BleepingComputer.com: Some music folders show album art, some don't.

Hey there!

I have my music folder set to display the artist folders as "picture and video" folders in the properties, so that they will show up as folders with the album art shown as images inside, as follows;



The problem is that not all of the folders display the album-art inside the folder like that, but instead display a different icon, like this;



Inside the Artist folder, there are Album folders (also set as "pictures and documents" folders, and then inside of those are the actual mp3s, which are set to show as "Music Details" in the properties.

At first I thought the differences in folder icons might be because some artist folders held more album folders than others, but that's not the case. Some of the correctly-showing folders have one album inside, some have many... the same is true for the incorrectly-showing folders. I went through and set each one's properties manually, and the properties are all the same, so I don't get why some are showing the art, and some aren't.

I tried the "customize>restore defaults" option, but that did nothing. I've tried creating a new folder, moving the contents, then deleting the old folder, but the new folder also shows the wrong way if the old one did.

If I try the same thing with one of the folders that works correctly, the new folder continues to show the album art (sometimes it chooses different covers to show in the preview).

Any ideas?

I'm running Vista Home Premium on a less-than-a-year-old system, with all of the updates and service pack stuff installed.

Have you tagged the non showing folders with the Album/Artist information with a program that uses ODBC to communicate Artist/Album information?

Also, are the non displaying folders ones you may have downloaded from oh, say limewire?

Either of these two are likely the issue you're having but not necessarily.

Let us know.

Well, I don't use Limewire at all, but there are a mix of types on there (ripped from CD, downloaded, copied from friends), but none of the showing/non-showing are consistently any of those types. Some ripped ones show, some don't, some downloaded ones show, some don't...

I've recently gone through my entire collection to sort and properly tag everything. I use the program called mp3tag to do it, and pretty much all of my mp3s have been tagged with this one program. I even went and took one of the albums from a non-showing folder and re-tagged them all from scratch, but when I put them back (even in a new Artist folder) they still didn't show the album art in the Artist folder view.

The thing that I notice that's weird though, is that all of the album art shows up on the Album folders inside the Artist folder, but it's just the Artist folder that I'm having the problem with.

I'd say about 1/5th to 1/4 of the Artist folders are not showing the art properly. The rest show a thumbnail or two from the albums inside.

Thanks!

I think this link will help explain alot for you.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...1/albumart.aspx

Thanks for the reply, but that doesn't really tell me why the random non-showing folders are behaving the way they are. I don't use WMP for my music collection, and I have personally hand-tagged each file. I've also got the album-art tagged into the mp3 file itself, and not sitting in the folder as an albumart.jpg type file.

It's so arbitrary that it's driving me crazy! I've "bypassed" the problem by just setting the "Music" folder to show the band names as a list instead of the folder icons, and then having the albums show as icons inside the artists' folders. Incidentally, the album art DOES show up for all of the album folders inside the artist folders -- it's just the artist folders that are showing art randomly or not.

I realize this isn't a fix, just a workaround, so if anyone has any other ideas, it'd be great to hear 'em.

The folders are set up like this;

Music>Artists>Albums>Songs.mp3

Even if there is no album specifically (just random files by the artist) I still keep them in a "Misc albums" folder inside the artist folder for the sake of consistency.

So you said,

Quote

Let's go into some detail here. The icons being used for the Music folder, are special Shell Folder Icons. The point here is that these are managed
First by the Windows operating System in use, and secondly by any music software that you have is place to manage Media Information.

If you right click on the folder whose Album art is missing, you have one of a number of options.

1) you can go into properties, and select the the Change Icon Button and click "Restore Defaults", which should put in place the
special shell Object used for the Music Folder. Then, you can add or change the picture displayed by going to the Customize Tab
in properties and selecting on of the supported image Files for the Album in question. Hit apply and hit OK. Choosing all defaults should
also restore album Art that is currently in use by the original album you stored.

2) If you haven't changed the Shell Object that the Icon is related to, then you could manage this information from within Windows Media
Player, which has tools For THIS purpose. Go to Library, click on Album, and then Right Click the Album in question and click Find or Update Media
information which should correct this information

3) Depending on how you're managing you Media Information, you may have to change the way that this information is applied.
Further, If you imported music from one location to another using the original Icon that DOES NOT support displaying Pictures on
the Folder icon itself, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO VIEW THE ALBUM ART, even though it may actually be associated with the Albums themselves.

Quote

Something in the way you are managing these folders is wrong. It sounds like Windows is behaving the way it was meant to.

Try all three steps and let me know what you find.