It has recently started bothering me that for most of my favorite artists, whose albums I play a lot, there is always exactly the same one single artist photo that is always displayed for every track of every album by that artist. So I wondered whether there is a way to get a slideshow of artist photos, on Now Playing or on a Roon Display.
I saw that there is a way to do a slideshow of cover art (by dumping the images into the local album folder, which did seem to work for me). However, I don’t usually want multiple album covers, and didn’t find any solution to how to do a slideshow for the artist, although I did find at least one thread asking about this: Rotating Artist images on Now Playing screen.
I’ve come up with a clunky but I think effective workaround for this:
Get hold of the artist images you want (e.g., from fanart.tv)
Go to an album page by the artist you want to display a slideshow for on Now Playing or Display
Click Edit
Add a Primary Artist. e.g., if the artist is “SomeArtist”, add a new Primary Artist “SomeArtist1”
Go to the Artist Page for “SomeArtist1”; Edit; Add Image (choose one of the new images you want in the slideshow)
Rinse and repeat for “SomeArtist2”…“SomeArtistn”
Select All albums by the Artist
Add “SomeArtist1”…“SomeArtistn” as Primary Artist for all of those albums by that Artist
It looks a bit clunky on a “Now Playing” screen, with all the fake Artists listed (although I personally would take this clunkiness over always having the exact same one artist photo for ever and ever, amen…)
Otinkyad,
elegant solution to somebody else’s problem.
Thing is, Roon seems to substitute album art by a selection of their own. Now if that was at least contemporary to the album playing, that would be fine-ish. Getting the same old tired 65+ old men’s mugs for an early 70’s young dogs album is laughable.
Hello @Egbert_Braam – actually, I’m pretty sure that the image for the Roon-identified real Primary Artist can also be changed. Go to the Artist page for that artist, click Edit, and then you can choose a different image (you have to supply the image, of course). Not sure if that was what you were referring to.
Thanks for the idea. Is this process adding extra “fake” artist entries to the artist scroll? If so… i don’t think i can employ this technique.
I’ll have to try this on a few artists and see how much tedium I can take. I sometimes wish that I was a software coder…
@Egbert_Braam – Sure, doing this for all artists doesn’t seem at all tractable. I was only thinking of doing it for the handful of artists whose music I have a particular connection with and who have multiple albums that I really like.
@Mike_O_Neill – Not sure if I understood your question correctly. But the artist isn’t renamed (“The Beatles” is still there as the first Primary Artist) – it’s just that additional fake artists are added, as in the screenshot above. So Roon should still be able to interlink on “The Beatles”. Not sure whether the existence of the other fake artists could still mess things up…
This is certainly a very tedious method, though – I can’t imagine doing this for more than a few artists.
Nice work around @otinkyad! Now that the original album art is in the lower left, I rather like the artist photo on top. Like you, it’s hard to believe for some of the truly iconic bands out there, Roon only has one grainy black and white photo as an option. I’ve already uploaded some amazing concert shots as you suggest and it’s awesome. I just named my additional artists as TP1, TP2, etc to save space. Once they are saved once they can be used for other album but it speeds up the process.
Hopefully Roon makes this much easier in the future!
Glad this worked for you, @mark_barry1 ! I’d be interested to hear what some of the artists are for whom you have done this, if you care to share.
(In my case, so far, it’s The Beatles, and Emerson Lake & Palmer only. Probably will do this for Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Yes, Traffic, Queen, Oasis; maybe Coldplay, Radiohead, Cream, Blind Faith, Pink Floyd – but that will probably be about it).
Yesterday I added about 5 new photos per album. This kinda makes them run through 2-3 times per song. And I skip around songs a lot instead of listening to a whole album.
Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, Pink, Zeppelin, Jefferson Starship, Billy Joel, David Bowie, Boz Scaggs, Journey, Eagles, Cars, Rexha Bebe, L’ll Kim, Maya…I think that’s it for now.
@mark_barry1 – cool. Interesting that you are doing it by album. I did do that for one Beatles album initially. Then in Albums view (sorted by Artist) I selected all of the albums I knew to be by The Beatles, then Edit, then add all the fake artists to all of those albums. That felt easier for me than doing it one album at a time. YMMV…
EDIT: great Petty concert pic! Hmm, I’ll have to try concert pics as well – any particular source you used for those, or just the google…?
@otinkyad Just Google. The concert pics are by far my favorite. I have 3 ipads around the house I leave on and plugged in all the time. It’s like having a rotating art gallery
@mark_barry1 — Sorry for the delay in replying. I haven’t tried this in a long while. Will try to test this in the next couple and report back. Is it still not working for you?
