[Mike952]

In my attempt to experiment with artwork, I fear I may have somehow embedded a piece of artwork somewhere in the kodi structure, and now I can't seem to correct it.  I am working with a modest collection of music (singles) as a practice set.  So, if necessary, I'm good with a 'do over'.  I manually edited tags using MP3Tag (better than Musicbrainz for this particular collection).  Tagging was done on my Windows-10 PC.  I dropped independent album art onto each tag and saved.  I transferred the collection to a music file (Tropic-Rock-Singles) on my MediaCenter (Linux 20.3, Kodi 19.3) using WINscp.  I scanned 'Tropic-Rock' into the music library as a 'Source'.

File structure:
     Music
          Tropic-Rock
               Tropic-Rock-Singles

Music plays fine and displayed artwork seemed correct.  However, I was not satisfied with how artwork was displayed during playback, and attempted to add and additional piece of artwork (as folder.jpg).  folder.jpg was added to the Tropic-Rock-Singles directory in an attempt to have folder.jpg artwork represent the entire collection, while still displaying each individual album cover during playback.  FAIL!  I now have come to understand that 'fullscreen music visualization' might be a better solution for what I'm attempting to accomplish.

As I have entered the music collection as singles, Kodi has loaded the contents of the Tropic-Rock-Singles in Music>Songs (i.e., there is no 'album').  If I play the music collection directly from Music>Songs with fullscreen music visualization, artwork and information are correctly displayed.  However, if I attempt to build a playlist and include items from the music collection, information is correct, but artwork reverts to folder.jpg.

My original file set on my Windows machine is fine.  I've copied a fresh set of tagged files to my MediaCenter, removed Tropic-Rock, cleaned the music library, restarted Kodi, re-scanned Tropic-Rock, and reloaded to music library.  The singles are listed under Music>Songs and play and display fine.  However, when I attempt to build a playlist, each of these files presents folder.jpg as the artwork.  Thought I had removed all traces of folder.jpg, but it seems that I have one (or more) embedded somewhere.

Any suggestions/insight greatly appreciated.. Again, if this is a complete 'do over' that's fine.

[jjd-uk]

Not sure about the answer to you specific query.

But a suggestion for your workflow as you mention doing your tagging on Windows, I'd suggest doing any experiments on there, since on Windows you can install multiple copies of Kodi then run them in Portable mode so they are independant of each other. This comes in useful when trying things out as you can keep one as Master install that reflects what's on you Linux PC, then use any additional installs for experiments so if anything goes really wrong with the experiment you can just deleted the Portable Data folder to restore to default, then you can copy the Portable Data from the Master to set everything up again ready for another experiment.

[Mike952]

Thanks jjd-uk.  Update...

Searched high and low unsuccessfully for source of folder.jpg.  In despiration, cleared Kodi cache, and song files are no longer pulling-in the rouge artwork file.  Kodi has stored single song files under the Music>Singles node.  These files all have correct associated artwork as assigned during tagging.  When played from Music>Singles, these files play and display artwork correctly in visualization mode.  However, when I attempt to include them into a playlist, no artwork is pulled-in.

I note that music files stored normally (as albums) play and display artwork fine in a playlist.  It seems to be only the 'singles' music files that do not transfer artwork.  I have tried building a playlist with only 'singles', with only 'albums', and with a mixture of 'singles' and 'albums'.  Results are consistent.  My 'singles' do not display (transfer?) tagged artwork into the playlist, but 'albums' do.  I'm wondering if there is a recommended 'best practice' for managing 'singles'.  Currently, as indicated in previous post, I have 'Tropic-Rock-Singles' as a subfile of 'Tropic-Rock'.  Perhaps it needs to be added to the Music Library as a unique source (i.e., its own unique file).

Thoughts?

[jjd-uk]

You could try seeing if it's still located in your thumbnails folder wirthin userdata and remove it if it's still there, might not be easy if there's a lot of images stored in there.

[Mike952]

I've managed to remove the original  'offending' artwork by removing a music library source, cleaning the library, and clearing cache.  During attempts to successfully build a playlist (that displays artwork) I managed to get another bit of artwork dominating my screen.  Found it in thumbnails and removed it.  This is maddening.  I'm certain I had this working in the early stages.  I can see associated artwork for all my music entries on the 'Music' page.  But whenever I move songs into a playlist no artwork is brought over.  I just see the 'placeholder' icon.

[Mike952]

Wow.  Everything has suddenly decided to work.  I have a functioning playlist WITH ART.  I'll mark this as solved, but I really wish I had better closure.  I have absolutely no clue what changed.