Why Won't My Album Cover Art Display from My Apple Music Files on My NAS Anymore?
Answered
With my last update of my Apple Music files on my NAS I am no longer able to retrieve album cover art. I did a recent transfer of my Music folder from my MacBook Pro to my NAS device because it had been awhile since I had updated it and I had purchased several new albums over the past year. However, after deleting my old Apple Music files from the NAS and loading up the new ones I found I was no longer able to retrieve or see the album cover art. The music plays fine, but no album cover art. It worked fine before. Did something change that inhibits the album cover metadata from being transferred to my NAS now? I tried copying the files over several times with no luck. No album cover art is being displayed in my BluOS Controller. WHAT HAPPENED...WHAT HAS CHANGED????
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Official comment
Hello Keith,
This seems like it will take some more involved work to resolve. I've escalated your case to our support crew, who will investigate further.
Regards,
Sam R. -
So did your old files show the artwork in Bluesound?
You wrote "after deleting my old Apple Music files from the NAS and loading up the new ones" - does this mean you removed all your music from the NAS, then re-copied from the MacBook Pro?
Could the music that was re-copied now not include the artwork? It needs to be embedded in the music files or stored in a separate image file as per https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/200271926-Why-is-some-of-my-Album-Cover-Art-shown-as-missing- .
Did you perform a re-index? Or a "rebuild music index"? The latter is more complete IIRC.0 -
Hi Dan,
Thank you for your response. Let me see if I can answer your questions as asked...
Yes, I deleted my Apple Music file from my NAS drive in order to update it with a new file which had my more recent downloads which I had purchased from iTunes. (All of my Apple Music is purchased content or recorded from a CD) So no encrypted Apple Music files (not purchased from the iTunes Store) that I know will not always transfer to a NAS drive.
Yes, my update to the NAS drive was a new copy of my Apple Music file from my MacBook Pro.
Yes, my previous copies (several in the past) always displayed my album cover art when accessing with my BluOS app and my NAD M50.2.
Yes, I did re-index my library, but I did not try "rebuild music index" as I do not see that option in my Settings menu.
I have repeated the process several times, both re-loading my file to my NAS drive and re-indexing on my BluOS app, but the results are still the same. I contacted Apple and after several rounds of technical support they are not able to determine that there is any issue on their end and referred me back to BluOS, of course stating that they can't address unsupported platforms. :(
I can't help but suspect, as you have, that the cover art is somehow missing from the files, but I am not sure how to determine that. Also, that would suggest that something has changed recently that is not permitting the album cover metadata to transfer to my NAS drive, which Apple doesn't seem to know of any changes that have been made that would prevent that from happening.
The folder has two files in it. A typical blue folder icon labeled "Media" and second file icon with the iTunes logo labeled "Music Library". This is how this file has always presented in the past, so nothing seems out of the ordinary on the surface.
By the way there is second folder in my NAS drive music folder which has my personal music files which are old CD transfers and they play and display cover art just fine through my BluOS app and media player. So, this does seem to be something associated with the Apple Music files specifically.
That's about the extent of it as far as my research and knowledge goes, but this is definitely a new phenomena that is presenting with this most recent Apple Music file transfer to my NAS.
Hoping something here might spark an idea as this is frustrating to me :) Any wisdom or knowledge you can pass along is sincerely appreciated.
Best regards,
Keith
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I put together a simple tester for music files on Bluesound - see if this works for you: https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2015/06/29/bluesound-cover-art-widget/#widget
(note: I may remove that URL in future - I'll try to remember to update it)
When you choose your files, choose all the tracks in a folder including any image files in the folder. Or, drag the album folder onto the widget "area".
(BTW this is in beta so let me know if this doesn't work).0 -
Hi Dan,
I will carve out some time and try the Bliss cover art solution you proposed this weekend. I have 900 complete albums in my Apple Music folder so it will take awhile to get through it, but I'll at least test the waters and see if this works.
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Hi Dan,
Since we last spoke I have taken a few steps;
1. I did try out the Bliss solution you suggested and it did load up album cover art. However, the album cover art was of fairly poor quality and appeared to be pictures or photos of the relevant title's cover art from web postings. Some were people's pictures of their personal CDs or records. Not meant as a criticism, that just appears to be how the Bliss solution operates. It does indeed add some album cover art, but it is of relatively poor quality images.
2. I went back to Apple to see if they were aware of any changes that would have caused my files to transfer to my NETGEAR NAS drive without album cover art. They were not aware of any changes to the files or file structure that would have caused the cover art metadata not to transfer over. They suggested I check with NETGEAR to see if there could be a problem with my NAS drive and suggested a potential reformatting of the drive. NETGEAR ran a very thorough diagnostic and could not find anything wrong with the drive nor the files. They actually found the album cover art present in the files. So it would appear that the files are making it to my external NAS drive intact with the album cover art.
3. So, I'm kinda back to square one and wondering if something has changed in the BluOS program that is causing it to not be able to find or read where the album cover art metadata is in the Apple Music files. I have spent hours and hours with Apple, NETGEAR and the closest I've come to solving this mystery is based on the conversations with NETGEAR which would seem to indicate that the Apple Music files are transferring to my NAS drive intact.
So, here I am again at the BluOS doorstep wondering if the team there might have learned anything more about this situation or heard of similar experiences from other customers who are using Apple Music files stored on an external NAS drive for the purpose of being able to access and play them through their BluOS based players?
Any additional insight or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Something has to have changed as this was never a problem for me before this most recent file transfer and it seems to be something that has reared it's ugly head fairly recently.
Your time and review of this matter is sincerely appreciated.
Keith Brown
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Thanks for the feedback about the cover art - we'll follow up in our support email to work out what releases this occurred with.
If you ran the tests above after using bliss it might be that bliss has added the artwork - as I said, if you use the widget on the web page I linked to, it should say if the album has artwork.
If that's the case and the artwork has been added since, have you tried another re-index?
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Hi Dan,
I removed Bliss from my computer and removed all the files that had been created using Bliss. So the efforts I refer to in my most recent comments are after having done the experimentation with Bliss, then subsequently removing those files and removing the Bliss software from my MacBook Pro. In essence I went back to the drawing board to see if I could figure out how to get the Apple album cover art to be displayed.
The current files on my NAS drive are straight transfers from my MacBook Pro to my NETGEAR NAS drive with no Bliss (and re-indexed) and am back to the files not displaying any album cover art in my BluOS controller app.
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To be clear: if bliss changed files (e.g. embedded artwork), deleting bliss doesn't change that.
But I think I'm misunderstanding the fact that you are using fresh files again.0 -
Yes, Bliss added artwork. But I wasn't happy with the artwork that Bliss added. So, I deleted the files from my Mac and from my NAS drive that had been manipulated using Bliss. Then I removed the Bliss app from my Mac and started over by re-loading my Apple Music file on my MacBook Pro and then transferring that new file to my NAS drive.
The new files have the Apple cover art back and the NAS drive also appears to contain the correct cover art associated with this new clean files.
But now that everything was restored back to pre-Bliss status I'm also back to BluOS not displaying the cover art. So, for some reason, BluOS is not finding the cover art in the native Apple Music version of the files on my NAS drive.
So, short of using Bliss, I appear to be stuck with playing my Apple Music files on my BluOS player now without the album cover art displaying. Nobody seems to be able to explain what changed that has caused the BluOS app not to display the native Apple Music cover art metadata.
That's the question I wish we could answer so that a fix could be found rather than using Bliss. I just wasn't thrilled with the Bliss cover art. Probably being picky here, but there is a significant quality difference and since this all worked before I felt like there must have abbey some kind of change that might possibly be able to be corrected.
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Sorry, spellchecker messed up my last sentence in the prior post. What I intended to write was, "Probably being picky here, but there is a significant quality difference between the Bliss cover art and the native Apple Music cover art. And since BluOS worked before displaying the cover art from my NAS drive and the native Apple Music files I figured that something must have changed that could possibly be understood and corrected.
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Ok, Bluesound are best placed to comment on the indexing...
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OK, I thought this was Blusound. Is this an issue that you can refer to the appropriate Blusound technical people? I guess I assumed that since this forum is on the Bluesound website that I was dealing with Bluesound technicians.
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Keith,
I may be mistaken but having read through this discussion I cannot see any reference to you having performed a full *rebuild* of the index rather than a *re-index*. It's essential that you perform the former after having modified existing metadata rather than the latter which effectively just appends new items to the index.
In order to do a full rebuild you need to open the Bluesound Control App then navigate to :
> Help
> Diagnostics
> Rebuild Index
Note that since this operation will delete the current index and rebuild from scratch it could take an hour or more to complete depending on the size of your library.regards,
Mark0 -
Hi Mark,
Yes, I actually did a full re-build and re-indexing after re-loading the new files. Unfortunately, the results were the same and I still am not able to see the album cover art.
Is there anyone there that would be able to get on the phone to discuss this in more detail. Going back and forth in emails is very cumbersome and time consuming...and I think things might be better understood if we were able to talk over the phone.
Let me know if that is at all possible.
Thanks,
Keith
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Apologies if I mislead you into thinking I was "official"!
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