a500 music player Album Art problem.

[Greg_E]

I did a quick search for Album Art and didn't find anything that applied so thought I better ask... Got my new to me a500 last night, and loaded in all my music today... I've got about 1/3 to 1/2 of the album art showing, is there any way to force the device to rescan for media to hopefully catch everything? My Archos 43it sometimes needed a little help like this to catch all the images for the album art, but I can not find a way to make the a500 do this. I'm running the latest OS that was available OTA.

If there is no way to force it to rescan, I guess I'll have to delete everything and then add them back much more slowly.

Album art for all disks is contained in the Album folder which has worked on most everything else and some of them are working so I don't think the images need to be embedded in the individual song files, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Icebike]

Reboot works most of the time.
Do you have your music on an add-in MicroSD card?

You know, Google Music went public for everybody today.
Sign up, get an account.
Install their Music Monitor on your computer(s) and point it at your music directory.
It will upload everything to the cloud, find Album art, let you create play lists, and
stream it to your android devices, as well as let you play your music on the computer.

No more filling up your tablet with tons of music.

 

[Greg_E]

I have rebooted a couple of times. Even left it idle for a couple hours and plugged in to see if it would find everything but still no luck. They are stored on the internal flash, all are AAC+v1 so it is only about 5GB for 2200+ songs.

The Google music thing only works if you always have a connection to the net, and don't mind using the battery for the Wifi radio, mine will be in airplane mode most of the time.

 

[Icebike]

Google music also lets you pin any music to the device for off line listening, and then you can change your mind and unpin it again.

Don't be afraid to use your battery. Its really a pretty good battery.

 

[StoneKy]

I downloaded (free) MixZing Music Player, a week or so ago.

It downloads missing album art.

MixZing - The Ultimate Android Music Player

 

[Greg_E]

Well putting the music in with smaller groups didn't work. Kind of at a loss since all the albums have art in the folders. Downloaded Winamp for Android and it also doesn't show all the images. Oddly enough, all the images are appearing in the photo gallery.

Now most of the artwork is showing up, except for the playlist view which is not showing any artwork. For the missing items in the album and artist views I'll have to go through and make sure the names of the files are correct. If that is all good then I'll delete the few that are missing and add them back in to see what happens.

 

[StoneKy]

Did you not try?? Works great for me. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mixzing.basic&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5taXh6aW5nLmJhc2ljIl0.

 

[StoneKy]

Another way to do it is to put a .jpg of the album art into the album folder and the call it AlbumArt.jpg

This is supposed to be a good album art grabber https://market.android.com/details?id=com.citc.aag&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5jaXRjLmFhZyJd I haven't tried it but gonna!

 

[Greg_E]

I don't need to download any more images, they are already in each file. I may try renaming the images that do not show up. Right now they are in the format of Albumname.jpg because that was what my Archos player liked best, I think it might also be the preferred name that Winamp on PC wants. It could be that something funny like a special character is in the file name or something like that which is causing the images of certain albums to not be shown.

Now as far as a music player, I may try a few others, I don't like the way the albums get sorted when I sort by Artist. Anyone that has a few movie soundtrack disks will know what I mean. I really like the music player on my Archos, not sure if I can push the .apk out of the Archos and load it into the a500, but I'd like to find something similar.

 

[spexwood]

I don't need to download any more images, they are already in each file. I may try renaming the images that do not show up. Right now they are in the format of Albumname.jpg because that was what my Archos player liked best, I think it might also be the preferred name that Winamp on PC wants. It could be that something funny like a special character is in the file name or something like that which is causing the images of certain albums to not be shown.

Now as far as a music player, I may try a few others, I don't like the way the albums get sorted when I sort by Artist. Anyone that has a few movie soundtrack disks will know what I mean. I really like the music player on my Archos, not sure if I can push the .apk out of the Archos and load it into the a500, but I'd like to find something similar.

I know you said you don't need to download the images, but check out "Cover Art Downloader." It will either help you find missing album art OR allow you to choose album art jpg files that you have on your device already. The free version will properly place the album art in with the music as AlbumArt.jpg. the paid version will also allow you to embed it in the music file's ID3.
The Market page says something about it not working with Google Music 3 though. Not sure what that means exactly, but it also says that an update is coming soon.

As for a player, I always suggest giving Poweramp a try. That is my personal favorite on my Galaxy S2 and my previous phone (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10). It has tons of features, but it will also read those AlbumArt.jpg files... as long as they are done correctly. It also reads the art if embedded in the ID3. The only problem is that because I dont listen to music on my tablet, I have never tried Poweramp on it. It SHOULD work, but try the trial version before buying. (The trial is only for like 15 or 30 days btw).

Sent from my A500 using Android Tablet Forum

 

[Greg_E]

Well I fired up the newest version of Winamp and after playing a song from each of the stuck albums it now has all the artwork, still can't get the stock player to display everything but I'll probably just switch to Winamp or one of the other suggested players.

I am really happy that Winamp seems to be working with m3u playlists, need to load this on my Archos 43it to see if it can still parse them on Froyo. This has been a real thorn in my side because making playlists on a 4.3 inch resistive screen is no fun, so making them on my computer now is going to be a big deal for me.