

[Skakner]

I'm thinking of changing the "Artist - Title" tag scheme, to "Artist - Album - Title".
For example, Aretha Franklin - Funk-Soul - Respect, instead of Aretha Franklin - Respect.
This way, all files will have an album name. Well it's genre's name but Poweramp doesn't know!
Maybe this stops Poweramp from considering the files as Album-less.

Just thinking...🤔

[andrewilley]

I'm a bit puzzled as to what you mean by "tag schemes" being "Artist - Title" or "Artist - Album - Title". Each of those items is a separate embedded data tag, they are not combined strings (other than perhaps in the filename).

Setting the Album tag to "Funk-Soul" seems odd, as that really belongs in the Genre tag. Probably best as two descriptors separated by a semicolon in fact - "Funk ; Soul" - so the song can be shown in the "Funk" genre and also in the "Soul" genre.

If you set multiple songs Album tags to "Funk-Soul" you will just create a new cover image for any songs displayed as part of the new "Funk-Soul" album, which is effectively the same issue you currently have with having just one "Unknown Album" image - although at least a bit more targeted that way, and you could choose an image which fits with any Funk-Soul tracks.

Andre

[Skakner]

I haven't thought that filename and tags can be non identical!
For example:
Filename Aerosmith - Dream On can be tagged as Artist:Aerosmith, Title:Dream On, Album: Classic Rock or whatever.

So I tried exactly that!
And it works! Everything looks fine now! The only problem, well sort of, is that on Now Playing screen appears an Album name. 
On the other side, the filename remains Aerosmith - Dream On, which is more eye friendly in Windows explorer. Get something give something...

I have to put some thought to which display I prefer...

Thanks for the answers! 🙂