Below is my take on this issue - this is a guide I am working on to address this and a few other issues. It is not complete yet but may be helpful to you. Please feel free to suggest edits / corrections!
Library and Artwork
If you want to get the best experience from Volumio then it is important that you organise you library and artwork correctly. This guide aims to identify the key areas that need to be considered to make sure that this happens. You cannot expect Volumio to organise and sort you collection if you donāt take care of a few housekeeping jobs first. The following guide is a recommendation on how to achieve this based on my experience and understanding of how Volumio works;
Library
The simplest (and in my opinion best) way to organise your library is to build it with a directory structure like;
āYourLibrary/Name of AlbumArtist/Name of Album/Songsā
In other words, your library should consist of a source (a drive or folder containing your library) which is arranged with separate folders for each AlbumArtist. Please note that this is AlbumArtist - not Artist. Whatās the difference? AlbumArtist is a description of who the album is attributed to. It may contain tracks that include other Artists - typically AlbumArtist is āArtist Xā but it may also include tracks where the Artist is āArtist X with Artist Yā or āArtist X feat. Artist Yā. This information is stored in the ātagsā for each song and Volumio uses these tags to organise your library. The tags can be edited using a variety of software packages (I use MP3tag) - Google is your friend here! In these cases the AlbumArtist should be set to āArtistXā and the Artist set accordingly.
Inside every AlbumArtist folder there should be separate folders for each album which should contain the tracks and any artwork (see below).
What about āCompilationā type albums?
A Compilation album is an album containing tracks by disparate artists - in other words there is no single āAlbumArtistā for the whole album. It is a collection of songs by different artists. In this case, you should set the AlbumArtist tag to be āVarious Artistsā or something similar. You can use another descriptor if you want (VA or Various etcā¦). What ever you decide to use make sure that Volumio understands that the descriptor you use is an indication of a "compilationā type album. You can set this by adding the descriptor used within āCompilation Metadata Fieldsā if it is not already there (in the āSettingsā, āMy Musicā screen). Place each of these albums within a folder named āVarious Artistsā (or whatever descriptor you decide to use). The structure should look like
āYourlibrary/Various Artists/Name of Album/Songsā
Artwork
Below is a summary of how Volumio uses albumart:
Volumio displays artwork for Artists and Albums on various pages (screens). Having the correct artwork for Artists and Albums enhances the visual display on pages significantly and makes it easy to scan the page visually and find the album you want.
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Volumio will look for album artwork to display from within the album folder for each album (* See below for recognised file names). If it finds a relevant artwork file it will copy it to the Volumio artwork folder (/data/albumart/folder/path to album) for future use.
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If it fails to find artwork AND you have āShow Embedded Albumartā ON (in āSettingsā, āMy Musicā, āAlbum Art Settingsā) it will then look for embedded artwork in the song files. If it finds artwork it will copy it to the artwork metadata folder (/data/artwork/metadata/path to album).
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If that fails AND you have āWeb Album Artā ON (in āSettingsā, āMy Musicā, āAlbum Art Settingsā) it will attempt to download the album cover from the internet and save a copy to the albumart web folder (/data/albumart/web/path to album). You can set the resolution of downloaded artwork from the āSettingsā, āMy Musicā screen. The available options are;
Small
Medium
Large
Extra-large
Mega
Which size works best will be dictated by the size of screen used to run the Volumio application. If you use a small mobile phone or tablet then the smaller sizes will be adequate but if you use a large computer or TV screen then you will want to use āExtra-largeā or even āMegaā.
- Album art is normally stored as āfolder.jpgā within the album folder but Volumio will search for files with any of the following names and use them;
ācoverart.jpgā,
āalbumart.jpgā,
ācoverart.pngā,
āalbumart.pngā,
ācover.JPGā,
āCover.JPGā,
āfolder.JPGā,
āFolder.JPGā,
ācover.PNGā,
āCover.PNGā,
āfolder.PNGā,
āFolder.PNGā,
ācover.jpgā,
āCover.jpgā,
āfolder.jpgā,
āFolder.jpgā,
ācover.pngā,
āCover.pngā,
āfolder.pngā,
āFolder.pngā