Music Cover Artwork Order

[wagszilla]

I like to group single/straggler songs together into 1 cohesive album for the sake of ease of navigation, ie: "The Rolling Stones - Singles".

For some reason, Music will sync these to my iPhone in random orders sometimes. For example, Track 7 of "The Rolling Stones - Singles" album will be the cover artwork but in others like "Metallica - Singles", Track 1 will be the cover artwork (which is what I want).

Has anyone figured out why Music sorts things this way?

I will try to do an A/B comparison later but this has popped up several times now and it seems random tbh.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Not sure I'm understanding what you are asking so I'll guess at it.

It reads like maybe you've got unique cover art for the miscellaneous tracks you have that don't belong to a single album. If you name these with the SAME album name, Music/iTunes seems to almost randomly pick one of the songs art for ALL of the songs in that "album." For example, if a bunch of miscellaneous songs in my library were all gathered together and named "Albumless" or "Orphans" in the album field, even if they all have their own art/image, one of the song's cover art will seem to dominate all music from the Albumless or Orphans album. Music/iTunes doesn't seem to use the image associated with each single if it gets ONE of them in memory or stored as the album art for that "big" album of misc. tracks.

A remedy that will work is NOT grouping all these as one big "catch all" album but instead copy up to each song's title into the album field too, making it a one track "album." Then, Music/iTunes will use the art associated with that 1-track "album." This will really jack up the number of albums in your collection but it will make whatever art you have associated with each single be the art that shows when that single plays.

That may or may not be what you are asking about, but it seems that Album name thoroughly influences album art... much more so than the actual image art attached to each song.

Note also that the random choice doesn't seem to stick forever. At times, one of the other single’s art will take over and be the art for all of the singles for a while... unless you use the above "hack" to make Music see each misc. track as its own album.

 

[wagszilla]

You are interpreting me correctly.

What is confusing me is I don’t know the criteria that Music/iTunes uses for determining what the “Master Cover Image” would be.

In my logic, the cover artwork for Track 1 should be the “Master Cover Image” for my album of collected singles. This artwork is what should appear in Music/iTunes on either my Mac or my iPhone and if I switch to Track 2 onwards, the cover artwork should only change in the “Now Playing” screen. This is essentially how Music/iTunes behaves in most scenarios which is why this is my expectation.

See examples below

You will see (1) Track 1’s cover is the “Master Artwork Cover” and (2) how the cover artwork only changes in the “Now Playing” section.

Now contrast the above with this:

In both cases, a different album cover is used as the “Master Cover Image” and not Track 1. In the first case it is Track 5 (“I Disappear”) and in the second case it is Track 6 (“Wild Horses”).

It isn’t pulling in the oldest chronological year or the first track, so I’m confused by the logic here. It could just be a glitch of some sort.

I should also note that I am only having this issue on iPhone and not on my Mac.

I still haven’t had time to do an A:B comparison since my original post but I appreciate the reply.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

My immediate guess is that the Album name (tag) for the Manson Singles is Single-MM while the album name for the Stones and Metallica album is both the identical "Singles"

I've seen this first hand with countless albums titled "Greatest Hits" and similar. Each Album name must be unique if you want that albums image to consistently show for that album. Else, if 2 different albums have the same names, it seems that cover art from the other album will sometimes show for the wrong album.

If the guess is right, rename The Rolling Stones album tag from Singles to Rolling Stones Singles or Singles RS and rename Metallicas album called Singles to Metallica Singles or Singles Me. And that should fix your problem. I usually just put the artist name in common names like Singles, The Singles, Greatest Hits, etc.

Album title rules what image shows. When multiple songs seem to be on the same album (name), you may sometimes get the album cover you expect and other times get somebody else's album cover.

 

[wagszilla]

I've seen this first hand with countless albums titled "Greatest Hits" and similar. Each Album name must be unique if you want that albums image to consistently show for that album. Else, if 2 different albums have the same names, it seems that cover art from the other album will sometimes show for the wrong album.

This is partially why I named them "The Stones - Singles", "Metallica - Singles", etc. That and I didn't want to get confused myself.

After quick investigation, Metallica didn't have an Album Artist field applied to any of the tracks but I touched up Metallica, The Rolling Stones, and some others and the issue not only persisted but was made worse.

I'll do a deeper dive tomorrow with fresh eyes.