Make it easier to set the artist cover

[2br-2b]

Hello!

I'm trying to figure out how to set the artist cover, but despite looking at f6c428e#diff-cf22d2082ce771e04f0840127b3684772d2991195c576929e716ee92ec3badcb, I can't find out how. It would be helpful to document this!

(I'm putting this issue so that after eventually I find it, someone still sees this issue and can help out others)

[2br-2b]

Update: I found the code to do this

music/lib/BusinessLayer/ArtistBusinessLayer.php

Lines 212 to 232 in 83d572c

	/**
	* Find artists by name so that the characters forbidden on Windows file system are allowed to be
	* replaced with underscores. In Linux, '/' would be the only truly forbidden character in paths
	* but using characters forbidden in Windows might cause difficulties with interoperability.
	* Support also finding by the localized "Unknown artist" string.
	*/
	private function findAllByNameMatchingFilename(string $name, string $userId, IL10N $l10n) : array {
	// we want to make '_' match any forbidden character on Linux or Windows but '%' in the
	// search pattern should not be handled as a wildcard but as literal
	$name = \str_replace('%', '\%', $name);
	$potentialMatches = $this->findAllByName($name, $userId, MatchMode::Wildcards);
	$matches = \array_filter($potentialMatches, fn(Artist $artist) => self::filenameMatchesArtist($name, $artist, $l10n));
	if ($name == Artist::unknownNameString($l10n)) {
	$matches = \array_merge($matches, $this->findAllByName(null, $userId));
	}
	return $matches;
	}

You need to make a photo file in the music folder with the name of the artist.

It would be nice if this were automatically pulled from Last.FM, of if there were a way to set this by clicking the artist picture (or empty space) and select a file

[paulijar]

Last.fm used to provide artist images through their API but that feature was removed several years ago. Nowadays, the only possibility to get artist images from Last.fm would be to scrape them from their web site. I'm not sure but there's a good chance that this would be against their license conditions. And for the very least, it could break as soon as Last.fm does any changes to their web site.

Providing a button to manually upload the image would be a possible way to improve the usability here.

[ei8fdb]

Last.fm used to provide artist images through their API but that feature was removed several years ago. Nowadays, the only possibility to get artist images from Last.fm would be to scrape them from their web site. I'm not sure but there's a good chance that this would be against their license conditions. And for the very least, it could break as soon as Last.fm does any changes to their web site.

Providing a button to manually upload the image would be a possible way to improve the usability here.

Hello @paulijar,

Still using NC Music, and using Internet Radio streaming every. day. for. years. ❤️

@2br-2b How I've dealt with artist/album images is encoding it into the music file. I used Musicbrainz Picard to do it. It's a bit of a PITA (just to do it seperately) but it works.

Would that help you?

How other software achieves adding covers

Alternatively - manually uploading a file like @paulijar or fetching a file from a URL might be easier and more robust options than pulling from Last.fm.

I use Calibreweb and Audiobookserver almost as much as I use Nextcloud Music.

Here's how they dealt with it:

How Calibreweb does bookcovers

1. Internet search

• upload ebook file
• add minimum metadata - audiobook name, author, etc
• "search" multiple sources across the internet using metadata
• pick the "correct" cover

Quick screen recording:

calibreweb-cover-lookup.webm

2. Manual add cover image
Calibreweb has 2 nice options:

1. fetch a file from a URL

• upload ebook file
• put direct link to image file in field
• push fetch
• Calibreweb fetches file, "stores" it in the filesystem, and associates it with the ebook file

2. manually upload a file

• upload ebook file
• choose "upload image"
• file is associated with the ebook file

Quick screen recording:

calibreweb-upload-or-fetch-cover.webm

How Audiobookserver does book cover lookups

1. Internet search

• upload audiobook file
• add minimum metadata - audiobook name, author, etc
• "search" multiple sources across the internet using metadata
• pick the "correct" cover
• file is associated with audiobook file

Quick screen recording:

audiobookserver-cover-lookup.webm

2. Manual cover image upload
Audiobookserver has same options as Calibreweb, visually they're just a little bit different.

audiobookserver-upload-fetch-cover.webm

Thoughts?

@2br-2b what about those options? @paulijar if you were going to add manual upload, how much extra development would it take to add "fetch from URL" support?

As always thank you for Nextcloud Music.

[paulijar]

How I've dealt with artist/album images is encoding it into the music file. I used Musicbrainz Picard to do it. It's a bit of a PITA (just to do it seperately) but it works.

The Music app doesn't (yet) have the support to use artist images embedded in audio files, so this is not a solution for this specific problem as of today. We do have the support for the album images as you probably know. I have had a TODO comment in the code about this for a long time. But I have been wondering, do people actually have the embedded artist images on their audio files or would this be wasted effort. But if Picard can do that automatically, then maybe that's one vote for implementing the support.

@paulijar if you were going to add manual upload, how much extra development would it take to add "fetch from URL" support?

Difficult to tell for certain but obviously there are some synergies. Having two different options to upload the image requires some additional UI elements which may be the largest extra effort. Maybe I suck as a front-end developer but it seems to me that I always end up using way more time on small UI changes than I originally thought.

[kaffeeringe]

How about fetching artist pictures from Wiki-Commons?

[robshnup]

I have a normal music directory structure like that:

|_ Artist
 Artistname.jpg (e.g. "Snowy_White.jpg")
 |_ Disc1
 |_ Disc2
 |_ ...

Thus I have uploaded an image file named like the artist (with underscores) for every artist in his directory.
But when I click on the info button beside the artist name in NC-Music it complains that there wouldn't exist an appropriate artist imagefile anyway.

What is going wrong there?
Greetings

[paulijar]

@robshnup When matching the artist name to image name, the underscore is not matched to space. I guess it could be enabled quite easily but that doesn't happen as of today. So does it work for you if you renamed the image file as "Snowy White.jpg"? Note also that the name matching is case-sensitive.

[robshnup]

Hey thanks for clarifying.
But that doesn't work neither nor. Neither one word tags like "Abba.jpg" nor "Mark Knopfler.jpg" without underscore.
Last.fm finds the tags anyway - seems to be correct.
It's getting none artist images whatsoever.

[paulijar]

Does it find the images if you now scan for new content with occ music:scan? The finding is actually supposed to happen without the manual scan but maybe something has gone awry in this logic with some update.

[robshnup]

@paulijar That did the job - thanks for the hint!

But: that did the job only for one word artist images like "Abba.jpg"
After renaming my two word images like "Snowy_White.jpg" to "Snowy White.jpg" without underscore the files alre still not found!

This is NOT right! - My fault, lack of permissions!

But nevertheless: it would be very helpful the "underscore-version" being supported...

[paulijar]

I now allowed replacing the spaces with underscores when providing the artist image. This will be part of the next version, whenever that will be released.

[paulijar]

Music v2.4.1 is now released with the support for replacing spaces in artist image names with underscores.