[winter.zed]

Some of my album artwork was not showing in id8 even after I spent hours with the mp3tag app making sure they are all there.

After some experimenting I found that a max pixel size under 1000 for the longest edge (I used 950) for the artwork will always work. Previously I had some artwork at 1200 pixels - for whatever reason. (some legit, some not...)

Also - I found that changing the volume label of the USB device would force a re-index and that is the only way the new art will come up. Otherwise Idrive will just use the cached metadata and not show the resized artwork.

Hope this saves some time and frustration for somebody

[Crazy One]

Do you know how to get artwork on radio stations?
Out of 30 stations only 1 one is showing artwork for the station logo and the cd cover when playing. The rest are just bmw geometric graphics.
In Mercedes all the stations have graphics so it is not the station fault.

[winter.zed]

Originally Posted by Crazy One

Do you know how to get artwork on radio stations?
Out of 30 stations only 1 one is showing artwork for the station logo and the cd cover when playing. The rest are just bmw geometric graphics.
In Mercedes all the stations have graphics so it is not the station fault.

I don't. It seems to depend on the head unit. In my Boxster I don't get any icons for radio stations, in my previous Jetta, which was 2 years older - I did get a few...
Same with the BMW. I get some.

[omera60]

Originally Posted by winter.zed

Some of my album artwork was not showing in id8 even after I spent hours with the mp3tag app making sure they are all there.

After some experimenting I found that a max pixel size under 1000 for the longest edge (I used 950) for the artwork will always work. Previously I had some artwork at 1200 pixels - for whatever reason. (some legit, some not...)

Also - I found that changing the volume label of the USB device would force a re-index and that is the only way the new art will come up. Otherwise Idrive will just use the cached metadata and not show the resized artwork.

Hope this saves some time and frustration for somebody

I am also trying to organize a “Music Collection” replacement USB for ID8. What is the largest size it will display? I have 1000x1000 but it can still be blurry when displayed on the media player full screen. FYI I haven’t gotten my car yet just tried on different ID8 cars like G20LCI or G70 etc, so anytime I try something I have to find a car of a friend or go to the dealer to try it with

[winter.zed]

Originally Posted by omera60

I am also trying to organize a “Music Collection” replacement USB for ID8. What is the largest size it will display? I have 1000x1000 but it can still be blurry when displayed on the media player full screen.

I went from 1200 straight down to 1000 - and that worked. Have not tried anything between. Did not have much time to spend to find exact limit.
I never run the media player full screen - so not an issue.
An album artwork provides no "useful information" and I just like to see as many things as possible on that nice big screen

[omera60]

Originally Posted by winter.zed

I went from 1200 straight down to 1000 - and that worked. Have not tried anything between. Did not have much time to spend to find exact limit.
I never run the media player full screen - so not an issue.
An album artwork provides no "useful information" and I just like to see as many things as possible on that nice big screen

Thanks, I will try to resize them a little higher but below 1200. Maybe 1024? I will report back.

[SimSimma240i]

Originally Posted by winter.zed

Some of my album artwork was not showing in id8 even after I spent hours with the mp3tag app making sure they are all there.

After some experimenting I found that a max pixel size under 1000 for the longest edge (I used 950) for the artwork will always work. Previously I had some artwork at 1200 pixels - for whatever reason. (some legit, some not...)

Also - I found that changing the volume label of the USB device would force a re-index and that is the only way the new art will come up. Otherwise Idrive will just use the cached metadata and not show the resized artwork.

Hope this saves some time and frustration for somebody

I wanted to say thank you for this information.

I attempted to update the album art for about 30 songs, 3 times (using 1500 pixels, 900 pixels, 500 pixels) and was unsuccessful each time.

Tried different pixels and my BMW wouldn’t recognize any changes. (I used Windows Media Player to update the album art - no other software)

I finally read your post and tried to rename the USB key. That seems to have done the trick. I ended up using 1000 pixels to be safe.

Thanks again as it took me a couple hours making new photos/updating the usb and going in and out of the car.

Appreciate it 👍

[KevinC]

Pro tip: For any of you guys with a Mac and your music stored in iTunes, I highly recommend a nice little cheap ($5 IIRC) app in the App Store called Export for iTunes. It will resize your artwork as well as do a ton of other useful stuff, like exporting playlists.

[Spider-Dan]

Sorry for the thread gravedigging.

I was having a similar issue updating album art metadata on my 2024 i4 (iDrive 8.5) and found this thread. I registered so I can provide some updates for anyone else that has a similar issue.

I can't speak for other BMW models, but on the i4 with iDrive 8.5, I can confirm that changing the volume label on the USB drive DID NOT work; iDrive appears to track drives by the internal disk ID. Another suggestion I've seen - insert 5 different USB drives with only 1 file each to "push" the old drive out of the cache - didn't work, either. But what did work was to wipe my original drive, put only one file on, plug it in and allow iDrive to update/rescan (you can see it removing the old song entries from the cache), then wipe it again and re-add all the original songs. This successfully forced a rescan.

It's worth mentioning that there does still seem to be a 1000x1000 pixel limit on album art.

[winter.zed]

Originally Posted by Spider-Dan

I can confirm that changing the volume label on the USB drive DID NOT work; iDrive appears to track drives by the internal disk ID.

Possible different outcome because of iDrive 8.5 vs. iDrive 8. Will never find out - my car will be stuck "forever" on v8.