I've always used a duplicate of my music collection on my external usb hard drive, for adding music to the Kodi library on my Android TV box. But last week I decided to remove the music collection on my external usb hard drive and to use the music collection on my pc (samba shares).
Since I'm using a different folder structure on my pc for my music collection (three root folders/sources divided by genre: hardrock, house, pop) I need to use an Artist Information Folder on my Android TV Box, otherwise the extra artwork will not work correctly.
The Artist information Folder on my Android device, contains subfolders for each artist. Each artist folder, contains all available artist artwork: folder.jpg fanart.jpg, fanart1.jpg, fanart2.jpg etc, logo.png, clearart.png, landscape.jpg, banner.jpg. I don't use extrafanart folders anymore, just like the video library.
All available albumart (folder.jpg, discart.png, spine.jpg, back.jpg) is stored in music album folders on my pc. I have defined the extra artwork for the music library in an avancedsettings.xml. I haven't any artist art in the music folders on my pc, besides a folder.jpg for each artist. (needed for folder thumbnail preview in Windows)
After scanning my music collection into the music library, I ran into the following peculiar issue.
When I enable extrafanart in the library in the skin topmenu, I suddenly have extended artist art in the music folders on my pc. Logo.png, clearart.png, landscape.jpg, banner.jpg. I even have extrafanart folders containing: fanart0.jpg, fanart1.jpg, fanart2.jpg.
For a couple of artists, the wrong fanart is shown, although all my artist have the correct MusicBrainz Artist ID tag. I'm pretty sure that the artist art in the Artist Information Folder on my Android box is being ignored completely and all artist artwork is being downloaded from webservices instead.
Can you confirm and explain please, why the skin is downloading artist artwork to the music folders on my pc? (Artwork Beef is disabled and the same happens in MQ7 Matrix mod)
Here's a screenshot for the Pink Floyd folder on my pc. Check the date and time stamp 12-06-2021 16:07 for the extrafanart folder, banner.jpg, clearart.png, fanart.jpg, landscape.jpg and logo.png. Imho these images should not have been downloaded, since I'm using an Artist Information Folder on my Android TV Box.
EDIT 1: I think I found the culprit. The metadata and artwork module. I'll have to run some tests, to be sure.
EDIT 2: It was the metadata and artwork module, which downloaded artist fanart to my music folders. Question: is this module (skin dependency) still necessary, even though I prefer to download my artwork manually? What does this addon do extra, besides downloading artwork?