Changing album art

[taxen23]

I've been having a similar issue and I needed to make an account here to ask for clarification on this issue.

Is there any way to have selected album art and selected artists art under each album? 

Currently, I have multiple artists in each album, with their own unique art. However PA seems to choose a random artist in the album to make it's album art? I tried changing the album art but it doesn't change at all? Furthermore it sometimes changes the art of the artist when I try to manually change the album art, but still doesn't change the album art. 

For example, here it randomly decided to use Marvel vs Capcom art as the album cover, even when I keep selecting a Tekken album art? No matter what album art I select, it chooses it's album art based on the artist art of the specific song in the album titled "Player Select"

[andrewilley]

@taxen23 Please make sure that the Album Artist tag is set to the same value for every song in the album.

Andre

[taxen23]

56 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

@taxen23 Please make sure that the Album Artist tag is set to the same value for every song in the album.

Andre

I originally had the album artist blank for most all of my music. After setting it to the same value across an entire album I seem to still have the same issue. I'm not entirely sure what characteristics determines which song PA uses for album art.

 

Also I'd like to note I tried changing the album art for the shared album artist as well, and it still does not change the album art shown in the albums list.

I'd like to add that I also do not know what determines the artist name listed under the album name, as the artist "Tekken" is not the latest modified, latest added, nor first or last chronologically or alphabetically. And it also isn't the artist or album artist the album is it's album art from.

I'd like to know if there is at least a way to change the song the album automatically bases it's album art off of.

Edited January 7 by taxen23
Additional clarification

[andrewilley]

For songs to be considered as being part of the same overall album, the Album Title and Album Artist tags need to match for every song in the album. The Track Artist tag can vary from song to song though (e.g. for duets, collaborations, as part of a collection, etc). Note that both the Artist and the Album Artist tags can contain multiple different names (often separated by semicolons) but the whole Album Artist tag in its entirety needs to be the same as all the other songs in the album for it to be used to link the songs into one album.

If you go into the Artists list, and choose the Artist (or Album Artist) you can use the Image context menu option to choose a different image for that artist (for example if you don't like the one that was found via the automatic search). That image will then be used in Artist and Album Artist lists.

For any embedded artwork (i.e. images contained within the song files rather than downloaded) if you have an album where each song has a different cover image - e.g. if the album is a collection of singles with their own covers - then PA will select the first found image to use for the overall album cover in lists. You can alter this using the Album Art context menu option, but that will change the artwork used for all of the individual songs contained within that album, not just for the overall album container.

Andre

[taxen23]

52 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

For songs to be considered as being part of the same overall album, the Album Title and Album Artist tags need to match for every song in the album. The Track Artist tag can vary from song to song though (e.g. for duets, collaborations, as part of a collection, etc). Note that both the Artist and the Album Artist tags can contain multiple different names (often separated by semicolons) but the whole Album Artist tag in its entirety needs to be the same as all the other songs in the album for it to be used to link the songs into one album.

If you go into the Artists list, and choose the Artist (or Album Artist) you can use the Image context menu option to choose a different image for that artist (for example if you don't like the one that was found via the automatic search). That image will then be used in Artist and Album Artist lists.

For any embedded artwork (i.e. images contained within the song files rather than downloaded) if you have an album where each song has a different cover image - e.g. if the album is a collection of singles with their own covers - then PA will select the first found image to use for the overall album cover in lists. You can alter this using the Album Art context menu option, but that will change the artwork used for all of the individual songs contained within that album, not just for the overall album container.

Andre

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding this or if I misrepresented my issue. Here I have how the Rhythm Game album looks. I cannot change this image without changing the image of a specific artist in the album. I then went ahead and changed every song in this album (even the ones with different track artist) to have the album artist "MYUKKE.". The album art is still the same and unable to be changed. The only way to change the album art is to go into "Artists" and change the artist's image (the artist of the specific song it is for some reason choosing to base it's art off of) to whatever I want the album to be. However I wish to keep the difference artist art as is but to either change the album art to another specific artist's image, or use a separate album art altogether. 

Also if this isn't possible; is there a way for me to somehow insert jpgs into the Android data folder for Poweramp to make them default images for specific albums? Or does this only work with artists in the selected_aa folder?

[andrewilley]

I'm not sure I'm quite understanding what you are saying either. You seem to sometimes be talking about Album Cover images and Artist images almost interchangeably, and I'm not quite sure which you are having problems with. A couple more FAQs which might help with a bit of background on how images are downloaded and chosen for display: 

 

As to your examples, I've searched online for an album called "Rhythm Games" by artist Arcaea, and also for an album called "Fighting Games" by artist Tekken, but found nothing. Those artist names seem to be computer game titles or companies? So I assume you are creating you own 'pseudo-albums' with created descriptive names in order to group a series of individual themed songs into one 'album' for playback purposes. While this is possible (and I do it myself for some subjects) it might be easier to use the Folders or Folders Hierarchy library categories instead of using tag-based categories. 

Anyway, before continuing any further, you should definitely ensure that for every song that you want to be considered as being part of one 'album', all of the Album tags contain one overall name for that album, and the Album Artist tags contain the overall designation considered to be the 'artist' for that whole album. Sometimes the 'Album Artist' tag may not even be an artist's name at all - for example "Various Artists" is commonly used for collection CDs - it just needs to be the same for all of the connected songs.

Other tags can vary from song to song, such as Title (the individual song's title) and Artist (the person or persons who play/sing on that individual song - which may sometimes be the same as the Album Artist, or could be completely different for every track in the case of something like a "Best of the Eighties" music collection). For the sake of this discussion, let's assume there is only a single artist's name for each of your tracks, as multiple/split artist names (such as a song by "Eminem feat. Rihanna") will just complicate matters further.

Do any of these individual songs have their own embedded cover artwork, or are you using manually downloaded images only? To your last question, you can place a folder.jpg or similar image in the folder for a specific album which will be used for that folder view when there is no embedded artwork nor anything stored in the cache locations album_art (for auto-downloads) or selected_aa (for manually chosen images).

Finally, Artist images are a completely separate thing, used for the the Library Categories 'Artists' and 'Album Artists'. PA will attempt to find a suitable image for the named artist online, but the results may only work reliably if they are reasonably well-known artists. Otherwise, you need to drill down into that Artist's category view and use the three-dots context menu=>Image. From there you can either use something that PA found online, or use your own Gallery image file. These are not the same as Album Covers though, and won't be used in the general Albums view (only in Artists>Albums).

Andre

[taxen23]

On 1/8/2024 at 3:27 AM, andrewilley said:

I'm not sure I'm quite understanding what you are saying either. You seem to sometimes be talking about Album Cover images and Artist images almost interchangeably, and I'm not quite sure which you are having problems with. A couple more FAQs which might help with a bit of background on how images are downloaded and chosen for display: 

 

As to your examples, I've searched online for an album called "Rhythm Games" by artist Arcaea, and also for an album called "Fighting Games" by artist Tekken, but found nothing. Those artist names seem to be computer game titles or companies? So I assume you are creating you own 'pseudo-albums' with created descriptive names in order to group a series of individual themed songs into one 'album' for playback purposes. While this is possible (and I do it myself for some subjects) it might be easier to use the Folders or Folders Hierarchy library categories instead of using tag-based categories. 

Anyway, before continuing any further, you should definitely ensure that for every song that you want to be considered as being part of one 'album', all of the Album tags contain one overall name for that album, and the Album Artist tags contain the overall designation considered to be the 'artist' for that whole album. Sometimes the 'Album Artist' tag may not even be an artist's name at all - for example "Various Artists" is commonly used for collection CDs - it just needs to be the same for all of the connected songs.

Other tags can vary from song to song, such as Title (the individual song's title) and Artist (the person or persons who play/sing on that individual song - which may sometimes be the same as the Album Artist, or could be completely different for every track in the case of something like a "Best of the Eighties" music collection). For the sake of this discussion, let's assume there is only a single artist's name for each of your tracks, as multiple/split artist names (such as a song by "Eminem feat. Rihanna") will just complicate matters further.

Do any of these individual songs have their own embedded cover artwork, or are you using manually downloaded images only? To your last question, you can place a folder.jpg or similar image in the folder for a specific album which will be used for that folder view when there is no embedded artwork nor anything stored in the cache locations album_art (for auto-downloads) or selected_aa (for manually chosen images).

Finally, Artist images are a completely separate thing, used for the the Library Categories 'Artists' and 'Album Artists'. PA will attempt to find a suitable image for the named artist online, but the results may only work reliably if they are reasonably well-known artists. Otherwise, you need to drill down into that Artist's category view and use the three-dots context menu=>Image. From there you can either use something that PA found online, or use your own Gallery image file. These are not the same as Album Covers though, and won't be used in the general Albums view (only in Artists>Albums).

Andre

Oh I see, I apologize I should've clarified that from the start. These aren't actual albums, but just how I categorize the songs. I figured Folders may be the only way to fully customize these how I want, but I wasn't sure given how album art is an option.

As for the artist art vs Album art, The artist art was appearing for each individual song when I enter an album. This is what I wanted, however based on your description maybe this isn't supposed to happen? 

Also for clarification, I originally wanted the album art to be a manually selected art, and the songs in the album to have artist artwork (different from album art). OR just to have the album art be another artist in the album (in the linked image, Arcaea is the album art, but I keep trying to change it to the Muse Dash art instead)

In the linked articles it mentions "some" song being chosen for album art? I would like to know how it's prioritized if at all possible. For example, if I embedded different album art into every single song, or embedded two different arts into each half of the album, which art would PA choose for the album art and how would I change the art it chooses?

Either way I can instead use folders if it doesn't work with albums. I just wasn't sure if it was possible with albums. Thank you for helping me through it!

Edited January 9 by taxen23
Additional question and clarity

[MotleyG]

3 hours ago, taxen23 said:

I originally wanted the album art to be a manually selected art, and the songs in the album to have artist artwork (different from album art). OR just to have the album art be another artist in the album (in the linked image, Arcaea is the album art, but I keep trying to change it to the Muse Dash art instead)

Unfortunately this isn't how PA or most other music player apps and programs work. While each music file is unique, the concept of Albums and Artists is the way these individual files become grouped together for browsing within the library as we refer to them.

For covers that Poweramp grabs itself or manually, Artist art is a single image assigned to all Artists that exactly match that name. Album art is a single image that exactly matches the combination of Album+Albumartist. This is one reason why those metadata tags are so critically important.

There is also the possibility that Poweramp can display Album art that is already embedded within each file. But for the library, only the first file scanned from that Album will show in the browser. However when playing each file, the Now Playing screen should show each cover as embedded in that file.

 

[andrewilley]

You can of course put individual artist pictures into each separate file - i.e. embedded within the file's metadata contents, using an external tag editor program. You can basically put anything you like in there, and PA will display it when it plays that file.

But PA's automatic or manual download system for Artist photos only applies to the Artist lists. Such images will never be shown in place of album cover art, either in lists of albums or songs, or on the player screen. 

Andre

[taxen23]

11 hours ago, andrewilley said:

But PA's automatic or manual download system for Artist photos only applies to the Artist lists. Such images will never be shown in place of album cover art, either in lists of albums or songs, or on the player screen. 

Okay I was following until this part. Manual Artist photos show up everywhere for me. Specifically, all of my albums choose the artist photo of a particular song (seemingly a random song) and show that as the album art both in Album lists and on the player screen. Is something wrong on my end?

 

Sorry to drag this convo on for so long. I've just been using this app for years but never understood how these images work at all. Pressing "album art" and it not actually changing the album art seems really odd

[MotleyG]

15 minutes ago, taxen23 said:

Manual Artist photos show up everywhere for me. Specifically, all of my albums choose the artist photo of a particular song (seemingly a random song) and show that as the album art both in Album lists and on the player screen.

Where is everywhere? And where is this Artist photo stored?

[andrewilley]

Just because a picture happens to be of a singer/band, that doesn't necessarily mean that you've saved it as an Artist image, you could have make an Album Cover out of any picture you like.

From Poweramp's point of view, images that it considers as being of artists will be used next to each singer/band in the list of available Artists, and also in the header area at the top of the album list for that artist. It won't be used next to any album titles, nor on the Player Screen. Of course you could have manually assigned the same photo to anywhere you like.

Artists (or Album Artists) Category list - where each item displays alongside an artist image:

Drill down one level to see a view of just one Artist's content - uses the artist image as header:

Then drill down into an individual Album view - no artist image is used at all, only images for the album and songs:

Andre

[taxen23]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Just because a picture happens to be of a singer/band, that doesn't necessarily mean that you've saved it as an Artist image, you could have make an Album Cover out of any picture you like.

From Poweramp's point of view, images that it considers as being of artists will be used next to each singer/band in the list of available Artists, and also in the header area at the top of the album list for that artist. It won't be used next to any album titles, nor on the Player Screen. Of course you could have manually assigned the same photo to anywhere you like.

Artists (or Album Artists) Category list - where each item displays alongside an artist image:

Drill down one level to see a view of just one Artist's content - uses the artist image as header:

Then drill down into an individual Album view - no artist image is used at all, only images for the album and songs:

Okay I think I see what's going on with the artist photo then. Although, again sorry for this being so long, I cannot change album art at all still. Album view, hold click on album with no art, select image, choose a photo, and it's still blank. It's very odd but honestly I'm just going to work with folders and hope I can manually change those akin to how playlists work. Thanks again for the help

[andrewilley]

6 minutes ago, taxen23 said:

Album view, hold click on album with no art, select image, choose a photo, and it's still blank. 

Sorry, you originally said you were seeing Artist images (which are generally auto-fetched back solely on the contents of the Artist tag). It's getting a bit hard to follow exactly what you are seeing, now you are saying the Album artwork is blank?  Again, if nothing is embedded in any of the song files, PA should attempt to auto-download song images and then it will choose one of them for the overall album. The online search criteria would be based on the Title and Artist tags for the song, or Album Title and Album Artist tags for the album. 

To choose a new overall Album Cover image, drill down until you are viewing the complete list of songs for that album. Tap the three-dots icon and select 'Album Art'. Pick an image from the items sourced online, or choose from your local Gallery (within the size limitations given in the FAQs I linked above). You can also do the same on a per-song basis (use three-dots menu in the Player Screen, or long-press in the song list, for each track separately).

The display logic is based on how the images are named and cached, but broadly it's based on whether the Artist and Album Artist tags fully match throughout the whole series of songs. If they are all the same, one image will applied for all the songs in that album, and thus for the overall album too. If the track artists vary though, a change to one track's artwork will only apply for any tracks in the album which are tagged as being by the same Track Artist.

So for example, in a "Various Artists" collection album with each song by a different Track Artist, you can change the artwork for each individual track from the Player Screen's three-dots menu (or long-press on the song title in the list). Each song can have different artwork. You can then assign a completely different image for the overall album by using the three-dots menu at the Album songs level and choose Album Art from there.

If you want to dig even deeper (and beware, it's a rabbit hole!) check out the contents of the cache folder where the found/downloaded images are stored:

Andre

[taxen23]

4 hours ago, andrewilley said:

To choose a new overall Album Cover image, drill down until you are viewing the complete list of songs for that album. Tap the three-dots icon and select 'Album Art'. Pick an image from the items sourced online, or choose from your local Gallery (within the size limitations given in the FAQs I linked above). You can also do the same on a per-song basis (use three-dots menu in the Player Screen, or long-press in the song list, for each track separately).

 

Okay this here is basically the part that's close to what's going on in the app. None of this works the way it's supposed to like you're telling me for some reason. I'm not saying you're lying or anything (you *definitely* know more about this than I do), but something must be wrong with it on my end. There's no three dots on my screen, however I can long press on a song like you said.

 

No matter what menu I'm in (Player Screen, song list, album list, anything) changing the art on any individual song changes the artist photo (I know you said it shouldn't) within the artists list, it changes the image shown in the song list, and the image shown in the player.

For 1 random song in each album, changing the song art and/or artist art not only changes the artist photo, image in the song list, and the image in the player, but it additionally changes the entire album art. 

The "no album art" issue I was previously describing is what happens when I remove the art from that particular song. The song that determines the art for the album. The album is choosing one song to demand the art of the album. I cannot change the album art, unless I go and change that song's art. If I change that song to have no art, the album art becomes blank. If I then choose album art in the album list section, nothing happens. If I change the song's image in the song list (OR change the artist's photo, it's all the same image for me. I haven't found any option for individual songs to have art if they have the same artist) the album follows suit.

All of the other songs by different artists in these albums can have any image in the world, but if I change the image of any one song by that artist (the one the album for some reason has the exact same image of) the album art changes.

Currently the only way for me to change album art is to find the one or so songs in each album that has the same art as the album and change the art via the song list. The album art button doesn't work in the album list. 

Sorry I'm really bad at explaining but Im hoping this clears it up? Also I'd like to note I have automatic downloads of art turned off.

4 hours ago, andrewilley said:

So for example, in a "Various Artists" collection album with each song by a different Track Artist, you can change the artwork for each individual track from the Player Screen's three-dots menu (or long-press on the song title in the list). Each song can have different artwork. You can then assign a completely different image for the overall album by using the three-dots menu at the Album songs level and choose Album Art from there.

If you want to dig even deeper (and beware, it's a rabbit hole!) check out the contents of the cache folder where the found/downloaded images are stored:

 

This I haven't tried before, and it's probably where my issue is stemming from. I have albums with various artists, but the "album artist" isn't labeled "various artists" so I may need to change it to that

[maxmp]

4 hours ago, taxen23 said:

No matter what menu I'm in (Player Screen, song list, album list, anything) changing the art on any individual song changes the artist photo (I know you said it shouldn't) within the artists list, it changes the image shown in the song list, and the image shown in the player.

The cover is _the album_ art, so if that song is in some album, you're changing that particular album art, not just the song cover. If the song is a single, category image still can be changed if the new image fits that category better (for example, it's higher resolution, or located closer to the song in case of folders, etc.).

As artist images also sourced from the songs of that artist, changing that artist song may change the artist image too - if the image is considered "better" than the previous one (or if forced via "Also use for ..." checkbox in images selection popup).

[andrewilley]

The 'Album Artist' tag merely needs to be the same across all tracks in an album. Quoting the wording as "Various Artists" was just a commonplace example, it could be the actual artist's name if it's a simple collection of their work. And if the individual tracks in an album are also all listed as being by the same Track Artist (again, quite a common occurrence for music albums) then changing the artwork for one song, or even at the album level, will change the artwork shown for every other track in the album too. The exact logic is down to the naming and matching conventions of the JPG files in the cache folder, but probably not worth getting into here.

Artist images are completely separate, and stored in different folders, from Album covers. Same goes for artwork for Genres, Playlists, etc. They may of course end up being be the same picture - such as when there are no online search results for a particular named artist's photo, I guess one of their album covers may show up as an online match instead.

To see the actual images being retained and shown by Poweramp, take a look in the cache folders using a File Explorer app. There are different folders used for automatically found images and for manually selected ones (the manual images should always be used in preference to auto-downloads).

album_art or selected_aa for album covers as used in album/song lists, and on the player screen.
artist_art or selected_artist for artist images used in the Artists category.
composer_art or selected_composer for composer images used in the Composers category.
genre_art or selected_genre for genre images used in Genres category.
playlist_art or selected_playlist for playlists as shown in the Playlists category.

If you view those folders sorted by most recent files first you can see what files get change or added when you modify the cover art within the player app.

The Artist photos (as stored in selected_artist) should only be affected when you either:

• Long-press on one artist's name in the full Artists or Album Artists library lists, and select 'Image' from the resulting menu.
• Click down from one of those two lists to see an individual artist's albums, and without opening any of the album pages use the three-dot menu option and select 'Image'.

As far as I can think, those are the only ways to manually choose an Artist image, otherwise an automated download will be searched for (and cached in the artist_art folder).

All of the above assumes your music is correctly tagged with accurate Artist, Album Artist, and Album names; if you invent these names for your own purposes (like my own "Singles" faux-album) you'll probably need to use local Gallery images as online searches will be pretty unreliable. 

Andre

[taxen23]

22 hours ago, maxmp said:

artist images also sourced from the songs of that artist, changing that artist song may change the artist image too - if the image is considered "better" than the previous one (or if forced via "Also use for ..." checkbox in images selection popup).

This is likely what's happening on my end. I just tried changing the artist photo in the list without opening the specific artist first. Turns out that was my issue. I was able to change the artist photo and it didn't affect the song list or album art like you both said. It looks like I've just been changing album art and trying to do so without affecting the songs in the album, but of course we know that's not exactly how it is supposed to work. But thank you both for clearing this up. I see how I misunderstood the app a lot more.

On the matter of changing the images to specifically what cover arts I want and whatnot, I found the folders mentioned before does work exactly how I was hoping when I drop the desired folder art in the folder. So I'll likely continue to use folders as a default for me.

Thanks again!

[andrewilley]

Phew, sounds like we've got an answer for you now. I actually earned a few things myself during testing for this thread too.

Andre

[Jonmalik]

Hey
I've been having a similar headache with album art on my music app, and it's been driving me nuts. I had to create an account just to dive into this. 😅

Is there any way to get the selected album art AND individual artist art displayed under each album? Currently, my albums have multiple artists with their unique art, but the app seems to play DJ and randomly chooses an artist's image as the album cover. I've tried changing it, but it's like talking to a wall. Also, sometimes it decides to switch the artist's art when I'm desperately attempting to give the album a makeover.

For instance, it pulled a "Marvel vs Capcom" move, using that art as the album cover, even when I insist on a "Tekken" vibe. No matter how hard I try, it's like the app has a mind of its own! Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. Anyone else experienced this album art rebellion? And, oh, relating to Loklok apk somehow? 🤔

Edited February 5 by andrewilley
Removed link to unrelated app

[andrewilley]

15 minutes ago, Jonmalik said:

Is there any way to get the selected album art AND individual artist art displayed under each album? 

Separate Album Art can be defined for a "various artists" album, which will be shown in album lists and as the header for the album page, while still displaying individual song covers sourced from embedded images.

Artist images are separate, they have nothing to do with song or album covers.

Please have a read through all the posts in this thread, and if it's still not working as it should, please provide full details of what you are seeing in the Artist category, album list, songs list, and the player screen.

Ansre

[Jonmalik]

Ok I try my best next time thank for your guidance.....

[Jonny G]

Hey, had a search about in the forum and this seems like the closest match to the issue I'm having getting PA to work the way that I want.

I'm in the same boat as taxen23 was in that I can follow what you're saying to do in the UI with regard to changing the artwork, but there's no 3 dots menu to access any further options. All I get is the ability to select an image online or a local image. (The latter which I don't have and don't really want to have to go downloading / extracting duplicate copies of album art that I already have embedded)

I don't know whether its a recent Android change which restricts access to the cached artwork files mentioned earlier in this thread, but that option certainly doesn't seem available to me.

All I want to achieve is the ability to choose an artist image (visible in artist and album artist lists) from the album covers which are embedded in the .mp3 files. 

Typically I just want to be able to set the album artists' earliest album as their artist image as this will be the most memorable for me to allow for quick browsing.

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

[Fitzian]

7 minutes ago, Jonny G said:

Hey, had a search about in the forum and this seems like the closest match to the issue I'm having getting PA to work the way that I want.

I'm in the same boat as taxen23 was in that I can follow what you're saying to do in the UI with regard to changing the artwork, but there's no 3 dots menu to access any further options. All I get is the ability to select an image online or a local image. (The latter which I don't have and don't really want to have to go downloading / extracting duplicate copies of album art that I already have embedded)

I don't know whether its a recent Android change which restricts access to the cached artwork files mentioned earlier in this thread, but that option certainly doesn't seem available to me.

All I want to achieve is the ability to choose an artist image (visible in artist and album artist lists) from the album covers which are embedded in the .mp3 files. 

Typically I just want to be able to set the album artists' earliest album as their artist image as this will be the most memorable for me to allow for quick browsing.

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

Afaik, there is no way to manually choose a track's embedded album art as the artist image.

[Jonny G]

15 minutes ago, Fitzian said:

Afaik, there is no way to manually choose a track's embedded album art as the artist image.

From what I've read I figured that was the case. I'm aware there's a link earlier on explaining how PA selects the image it decides to use for the artist, however in practice there's nothing I can really do to influence this behaviour, unless anyone knows different.

It's deffo more of a niggle than a problem for me, hence my reluctance to spend time creating a folder full of album art that I then manually assign to the album artist list, but very interested if anyone has come up with a workaround.