Aspect ratio request

[TRI-RETPAE]

Subject: Artwork Source Preference & Square Artwork Option?

Hi Paul,

I purchased SongKong yesterday and have been running it on a large library of mine. Overall it’s doing a good job with metadata, but I’ve run into an issue with artwork that I’m hoping you can clarify or possibly consider for a future update.

I use Discogs a lot for editions, catalogue numbers, and identifying pressings — it’s brilliant for that. But as you know, the artwork on Discogs is very inconsistent: lots of full jewel-case photos, poorly cropped scans, padding on the sides, shadows, non-square images, and low-quality user uploads.

After running FixSongs, I’ve ended up with roughly 10% of my library now having non-square artwork , even on albums where I previously had clean square covers that I had manually curated over time. For visual consistency within Apple Music this is extremely noticeable and quite frustrating.

My questions are:

1. Is there any way to preference certain artwork sources over others? For example, Bandcamp artwork is almost always clean, high-quality, and perfectly square, while Discogs artwork often isn’t.I’d like to be able to rank artwork sources or disable Discogs artwork entirely while still using Discogs for metadata.
2. Is there any setting I’ve missed that would prevent SongKong from embedding non-square artwork? (e.g., a “square-only” filter or aspect-ratio rule)
3. Is it possible to configure SongKong to only add artwork when none exists , rather than overwriting existing artwork unless the new artwork is demonstrably better?

Right now I’d honestly prefer no artwork to incorrectly shaped artwork, and I’d rather create a square version manually than end up with inconsistent aspect ratios throughout my collection.

If there’s a way to control or restrict artwork sources and aspect ratio that I missed, I’d appreciate any guidance.

I did spend quite a long time carefully trawling through all the setting I found before coming here . I may however have missed something

If not, I hope this is something that could be considered, as it would help users maintain a visually consistent library.

Thanks,

gus

[paultaylor]

@TRI-RETPAE

Is it possible to configure SongKong to only add artwork when none exists , rather than overwriting existing artwork unless the new artwork is demonstrably better?

Hi, yes - actually by default it only adds artwork if missing so I wonder if either you changed the setting or you didn’t store the artwork in the songs themselves just within album folder and are checking the results externally outside of SongKong, e.g your music player was using the folder.jpg file in your album folder but now SongKong has added artwork for the songs in this folder (because these songs do not have embedded artwork) your music player is preferring the embedded artwork over the folder.jpg

The two options are Save front cover art embedded within song file and Save front cover art to filesystem. The first option decides if the artwork is added to song files or not, second option optionally allows the artwork to be written to filesystem as well. Note artwork has to be added to the song files for it to be added to filesystem as well you cant only add to filesystem.

@TRI-RETPAE

Is there any setting I’ve missed that would prevent SongKong from embedding non-square artwork? (e.g., a “square-only” filter or aspect-ratio rule)

No yet, we do an issue raised for that - https://jthink.atlassian.net/browse/SONGKONG-893
I should get this issue done, what exactly would you like to see, what should the tolerance be?

@TRI-RETPAE

Is there any way to preference certain artwork sources over others? For example, Bandcamp artwork is almost always clean, high-quality, and perfectly square, while Discogs artwork often isn’t.I’d like to be able to rank artwork sources or disable Discogs artwork entirely while still using Discogs for metadata.

No, but I notice you dont mention MusicBrainz which is our primary source, and we also use Cover Art Archive, have you disabled MusicBrainz matching?