Where does the Album Art come from?

When I play music from either a data CD (ie MP3s) or a USB drive (again, MP3s), often I get album art. I know for an absolute fact that there is no artwork coming from the source (CD or USB). However, they are tagged properly, for the most part.

So is it looking to the cloud to get the artwork? Thru what connection does it do this? What database does it call? What TAG field is it looking at? The few that don't display correctly, if I know what cloud database, and which field, I can correct them.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by astrohip

When I play music from either a data CD (ie MP3s) or a USB drive (again, MP3s), often I get album art. I know for an absolute fact that there is no artwork coming from the source (CD or USB). However, they are tagged properly, for the most part.

So is it looking to the cloud to get the artwork? Thru what connection does it do this? What database does it call? What TAG field is it looking at? The few that don't display correctly, if I know what cloud database, and which field, I can correct them.

Thanks!

This is straight from the manual.

"Music recognition technology and related
data are provided by Gracenote®.
Gracenote is the industry standard in music recognition
technology and related content delivery.
For more information, please visit
www.gracenote.com."

JEG23

Thanks! I searched my online manual, but forgot that "Entertainment" is in a separate manual, that's not available electronically.

Off to visit Gracenote...

Oh, I noticed one weird bug already (I'm sure I'll discover more). Playing from the USB port, I did a search for a specific artist. It found 10 songs (the USB drive had about 5,000 MP3s across dozens of folders). When I played those ten songs, it displayed album art from other artists.

Example: "I've Seen All Good People" by YES, but the artwork was from a Frank Sinatra CD.

It was my first time playing around with this (only had the car about a week), and I was driving, so I didn't have a chance to explore. I'll have to see if there is any rhyme or reason to it. Perhaps it grabbed the art that went with the 1st track of that folder, even if the song being played was track 50. Or whatever.

But definitely a bug.

Originally Posted by astrohip

Thanks! I searched my online manual, but forgot that "Entertainment" is in a separate manual, that's not available electronically.

Off to visit Gracenote...

Gracenote doesn't allow commoners into their database. Even to look.

From their site:

Gracenote made the hard decision to remove the website search in favor of focusing the site and our web resources on our customers. Many millions of you will still use Gracenote’s recognition technology daily, on your desktop with products like iTunes and Winamp, on your mobile phones, in your cars and home entertainment systems. Thank you for understanding.

They consider their customers to be developers, not the end-user. And while they are strictly correct, it makes for a non user-friendly service in this day and age of open access.

Our new website was designed to meet the needs of our developers and those of content creators and owners – our customers.

I wanted to re-address your last question pertaining to making changes, espcially after you download music onto your internal HD in the car. Were you able to find if there was any way to make changes to say, unknown track, unknown artist?

The album art comes off your MP3 files, that are tagged properly. Not from Gracenote.

So is it looking to the cloud to get the artwork? Thru what connection does it do this? What database does it call? What TAG field is it looking at? The few that don't display correctly, if I know what cloud database, and which field, I can correct them.

mp3 metadata

Originally Posted by AutoUnion

The album art comes off your MP3 files, that are tagged properly. Not from Gracenote.

A vague answer that is not correct. My USB stick has nothing but MP3s on it, no JPGs at all, so it can't come from the USB stick. And, my Tags do NOT contain album art. Now if you are saying it uses the meta-data (AKA Tags) to retrieve the album art from somewhere, you are correct.

It was clear from my original post that I am aware it uses the TAG info (I referred to it). My question was along the lines of "where does it go to get the art". Gracenote seems to be the answer, according to JEG23 and the manual.

Originally Posted by Military BMW

I wanted to re-address your last question pertaining to making changes, espcially after you download music onto your internal HD in the car. Were you able to find if there was any way to make changes to say, unknown track, unknown artist?

I'm working on this as we speak.

As an aside, I am not d/l'ing to the internal HD. I have a 16GB USB stick that has more than enough music for now. So I don't see any reason to use the HD. Plus, it's a no-brainer to change the USB drive; I have no idea how to change the internal BMW HD. I'm sure I could learn, but who cares?

Some tracks show art, some don't. For some, it's obvious why not. Weird compilation names for the Album Name, that are probably not a real album, but a made-up name ("Best Hits of the Vietnam Era" ). But some I can't figure out why they don't display. I have listened to some albums that are very simply--one artist, one album name, both short & sweet, and spelled correctly. Why don't they display?

So I am running an experiment. I am taking a track that works, and playing with a variety of the Tags. I am going to see if I can figure out which ones are critical for info, and if things like spelling affect it. I'll copy this MP3 a dozen times, change the Tag info on each copy in some minor way, and see what happens.

I'll report back.

Originally Posted by astrohip

A vague answer that is not correct. My USB stick has nothing but MP3s on it, no JPGs at all, so it can't come from the USB stick. And, my Tags do NOT contain album art. Now if you are saying it uses the meta-data (AKA Tags) to retrieve the album art from somewhere, you are correct.

No, I don't think so. I right-clicked on files of many MP3s off my desktop and the album art is embedded into the meta-tag data. I have a bunch of bootleg music I got off some sketchy site online. When it's on a USB stick, the iDrive displays the custom cover art that the website put on the files. No way album art comes from gracenote.

When I plug in my iPhone via USB I get the album art...not not via Bluetooth.

Anyway to fix this ?

Originally Posted by Travel4Surf

When I plug in my iPhone via USB I get the album art...not not via Bluetooth.

Anyway to fix this ?

Nope. A2DP doesn't have that support

Originally Posted by AutoUnion

No, I don't think so. I right-clicked on files of many MP3s off my desktop and the album art is embedded into the meta-tag data. I have a bunch of bootleg music I got off some sketchy site online. When it's on a USB stick, the iDrive displays the custom cover art that the website put on the files. No way album art comes from gracenote.

I don't know how to be more clear. I am very familiar with tagging. I use MP3TAG, and ripped & tagged most of my 1500 CDs myself. I do NOT have the album art embedded in the Tags. I just dbl checked a few, and there is no album art embedded. None. Zilch. Nada.

Just because your MP3s have art doesn't mean mine do. And the display is coming from a BMW source, not directly from the MP3.

Originally Posted by AutoUnion

No, I don't think so. I right-clicked on files of many MP3s off my desktop and the album art is embedded into the meta-tag data. I have a bunch of bootleg music I got off some sketchy site online. When it's on a USB stick, the iDrive displays the custom cover art that the website put on the files. No way album art comes from gracenote.

Here's a pic that should disprove your point. I grabbed an old CD. This CD is a commercial release, no tags obviously, pure CDA, not MP3. I made sure to grab an old one.

Popped it in the CD player, and voila, up comes album art.

Where did the album cover come from?

Where did the album cover come from?

GRACENOTE

JEG23

Where did the album cover come from?

GRACENOTE

JEG23

For commercial CDs it comes from Grecenote.
For mp3s it comes from the tags, if you have them set and true for BT or USB connected devices. No cover art from mp3s on the harddrive even if they have the right tags (some will say they get it from the harddrive too, but I don't believe them).

Originally Posted by astrohip

I'm working on this as we speak.

As an aside, I am not d/l'ing to the internal HD. I have a 16GB USB stick that has more than enough music for now. So I don't see any reason to use the HD. Plus, it's a no-brainer to change the USB drive; I have no idea how to change the internal BMW HD. I'm sure I could learn, but who cares?

Some tracks show art, some don't. For some, it's obvious why not. Weird compilation names for the Album Name, that are probably not a real album, but a made-up name ("Best Hits of the Vietnam Era" ). But some I can't figure out why they don't display. I have listened to some albums that are very simply--one artist, one album name, both short & sweet, and spelled correctly. Why don't they display?

So I am running an experiment. I am taking a track that works, and playing with a variety of the Tags. I am going to see if I can figure out which ones are critical for info, and if things like spelling affect it. I'll copy this MP3 a dozen times, change the Tag info on each copy in some minor way, and see what happens.

I'll report back.

Astrohip, thanks. You're probably still working on it. I just wanted to identify to everyone my minor (I say minor because its not a big deal, but it would just be a real huge inconvenience) concern. The reason this is an issue for me is this: If I have compilation CDs that Gracenote is not picking up on, then if I decide to store it in the internal HD, it will title it Unknown Artist, Unknown track. I already did that for one album, so I'm cautious to do that again until this gets figured out. If I do it for another unknown CD, then I could possibly end up having several Unknown Artist, Unknown Track for more than one album. If I wanted to play a specific album but I didn't have that information available on display, then basically I would have to listen to each unknown album to determine which one I want to listen to. I know. For most people, this is common sense stuff and shouldn't need any explanation. I wanted to ensure that if there was someone out there in the community that didn't understand why this thread was important or of relevance, they could understand from this explanation. Especially for non-audiophile people or non-techy people. Thanks.

Originally Posted by gicamuci

For commercial CDs it comes from Grecenote.
For mp3s it comes from the tags, if you have them set and true for BT or USB connected devices.

This poor horse is being flogged beyond redemption.

For MP3s, it uses the info in the Tags to then go online via cell to Gracenote, where it finds the album art. Why would you think for commercial CDs it would use Gracenote, but it wouldn't for an MP3? That doesn't even begin to make sense.

Originally Posted by Military BMW

Astrohip, thanks. You're probably still working on it. I just wanted to identify to everyone my minor (I say minor because its not a big deal, but it would just be a real huge inconvenience) concern.

I know it's minor, to you and I both, but it's still one of those things my mind refuses to just let go. I'm going to play with those Tags until I figure out which ones it uses, and what affect minor changes have (like misspellings).

I'm away for the weekend (although with my car), so probably won't get around to this for a few days.

I use an iPod and all my music files in iTunes have the album art associated with each file and it displays on the iDrive Screen when plugged via USB.

Originally Posted by Decboy

I use an iPod and all my music files in iTunes have the album art associated with each file and it displays on the iDrive Screen when plugged via USB.

If I'm understanding your post correctly, you have the album art ON YOUR IPOD. And it displays.

Want to try an experiment?

1) Pick any song, remove the JPG from your iPod, and the plug it back in and see what happens. I'm curious...

2) Pick any song, change the JPG to some other album cover, then play that song and see what displays.

Thanks.

I just purchased a 2013 F11 and have been copying my music libary via a USB stick onto the internal storage. I had assumed that it was using a local Gracenote database to display album art but after running some tests, I'm not so sure that Gracenote is used for artwork with music on the internal storage or USB storage.

I'm using mp3tag to inspect my mp3 files and the artwork metadata in particular. I found some mp3 files that had the cover art but the art was not being displayed by the BMW either from the USB stick or internal storage. After running some test, I think that the issue is the size of the image. Some recent music I downloaded had cover art with an image size of 1605x1490 that was not being displayed in the car. When I replaced the cover art metadata with mp3tag, to a smaller 300x300 image the car would now display the cover art.

Technically, it makes no sense to me that they would use Gracenote for CD info but not mp3 files but I'm beginning to believe that's the case. Maybe BMW only licensed Gracenote for use with CD's figuring they could save money but not also paying to license it for use with mp3's.

Originally Posted by gstephens

I just purchased a 2013 F11 and have been copying my music libary via a USB stick onto the internal storage. I had assumed that it was using a local Gracenote database to display album art but after running some tests, I'm not so sure that Gracenote is used for artwork with music on the internal storage or USB storage.

Technically, it makes no sense to me that they would use Gracenote for CD info but not mp3 files but I'm beginning to believe that's the case. Maybe BMW only licensed Gracenote for use with CD's figuring they could save money but not also paying to license it for use with mp3's.

If you read my posts above, you will see I disproved this. I absolutely do not have album art or JPGs in my MP3s. And when I play them from a data CD or USB stick, it displays the art. So it MUST get it from somewhere--internal or external I don't know, but not from the MP3. I am very familiar with MP3TAG and how to use it, trust me when I say I don't have artwork TAG'ed.

However, I can't confirm the opposite. I intend to play around and see if I can force artwork from the MP3 Tag. Now that the holidays are over I should have some time to try this.

You're right, I've just finished some more tests and they are using both the MP3 metadata and gracenote.

As astrohip noted, I also have many files without mp3 artwork that are displaying the album art so that must be coming from Gracenote.