Wrong album art displayed when saving an album as a playlist in local library

[unclnis]

Operating System

Windows 10, Spotify for Windows 1.1.92.647.ga4397eb7

My Question or Issue

In some cases saving an album as a playlist in my local library - will result - the playlist showing the wrong album cover.
For example: using drag and drop I save  an album by Mark Knopfler - into a local folder called Rock. Attached is a screenshot showing the Playlist is saved with album art from the wrong album!

Those are the albums on which I've noticed this issue:

-Dire Straits - The Best Of Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler - Private Investigations

-Fun lovin' criminals - Bag of hits

-Lynyrd Skynyrd - The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd

-Cat Stevens - The Very Best Of Cat Stevens

-Delerium - Semantic Spaces

-Wicker Park (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture)

-Amelie from Montmartre (Original SoundTrack)

[AlejaR]

Hey @unclnis,

Thanks for posting on the Community and welcome 🙂

We took a closer look at this. It seems all the albums you listed (the ones in which you noticed this behavior) are compilations and not albums per se. Looks like this is an expected behavior: the app gives priority to the album cover where a song with a lot of plays is and not to the compilation one if they are the exact same song.

So, to better illustrate this, in the case of the first compilation, the song Telegraph Road is from the album Love Over Gold. If you remove that first song from the playlists in your library, you'll see the compilation album art. Apparently the app recognizes that the main track is the one from the album Love Over Gold, and that's why it shows the art of that particular album.

That being explained, we can suggest you to add a costumed playlist cover to avoid this behavior in the compilations you add to your Library. We really appreciate the time you took to write this to us; your feedback is important to us. We know you’d like to make this as an opportunity for Spotify to become an incredible app.
 
Hope this clears things up. If you have any questions or need anything else, the Community is here for you.

Take care!

[unclnis]

Hi @AlejaR,

Thanks for getting back to me quickly & for the suggestion about custom covers. I'm familiar with this option but prefer not to be micro-managing each album which doesn't show as expected.

I've carefully read your explanation about the apps logic on finding the album cover based on one of the songs in a compilation. Yet I believe this doesn't explain the issue I'm experiencing. The thing is - Not all of the albums to which I've pointed are compilations (according to spotify itself - see screenshots) - yet they still fetch incorrect album art.  Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Albums - not compilations:

-Delerium - Semantic Spaces

-Amelie from Montmartre (Original SoundTrack)

-Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto - Getz / Gilberto

[OscarDC]

Hey @unclnis,

Thank you for keeping in contact and for the info shared.

We've tried to replicate the issue on our end, but the cover shown matches with the album cover. To continue investigating your case, would you mind replicating the issue and sending a screenshot, or a video recording where we can see the different cover you're mentioning? This will give us a better look at the issue.

Also, could you check from a different device if the playlist keeps showing the wrong cover?

We'll be on the lookout.

[unclnis]

Hi, yes the issue is replicated both on Spotify for Windows and on Spotify Android

Here's a video recording of an example with Amelie - https://open.spotify.com/album/3QMOVTfwazGKLvyLq41pyV?si=-L8qYvc1S16McxBgnlCvrw

https://ufile.io/avry1tpf

[Eni]

Hey there @unclnis, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

We're afraid we couldn't open the video because of security reasons. Would you mind trying again? You can attach it to your next response by using the Insert Video option in the post editor. You can also upload it to Google Drive and share the link with us (make sure the video has the permissions for anyone to see it).

On another note, could you ask a friend or a relative to log in to their account in your PC to check if they can replicate this with their own account?

We'll be on the lookout.

[unclnis]

Hi,

hope this works for you https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HAKzqQOezJnRKzfHUvu5X4f2Jlkzo13o/view?usp=sharing

[AlejaR · Accepted solution]

Hey @unclnis,

Thanks for your reply in this thread and for the video recording, it really helped us 🙂

For starters, we could replicate the behavior we saw on the video. So, as we mentioned before, it looks like this is an expected behavior. In the specific case of the playlist you sent us, even though you can see in the app that Amelie From Montmartre (Original Soundtrack) is an album, it's in fact a compilation of songs from different albums. Most of the songs on this Soundtrack are by the same artist, except for Guilty - 2001 Remastered Version by George Shearing.

To illustrate this better, here's a list of the songs on this playlist which are from different albums:

1. Album: Cascade Street
   1. I've Never Been There
   2. Not That Simple
   3. Evening Party
2. Album: The Lighthouse
   1. The Drowned Girl
   2. On the Wire
3. Album: The Lighthouse - Everything Is Calm
   1. Dispute
4. Album: The Waltz Of The Monsters
   1. Banquet
   2. The Waltz Of The Monsters

All these songs are from the same author, but they're from different albums and make together the compilation playlist you Kindly sent to us. If you remove these 8 songs by Yann Tiersen plus the song Guilty - 2001 Remastered version from the playlist you created, you'll see the cover will change. Since there are songs from different albums on that compilation-soundtrack, the cover you see is the default four-tile album artwork instead.

If this is happening with other playlists you've created the same way, it's most likely this scenario we've explained.

We hope you found this helpful. Let us know if you need anything else. 
 

Cheers!

[APanjwani]

https://open.spotify.com/album/3lYh9EYOXTV2JxmpQ0nhV2?si=dgIB7W0BTwW6ViuNWzaUkQ

Spotify shows this as a double CD compilation released by Parlophone Records Ltd.

When I save this as a playlist in my library, why does Spotify change the album artwork to four-tile?  I understand that it is a compilation but I would prefer the album cover to remain intact as printed on the physical CD.  Is there a way around this without manually editing the cover?

[Alex]

Hi there @APanjwani,

Thanks for the post.

Currently, there is no way to manually select the original cover image of a compilation when saving music to your library. 

We've made sure to pass on your feedback about this to the right teams a Spotify.

Cheers.