Music Files Persistently Showing Wrong Images for Albums on Android Phone?

[JKL2000]

Anyone ever had this problem? I have a Samsung Android phone, and sometimes when I have MP3 files that I KNOW have the correct JPGs embedded in them, they continue to show wrong images when copied to the phone. In this case it's legal downloads, which came with the correct images, but when I copy them to my phone for some reason in the music player app they show the wrong images (completely wrong band!).

Also, when I view the files that are on the phone, in Windows Explorer, I see the correct images - it seems to only be in the player that I see the wrong images. Maybe it's a problem with the player app?

[JKL2000]

Never mind - seems it was just the crummy player app that comes with Android. I installed WinAmp and that worked fine.

[Dave (in MA)]

Whatever music app I use on my droid tablet doesn't show album art, it only shows filenames.

I have a problem with my ipod nano whenever I add new tracks, all of the album art for the stuff that was already on there gets mixed up. The only way to get it right is to wipe out everything and re-copy. I don't think that it happens for normal people who allow itunes to sync a "Library", but I don't do it that way.

[JKL2000]

Whatever music app I use on my droid tablet doesn't show album art, it only shows filenames.

I have a problem with my ipod nano whenever I add new tracks, all of the album art for the stuff that was already on there gets mixed up. The only way to get it right is to wipe out everything and re-copy. I don't think that it happens for normal people who allow itunes to sync a "Library", but I don't do it that way.

I don't sync either, and that sounds like what happened with my Android. For some reason some Marillion album artwork was showing up for other albums - even ones I'd JUST copied to the phone with correct artwork embedded. F'd up! Anyway, as I said, I switched to a different player and things look ok for now.

[Kamilla]

thanks for the list guys. it'll really help me.

[Dave (in MA)]

thanks for the list guys. it'll really help me.

SPAM

[No Pride]

I don't think that it happens for normal people who allow itunes to sync a "Library", but I don't do it that way.

iTunes screws up some albums' artwork. For Kevin Gilbert's Giraffe, I ended up the artwork of some band called "Curly Giraffe." Amazingly, they don't have the artwork for "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" or Bruford's "One of a Kind."

[Dave (in MA)]

iTunes screws up some albums' artwork. For Kevin Gilbert's Giraffe, I ended up the artwork of some band called "Curly Giraffe." Amazingly, they don't have the artwork for "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" or Bruford's "One of a Kind."

In my case, I specifically added the artwork .jpg files to the MP3 files, and iTunes brought 'em aboard the iPod and everything worked OK for a while until at some point when I reconnected to my laptop for charging. Then it jumbled all the artwork as though some database got corrupted. It didn't swap in artwork from things I didn't have on the device. It's all moot now, because the power button stopped working.

[JKL2000]

I don't think that it happens for normal people who allow itunes to sync a "Library", but I don't do it that way.

It would really help if Apple packaged iPhones and iPods with some kind of documentation that explained WTF "syncing" means in the iTunes world. I really have no idea. I would never want my iPhone or iPod to have all the music on my PC, nor would it all fit. And I wouldn't want my PC to have only the small subset that's on my iPhone or iPod. So I just don't know what it means. I also don't really know what they mean by Library. They're terrible at making things understandable.

[Scott Bails]

This is going to sound more snarky than I intend, but many companies now just assume that most folks know how to use Google. I've purchased a few products that don't even come with an instruction or owner's manual, as it saves the company from printing one.

[Dave (in MA)]

I've purchased a few products that don't even come with an instruction or owner's manual, as it saves the company from printing one. Even if I have a manual for something, when I need to use it I'll look for an online copy because it's easier to deal with than a printed one, especially if the printed one is the same crap repeated over & over in different languages. With an online document I can search for a word or phrase, and I can zoom in or out as needed.

[Grimjack]

It would really help if Apple packaged iPhones and iPods with some kind of documentation that explained WTF "syncing" means in the iTunes world. I really have no idea. I would never want my iPhone or iPod to have all the music on my PC, nor would it all fit. And I wouldn't want my PC to have only the small subset that's on my iPhone or iPod. So I just don't know what it means. I also don't really know what they mean by Library. They're terrible at making things understandable.

Seems like that was more of a consideration in the earlier years of the digital age when this was a more widespread issue. Not that I'm minimizing your frustration or implying that it isn't an issue at all...its just an issue for a smaller (and growing even smaller) part of the demographic so its not likely that Apple will put resources towards explaining it better.
We're probably in similar situations...a sizable music library on the computer and the desire to have a subset of that library on the device. Here's what I've done:
1. Set your preferences in iTunes to "Manually manage my music library" and be sure to uncheck the box that says "automatically synchronize when my device is connected".
2. Create a PLAYLIST FOLDER (***NOT A PLAYLIST***) called iPhone.
3. Under that folder, create one or more playlists that contain the music you want to keep on your iPhone. I have several...one is my "Top Shelf" playlist of stuff I'll always want to have on my phone and never tire of (Relayer, One Size Fits All, Sluggo!, A Love Supreme etc), one is a Rush Favorites, a Steely Dan favorites, a Late Night Grooves playlist, a Morning Songs playlist etc etc.
4. Create a "smart playlist" under that folder called "New Stuff" and have it automatically populate with any new music added to your library from the last X weeks (I'll let you solve for X depending on your own preferences)
5. Populate additional playlists as you see fit
6. Connect your iPhone. You'll see it appear in the leftmost pane of your iTunes window. Click on it. You'll see a summary appear on the right, along with options to more specifically manage Music, Movies, Podcasts, Apps etc.
7. Choose Music
8. You'll see the option to synch all your music is probably already checked. Uncheck it.
9. Check the box that says something like "synch the following artists/albums/playlists" and look for the folder you created called iPhone. Check the box next to it.
10. Once you've done that, click the synch button on the bottom right. That should start the process of moving only those playlists in the iPhone folder to your iPhone.
11. Moving forward, every time you click the synch button when your iPhone is connected, it will automatically update the "New Stuff" playlist based on the X weeks you defined when you created the Smart Playlist (and you can easily change that whenever you want by right-clicking on the smart playlist and choosing "edit") to adjust its properties
12. You can add new playlists or remove existing ones from that iPhone folder as you please...synch your phone after making such changes and iTunes will update the music on your phone accordingly.

[JKL2000]

This is going to sound more snarky than I intend, but many companies now just assume that most folks know how to use Google. I've purchased a few products that don't even come with an instruction or owner's manual, as it saves the company from printing one.

Yeah, I get that and usually that works fine, but IMO iTunes is really, really non-intuitive, and you can't just introduce concepts like Libraries and syncing without explaining what the fuck they mean. To be fair, Windows Media Player is a piece of crap too - I can almost never figure out how to do certain things with that that are really basic. Also, I see from looking at it now that it also has libraries and syncing, but the thing is you can completely ignore those concepts with Windows, while you can't as easily with iTunes and the whole Apple operating system. It's like Apple is trying to prevent you from working directly with your files, and I resent that and it goes against computing instincts. It's like "What, you want to hold your CDs? Ok, but you can only do it while wearing these oven mitts."

I've used tons of software products over almost 30 years, usually working in a software development environment, and iTunes is really the only one where I wish there was a manual. I mean, even things like Microsoft Team Foundation Server are more intuitive, so why can't iTunes be? All I want is to be able to drag and drop music files onto my iPod and iPhone, and delete them when needed. But even deleting them is often impossible to do via iTunes.

[JKL2000]

Seems like that was more of a consideration in the earlier years of the digital age when this was a more widespread issue. Not that I'm minimizing your frustration or implying that it isn't an issue at all...its just an issue for a smaller (and growing even smaller) part of the demographic so its not likely that Apple will put resources towards explaining it better.
We're probably in similar situations...a sizable music library on the computer and the desire to have a subset of that library on the device. Here's what I've done:
1. Set your preferences in iTunes to "Manually manage my music library" and be sure to uncheck the box that says "automatically synchronize when my device is connected".
2. Create a PLAYLIST FOLDER (***NOT A PLAYLIST***) called iPhone.
3. Under that folder, create one or more playlists that contain the music you want to keep on your iPhone. I have several...one is my "Top Shelf" playlist of stuff I'll always want to have on my phone and never tire of (Relayer, One Size Fits All, Sluggo!, A Love Supreme etc), one is a Rush Favorites, a Steely Dan favorites, a Late Night Grooves playlist, a Morning Songs playlist etc etc.
4. Create a "smart playlist" under that folder called "New Stuff" and have it automatically populate with any new music added to your library from the last X weeks (I'll let you solve for X depending on your own preferences)
5. Populate additional playlists as you see fit
6. Connect your iPhone. You'll see it appear in the leftmost pane of your iTunes window. Click on it. You'll see a summary appear on the right, along with options to more specifically manage Music, Movies, Podcasts, Apps etc.
7. Choose Music
8. You'll see the option to synch all your music is probably already checked. Uncheck it.
9. Check the box that says something like "synch the following artists/albums/playlists" and look for the folder you created called iPhone. Check the box next to it.
10. Once you've done that, click the synch button on the bottom right. That should start the process of moving only those playlists in the iPhone folder to your iPhone.
11. Moving forward, every time you click the synch button when your iPhone is connected, it will automatically update the "New Stuff" playlist based on the X weeks you defined when you created the Smart Playlist (and you can easily change that whenever you want by right-clicking on the smart playlist and choosing "edit") to adjust its properties
12. You can add new playlists or remove existing ones from that iPhone folder as you please...synch your phone after making such changes and iTunes will update the music on your phone accordingly.

Christ, did you just type all that? I hope not. I really don't want to mess with playlists. I've never in my life created a playlist. To me, a Playlist is the files in a folder, with filenames that dictate the order in which they're played. I need to be able to quickly rip a CD and copy the files to a device, I don't have time to create a playlist.

BTW, do you ever have the problem where you can't delete music from an iPhone using iTunes. Delete is greyed out, and the Delete key doesn't do it either. I've read it's because I don't have the latest version of iTunes and the latest version of iOS on my phone, but I don't buy that.

Do you know of some tool you can install on a PC that allows you to just use connect an iPod and iPhone to a PC and just use Windows Explorer to manage files on those devices? I'd love that.

[Jerjo]

iTunes is terrible at finding album art. They've improved somewhat but I got so tired of it coming up with the wrong art or none at all I started pasting my own. It couldn't even get the right art for my King Crimson albums and it's not like those are obscure. First I just pasted in an image of Steve Jobs with a red tint and horns on his head. That got old. Then I went to my file of "images of questionable taste featuring ladies with daddy issues", found all those whose dimensions are square, and pasted those images in. If Robert Fripp ever sees my iPad I've got some explaining to do.

[Grimjack]

Christ, did you just type all that? I hope not. I really don't want to mess with playlists. I've never in my life created a playlist. To me, a Playlist is the files in a folder, with filenames that dictate the order in which they're played. I need to be able to quickly rip a CD and copy the files to a device, I don't have time to create a playlist.

BTW, do you ever have the problem where you can't delete music from an iPhone using iTunes. Delete is greyed out, and the Delete key doesn't do it either. I've read it's because I don't have the latest version of iTunes and the latest version of iOS on my phone, but I don't buy that.

Do you know of some tool you can install on a PC that allows you to just use connect an iPod and iPhone to a PC and just use Windows Explorer to manage files on those devices? I'd love that.

Oh, wasn't all that much to type. You seem like you're familiar enough with computers...that's only a few lines of code ;)
Don't resist the playlist. They are liberating. And the key to working through your confusion. You want your iPod/iPhone to function similarly to how an external hard drive works with simple drag/drop a la Explorer/Finder. Doesn't work that way. iTunes keeps track of way too much data attached to each individual file that's stored in a series of centralized xml managed by iTunes. The only way to circumvent this is to go completely third party and jailbreak iOS and start mucking about at a command line level, or using something like Rockbox which wipes an iPod completely and replaces it with a Unix shell solely to work with music (and allow the playing of non-supported iOS formats like FLAC). If you dig messing around with such things, it might be to your liking. But making a playlist is super easy, takes no time at all and honestly....resistance is futile. It's a playlist driven music world nowadays. The method I've described has gotten the most curmudgeonly tech-hating anti-Apple luddites to suddenly fall in love with their digital music collections again. It takes a few minutes of setup the first time, and from then on it really takes care of itself with virtually no time commitment. Yes...a playlist (.m3u file) is what you describe but with the addition of the location of the files in addition to the filenames/order. That's sort of important so that your iTunes library can reference a single file/song but allow it to live in multiple playlists.
iTunes is bloated and it makes simple management of files between computer and device not-as-easy as one would like. That's because its no longer its primary purpose...its a streaming world of playlists. The focus is much more on the iOS versions and selling Apple Music subscriptions. Physical music libraries aren't nearly the priority they once were. You might want to consider a dedicated portable audio player by Cowan, J-River, Sony etc that do offer a better drag/drop experience, though I expect as the demand for these types of products continues to shrink the experience/support for the software that powers them won't necessarily be top shelf. YMMV.

[JKL2000]

I really only listen to full albums, so I can't see having to create playlists for the contents of each album.

[Grimjack]

I really only listen to full albums, so I can't see having to create playlists for the contents of each album.

You don't have to. The smart playlist will automatically add any new albums you rip and you can just drag entire albums to the other playlists you've made. Fast n easy.

[JKL2000]

Seems like that was more of a consideration in the earlier years of the digital age when this was a more widespread issue. Not that I'm minimizing your frustration or implying that it isn't an issue at all...its just an issue for a smaller (and growing even smaller) part of the demographic so its not likely that Apple will put resources towards explaining it better.
We're probably in similar situations...a sizable music library on the computer and the desire to have a subset of that library on the device. Here's what I've done:
1. Set your preferences in iTunes to "Manually manage my music library" and be sure to uncheck the box that says "automatically synchronize when my device is connected".
2. Create a PLAYLIST FOLDER (***NOT A PLAYLIST***) called iPhone.
3. Under that folder, create one or more playlists that contain the music you want to keep on your iPhone. I have several...one is my "Top Shelf" playlist of stuff I'll always want to have on my phone and never tire of (Relayer, One Size Fits All, Sluggo!, A Love Supreme etc), one is a Rush Favorites, a Steely Dan favorites, a Late Night Grooves playlist, a Morning Songs playlist etc etc.
4. Create a "smart playlist" under that folder called "New Stuff" and have it automatically populate with any new music added to your library from the last X weeks (I'll let you solve for X depending on your own preferences)
5. Populate additional playlists as you see fit
6. Connect your iPhone. You'll see it appear in the leftmost pane of your iTunes window. Click on it. You'll see a summary appear on the right, along with options to more specifically manage Music, Movies, Podcasts, Apps etc.
7. Choose Music
8. You'll see the option to synch all your music is probably already checked. Uncheck it.
9. Check the box that says something like "synch the following artists/albums/playlists" and look for the folder you created called iPhone. Check the box next to it.
10. Once you've done that, click the synch button on the bottom right. That should start the process of moving only those playlists in the iPhone folder to your iPhone.
11. Moving forward, every time you click the synch button when your iPhone is connected, it will automatically update the "New Stuff" playlist based on the X weeks you defined when you created the Smart Playlist (and you can easily change that whenever you want by right-clicking on the smart playlist and choosing "edit") to adjust its properties
12. You can add new playlists or remove existing ones from that iPhone folder as you please...synch your phone after making such changes and iTunes will update the music on your phone accordingly.

Hi Grimjack. I'm thinking of trying this, but I have a couple of questions.

-As I said above, there are files I've deleted manually on my iPhone that still show up in iTunes (iTunes never seems to let me delete files, delete is always grayed out). Is this going to interfere with the whole Smart Playlist thing you describe?
-When I put new music on my PC, I don't add it to my iTunes music library, it's just on a couple of different folders on my PC. I don't use the music library in iTunes. Should I be? This has really been my basic question about synching. I was under the impression it was going to try to synch my iPhone or iPod and ALL THE MUSIC files on my PC (which is far more than either portable device could hold). Does it actually only synch the devices with music you've added to your iTunes library? If so, how come no one told me that? :) Also, what if my library holds more than would fit on my iPhone or iPod?

Thanks.

[bob_32_116]

I don't think it's anything to get paranoid about.

[JKL2000]

I don't think it's anything to get paranoid about.

It was you, wasn't it?

[mnprogger]

not due to a phone, but just online software, Queen apparently have a song on a Tony Bennett album, lol.
https://twitter.com/AllMediaReviews/status/692932853924040704