Music ignores local album artwork.

[Gregory Opera]

When using "Music", local album artwork is ignored, seemingly in favor of online album artwork, which is frequently incorrect.

This appears to be a different issue to https://bugs.launchpad.net/thumbnailer/+bug/1372000 , because https://bugs.launchpad.net/thumbnailer/+bug/1372000 is apparently "fixed" and I still experience this issue.

--

Reproduce:
- Copy music to your Ubuntu mobile device, ensuring that each folder contains appropriately-named album artwork (in my case, exactly the same name as the album and the folder in which the music is contained).
- Launch/open Music, browse your library and playback music.

Result:
- Most tracks are shown with no or incorrect album artwork.

Expectation:
- That Music would utilize or otherwise prioritize local album artwork.

--

Music: 2.4.1003

bq Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition:
* OS build number: OTA-12
* Ubuntu Image part: 20160708
* Ubuntu build description: Ubuntu 15.04 - armhf (20160708-091336)
* Device Image part: 20160606-540a47f
* Device build description: VEGETA01A-S23A_BQ_L100EN_2014_160708
* Customization Image part: 20160701-981-38-14

[Victor Thompson (vthompson)]

Hi Gregory, thanks for taking the time to file this issue. I've added the thumbnailer project as affected so they can triage this issue. Thanks!

[Michi Henning (michihenning)]

Gregory, can you please attach an example of what you think are the failing files?

We need a directory that shows the problem. It should contain at least one music track for which you see incorrect online artwork or no artwork, plus whatever files you think should be used to display the artwork you want.

We need these files *exactly* as they are in your Music folder, with the exact same file names and contents please.

[Gregory Opera (gregoryopera)]

Okay, so in my experimenting, I accidentally discovered something - some of the albums that have "working" album artwork have the album artwork in the same folder with the filename "cover.jpg", whilst all of the albums that do not have working album artwork have the filename "album title.jpg"... From what I can see though, this is not consistent as a bit more digging around shows that some of the albums with "working" album artwork use the filename "album title.jpg".

I have attached an animation showing the file structure of a typical album (note the So Country 2014 is the album in which I renamed the album artwork to "cover.jpg" to experiment).

* So Country 2014 previously displayed no album artwork when it used the filename "So Country 2014.jpg", but after I changed the name to "cover.jpg" and restarted, it now works.
* So Country 2015 is displaying the incorrect album artwork from an external source and as you can see, uses the filename "So Country 2015.jpg".
* So Country 2016 is displaying the incorrect album artwork from an external source (interestingly, one that does not even remotely resemble it!) and as you can see, uses the filename "So Country 2016.jpg".
* So Fresh Dance is displaying the correct album artwork and as you can see, uses the filename "cover.jpg" (not sure why this is, as I use "album title.jpg" - maybe Rhythmbox changed the filename at some point?).

I also have other albums (not shown in the animation) that display the album artwork correctly and use the filename "album title.jpg".

[Michi Henning (michihenning)]

You cannot drop an arbitrary jpg file into a music folder and expect it to be picked up as artwork. This simply doesn't work. The following file basenames are recognised cover art:

cover
album
albumart
.folder
folder

These base names must have one of the following extensions:

jpeg
jpg
png

Capitalisation is irrelevant. So, if you have a file called

AlbumArt.JPG

it will be used as the album cover.

If a song contains embedded artwork, it will be used. Otherwise, if one of these files is present, the contents of the file are used. Otherwise, we try to retrieve albumart from a database. The accuracy of the lookup depends on the accuracy of the tags in the song and whether the database (7digital) has a corresponding entry.

At any rate, there is no bug here. You can embed cover art in your songs, or use one of the filenames listed above if you don't want to do that.

[Gregory Opera (gregoryopera)]

In my experience, most music programs and applications recognize "album title.supported_extension" as album artwork, usually in addition to the same or similar filename structures you list above... That was why I thought there was a bug.

I agree that there is no bug here, though I still think there is a design flaw.

I'll close this "bug" and raise a request for "album title.supported_extension" to be added to the "wishlist" for Music...

Thanks for clearing that up though, Michi.

[Gregory Opera (gregoryopera)]

Okay, I can't work out how to delete this "bug"... Which is not actually a "bug".

*Facepalm*

But because I now consider this a design flaw, I have submitted a wishlist request for a change to the list of recognized album artwork filenames over here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/music-app/+bug/1627252

[Andrew Hayzen (ahayzen)]

The bug being marked as invalid across all affected projects, is effectively 'deleted'.