Sonos no longer recognizing folder.jpg for cover art?


Userlevel 2
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After the most recent upgrade to Sonos 13.4 (S2), I don’t see much cover art in the Sonos controller. More precisely, it seems that I see cover art if it is embedded into the MP3 file, but not if the cover art in a separate file called folder.jpg. In my collection, most albums have a folder.jpg, and only a minority of albums have embedded cover art. There are two reasons for this:

  • Albums that originally had on CD, cassette or vinyl.
  • For several years, Sonos was not able to display cover art that was embedded into the MP3 files that I bought, so I had to extract them to folder.jpg and remove them from the MP3 file.

Is any one else seeing this? Or is this just some accident on my system?

 


126 replies

Userlevel 7
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Works find on the few folders  have with just folder.jpg

 

I use MP3Tag to update all my Album art to decent quality images, mainly obtained from Albumartexchange.  It’s take some time to refresh the lot, a year or two!

 

I have had times when the artwork went awol, normally after a system update.  Easily solved in my case by unplugging all my sonos kit, restarting my router and then after 10mins plugging back in all my Sonos kit.

Userlevel 7
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I just put some songs from my music library up to be played and I’m seeing no album art too. All my covers are saved as folder.jpg and have been working fine up to now.

Tried restarting the controller and running a fresh library index with no change.

Here are some artwork considerations.

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I unplugged all players. (But not the router, that makes no sense). I plugged them in again. I updated the music index. No change. Still no cover art for albums where there is a single folder.jpg in the folder (as stated in the article buzz linked to).

So it seems like Sonos broke something. These are my zones:

A: 2 Play3 + 1 Sub (Gen one). One of the Play3 is connected with network cable to the router.

B: Port.

C: Two Sonos Five

D: Two Sonos One SL

E: Two Play1.

 

 

 

One issue I have noticed is that the App is very impatient. If the artwork is not returned promptly, the controller gives up. I can’t define “prompt” and I don’t know if the delay is caused by bumbling inside the App, the device running the App, or out on the network. WiFi interference could be a contributor, but this leaves tracks in a diagnostic.

Userlevel 7
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Router reboot is valid.  If the router has got is IP addressing in a mess then it could be slow in giving info to the Sonos products and as i found when using extenders the past, Sonos plays music but gives up on providing the artwork.  Embeded artwork seems to be a simpler task to display, I presume as it is delivered as part of the playing file.  The folder.jpg needs to be matched with the file playing and it seems if the network is poor Sonos gives up on this if it exceed a certain response time.  These are my assumptions when I had the same issues. I was using powerplugs at the time, now I have Ethernet connectivity it rarely becomes an issue.

I have given up on managing playlists by the Sonos App, not only because of the Album artwork flaws but also because of the poor playlist management features. Best alternative I found so far was to manage all tracks in the Apple Music App and use the AirPlay2 streaming. Artwork stored in the track metadata are nicely displayed by the Sonos App.

 
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OK, so now I see cover art in the queue on my desktop controller for most of the tracks - but not all. Now playing is empty. The queue is one single imported playlist. (I basically only use imported playlists, as I have a program that makes a random selection of album every day.) There is a folder.jpg in the folder for the playlist; no embedded cover art.

I also had an imported playlist open in the browser - no cover art.

Note that Sonos had been idle for the last six hours or so.

I also noticed that on the embedded ones, the art is kind of slow to turn up, like 15-20 seconds after the upgrade. It used be faster.

Userlevel 7
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I’d still recommend a router re-boot.  If the router has invalid or duplicate ip addresses stored it will slow down your lan and delivery of info to Sonos units.  I found that after a Sonos update especially, as each speaker is restarted as part of the update and the router may no have refreshed the Ip addresses properly.

Userlevel 2
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OK, I give in. I downloaded and installed new firmware for the routers. Cover art for folder.jpg appeared instantly in the Sonos player. Interesting enough, it still takes some time for the cover art to appear with the album that has the cover art embedded.

 

Thanks for being persistent in leading me in the right direction!

Your final  comment aligns with my existing understanding, which is that the folder.jpg route is quicker to load than art embedded in each file, all otber things being equal. 

Userlevel 7
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Still no music library cover art here. No problems with Amazon’s art.

I did reboot the file server. No change.

Power cycled my Beam (but not Sub or Surrounds.) No change.

Power cycled a single One SL. No change.

Restarted Controller, on Android tablet. No change.

Rebooting all Sonos is a massive PITA as many power cords are buried so I’m skipping that for now.

Spouse is using the network so a router reboot is out for a few hours, I’ll try that tonight.

Diagnostic if that helps anything: 1545282987

It may pay to keep track of the “Associated Product” from About My System. Occasionally, check this player’s network connection for long PING times and dropped packets. If this player is struggling, the artwork fetch might time out.

Userlevel 7
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Rebooting router didn’t get the album art back.

Dropping the music library, re-indexing and re-adding did nothing.

I hope Support can see something in the diagnostic I sent in.

Userlevel 1
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I am in the same boat. Having just purged all embedded artwork from my library (due to its inability to load faster than a particularly arthritic sloth) to replace with a folder.jpg model, I thought I finally had reliable cover art loading. And I did - until the latest update. Now, no matter what I try I get no cover art from local library sources. I’ve done the power cycle, I’ve rebooted the router, I’ve investigated wireless channel interference, yet the only thing that has changed on my setup is the most recent Sonos update. I’ll be following this thread with interest (and general annoyance) to see what feedback is received.

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The update from my corner is that while I did get back the cover art after rebooting the router, the effect only lasted for a few hours. Now I’m back on the situation where folder.jpg does not display, while embedded ones do, if with some delay.

I should add that I have fixed IP addresses for all Sonos devices. Only one of them is directly connected to the router, and that is by cable. None is connected by WiFi.

Userlevel 1
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The update from my corner is that while I did get back the cover art after rebooting the router, the effect only lasted for a few hours. Now I’m back on the situation where folder.jpg does not display, while embedded ones do, if with some delay.

I should add that I have fixed IP addresses for all Sonos devices. Only one of them is directly connected to the router, and that is by cable. None is connected by WiFi.

It does indeed sound like we are in the same position, the only difference being I have a Boost wired into the network and not a speaker. Hopefully someone from Sonos will be able to provide some more clarity on the situation :tired_face:

Hello together,

I have the same problem. No album covers (folder.jpg in the corresponding directories on my Synology) have been displayed since the last Sonos update.
Restarts and other nonsense did not help. Apparently, Sonos made another bug here.
Please pass it on to the developers and fix it as soon as possible.

Yep, same problem here.

folder.jpg not showing on either the Windows desktop controller or the Android app.

Just started very recently.

It took me a while to work out that albums with embedded art versus just a folder.jpg were what was making art visible or not :frowning2:

 

Userlevel 7
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Same here: no album covers to be seen on iPhone XS Max (iOS 15.1) and Windows 11 PC (Sonos S2, 13.4).

Diagnostic number: 1139511221

Userlevel 2
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And now, without restarting anything, I suddenly see the cover art again. What I did do was to the music from from one zone to another as I went into that room and then I moved the music back when I was done. Exactly when the cover art started to appear, I don’t know.

It seems quite obvious that Sonos made some changes, but it is not as simple as that they are ignoring folder.jpg, but something more subtle. Maybe threshold for when to display or ignore has changed?

 

Userlevel 1
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I'm not entirely sure why this has been marked as answered, or why the answer that has been flagged is even helpful.....

Userlevel 2
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Nor am I. I’m also puzzled that someone else than me (since I started the thread) can mark something as the best answer. I guess that Spunk accidently pressed the wrong button. Since the issue is by no means resolved, is there any chance that you can revert your action?

Userlevel 7
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I'm not entirely sure why this has been marked as answered, or why the answer that has been flagged is even helpful.....

I've asked the moderators to remove this Best Answer.

I guess that Spunk accidently pressed the wrong button.

No, it wasn’t me. And I would be very surprised if someone other than the thread starter or a moderator could do that.

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