Album art - by track or by folder/album?

[dhs910]

My apologies if this is a faq (I have searched).

Like most people, I store my music by album (I do store most classical music by work). Album art can be embedded in each track, but can also be added to the folder using a well known name (dbpoweramp used Folder) that most players will find and utilize. Dbpoweramp makes it easy to do either or both. I play back music using a phone or tablet app, and occasionally on my computer using a web interface specific to my NAS music server.

My question is: are there advantages to embedding the album art in the track, or is it just wasted space? I could only think of 3:
1) You can more easily embed multiple images (but then the player app has to display them).
2) For playlists where the player isn't smart enough to grab the per folder album art from the folder where the track is actually stored.
3) For "mixtapes" where you have copied tracks to a usb stick or the equivalent for playback in a portable player.

For those dbpoweramp users who intentionally embed the artwork in the track metadata, are there other reasons to do so?

Thanks,
Doug

[Spoon]

Re: Album art - by track or by folder/album?

Certain players, or streamers will only read embedded art, not folder.jpg

[garym]

Re: Album art - by track or by folder/album?

for me the only advantage is *3 (mixtapes). Accordingly, I use only a single "cover.jpg" file in each album subdiretory. If I make a "mixtape" or create a set of lossy files for my iPhone, I simply have the conversion process embed a copy of the artwork in each file at the time of conversion.

[dhs910]

Re: Album art - by track or by folder/album?

*3 is it for me too, and I can always use an on-the-fly converter to grab the album art if desired. My car stereo uses a b/w low res led display, so album art would be pointless there.

I haven't encountered any player apps that weren't able to grab the album art from the track's source directory, and would simply switch apps if that were the case. This is probably more likely to occur with free apps, and I always pay for my useful apps/programs (like dbpa).

The multiple image thing would be nice to be able to view digital liner notes, for example, but content owners and providers haven't seen fit to make this data available online even for boxed sets, and I'm too lazy to scan it all in, especially since there's no (longer?) a way to share it easily. This might also be a chicken-egg problem, since few player apps support multiple images or even full display of tag data.

Any other thoughts appreciated.
Doug