Artist Art issues with Volumio 3

[Lryan]

This is a work around I have used to get the artist artwork to appear when using the artists button from the main menu.
Also for the newbies to RaspPi I would recommend getting WinSCP from https://winscp.net this allows to to ssh into the Pi and navigate the file structure graphically and makes it easier and less daunting than using a terminal window.
Simply enter the IP address and the volumio user and password information.

Firstly get your music library structure correct on your choosen storage source.
Music–>Artist Name 1–>Album Name
Artist Name 2–>Album Name
:
:
Artist Name x–>Album Name

Each Artist Name folder has multiple Album Name folders and a folder.jpg which is the artwork of the Artist. Each Album Name folder has the album music files and a cover.jpg which is the cover art of the album. All music files also contain album artwork within their metadata.

I’m currently using version 2.8.06 but this should work for newer versions.
Web Album Art setting is ON

From main when I browse Artists there is artwork showing for most entries, when I browse Music Library and navigate to the Music folder all entries have artwork showing. But are different to those appearing when browsing Artists. I use MediaElch to scrape my Artist images whereas WebArt I believe uses lastfm database to scrape images.

So using WinSCP I connect to my Pi running Volumio and navigate to /data/albumart where I see a number of folders, the two that I’m interested in are PERSONAL and WEB. Both of these contain folders named after the Artists in my music library in web safe format, (%20 instead of a space).

Starting with the PERSONAL folder, in each of the subfolders is a artist.jpg file and a info.json file.
The artist.jpg is the same Artist image that appears when I browse via Music Library.
The info.json file contains the entry {“large”:“large.jpg”}

In the WEB folder each subfolder contains a jpg file with a filename of random numbers and letters and an info.json file.
The jpg file is the same Artist image that appears when I browse Artists at main menu.
The info.json file contains an entry {“large”:“d81539a8-854e-4184-9327-9e6908e5ce79.jpg”} the jpg filename will be different for each Artist but match the actual jpg filename in the subfolder.

Still in the Web folder, I navigate to an artist whose artwork I know does not appear when I browse Artists and it only contains a info.json. This file is empty when opened.

So I navigate back to the corresponding Artist folder within PERSONAL folder and copy and paste both jpg and json files into the corresponding artist folder within the WEB folder.

Then when I go to Main Menu Browse Artists the missing artist artwork appears. Sometimes you may have to refresh the webpage or clear your web browser
cache to see the change.

In summary it appears during importing music files Volumio looks through the Artist Name folders, and finding a folder.jpg, it creates an appropriate folder within \data\albumart\personal and populates with the found image file (after renaming it) and json file that it uses to display artwork when
browsing the Music Library. While at the same time creating a similar folder structure in \data\albumart\web and populating with images scraped from lastfm, for use when browsing Artists.

[Blakegr]

Hi Lyran I read your post with great interest as I have been having artwork issues for 3 years.
Am I correct in assuming that you are navigating inside volumio files on the Raspberry Pi, when you refer to personal and web folder structures?
To date my whole focus has been in the folders of my music collection (stored on a NAS)
If I need to look into volumio folder structures, can you provide more details as to how to do this?
Thanks Greg

[Lryan]

Its all above. Get winscp to ssh into volumio. The right pane is volumio and left is local pc filder structure. On right pane navigate to /data/artwork/web . This is where volumio stores band images it downloads when scanning the music library. Use winscp to download this folder to a location on your local machine.

Once done you can use your pc to add missing images to the appropriate band folder and modify the image filename entry within the json file (using notepad). Once all folders are completed you can use winscp to upload the local web folder structure to volumio.

[Blakegr]

Thanks Lryan, I am new to this but am making progress I think.
I managed to navigate to the web folder, but I do not know how to download it as you suggest above

Here is a pic of where I got to.

[Wheaten]

if you mount your NAS, and when finished you open the Artist view via the GUI and the web folder will be populated by Volumio. You don’t place anything here yourself.

[Lryan]

If you double click web folder you will see all your library band subfolders and each will contain an image file .jpg or .jpeg and a .json file (which can be edited in notepad) that references the image file. If you are missing images for specific bands you open the folder and using the left pane, navigate to a location where you have appropriate artwork you want to add, highlight it and click the upload button on the left side toolbar to put it in the current right pane location. Then you edit the .json file entry (right click edit) to change or add the image filename. Save .json edit.

[Wheaten]

This is a bad advice. Don’t place anything in the folder called /data/albumart/web.

If you press “Reset Album Art Cache” because you’ve added new artists or images al this work is gone.
Your custom image are placed in /data/albumart/personal/artist
Since these folder names are html decoded the easiest way is copy the Artist folder from:
/data/albumart/web
Remove the json file and place the image as Artists.jpg.
Copy this back to /data/albumart/personal/artist

so it looks like:

Or place the image as Artists.jpg in your music folder.

[Blakegr]

I have found something finally.When I navigate to the path as indicated in the picture below, I can see the only artwork that does display correctly in the artist view.
All of my other artists are clearly not in the search path and should be

What are my next steps please.
Greg

[Blakegr]

Lyran, I would appreciate your input on my dilemma please.
Thanks Greg

[Lryan]

That folder is not one for artwork. Look in albumart/personal or albumart/web you should see list of folders of artists in your library each of which should contain .jpg file.

Folder structure for your library should be an individual folder for each artist. These then contain individual folders for albums. As other user mentioned above try adding artist artwork as Artists.jpg in each artist folder in your library. Add album artwork as cover.jpg in each album subfolder. Rescan your library and this should populate the albumart/personal folder.