yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] davidebanks:
On my pc i noticed that when i changed my region to US and then open up Zune, the software seemed to have changed and added a whole host of new features. as a test I selected an album (Muse resistance. a UK band) and found that when my region was set to UK, that the Artist never appeared in the PC software Zune player! When i switched it to US, and play the same album, the Artist background appeared!!! when i get the time, im going to use the Zune Reset Tool, Keep PC in US location, then get Zune to the collection and then i will try syncing with my WP7 Phone and see if that makes a difference.....ive no doubt that the US market place is far better... :(
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] greener88:
I own a Zune HD, so I've been using the zune software for some time now. I have always had my pc location set to US so that the extra features such as marketplace show up in the software as you said. My Zune HD has always synced artist pics, bio, etc no problem, however, my WP7 will not sync any artist info/pics even with my PC location set to the US.

I think this feature is designed to only be available to markets where the music marketplace is available. So my guess is it is either determined by what location your Windows Live ID is set to, or, more likely what carrier you are with.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] davidebanks:
WELL WELL WELL, it looks like we are FINALLY getting somewhere! ive just changed my location and stuff to US on my phone, and One of the albums which NEVER showed the artist background before, has just magically APPEARED. Im almost certain now that the US marketplace is the root cause of our problems..... will check other files and albums too..... im gonna try some others now...... by the way greener88, WP7 version of Zune is missing some features from your Zune HD, I dont think that Artist info is included or bio.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] greener88:
Oh is that right? Well either way, artist backgrounds are what I'm really interested in.

I had my location set to US on my PC and on my phone before I synced any music and I still can't get any artist backgrounds... Pretty frustrating that we can't even pinpoint the exact problem.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] davidebanks:
yes its very annoying, but i think we are getting closer. the other thing i need to do now is make sure that my files are tagged properly. i suspect this is also causing a few issues. :( i hear media monkey and mp3tag are susposed to be pretty good........ ive now switched my location back to UK and it seems to still keeps my background artist from when i changed the location to US.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andrew-in-woking:
Solved

Hi all

This article explaines the problem and proposes a solution:

http://pocketnow.com/windows-phone/full-visual-experience-on-windows-phone-7-music-playback

I have tried it and it works.

Cheers

andrew-in-woking
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] yly3:
Thanks for the heads-up but unfortunately like the many peeps who replied on that article it still doesn't work for me. I don't want to jiggle with some misslabelled LIVE information or change my account info etc.

How did it work for you ? What settings did you use ?
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] greener88:
I assume it works for him because he is in the UK which is a country that supports the zune music marketplace. The following counties have access to the music marketplace: United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Germany.

Has anyone outside of these countries gotten artist backgrounds to work? Because I'm pretty sure this is the issue...
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] yly3:
Ok , let us get this straight once and for all. For those who artist background work, does it work with ANY track you sync with your phone or does it work only with Zune Marketplace bought/streamed music ?
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] davidebanks:
snap andrew in working, i also found that article and it looks like it has worked for me! only tried one album so far but will try the rest :D also i have NEVER bought anything from zune market place yet so it has worked with tracks which i have ripped or downloaded elsewhere! no zune pass needed.!:)
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] davidebanks:
ok ive tested it on quite a few albums now and it seems to work for me! :D at last, its taken a while to sort it but at least we got there eventually!
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] greener88:
Based on what I've read it doesn't matter where you've gotten the track, and it doesn't matter if you have a Zune pass. Artist backgrounds will sync from ANY track you have, but only if your music is tagged correctly, and you live in a country where the music marketplace is available.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andrew-in-woking:
Copied from vinyl

Hi all

Quite a lot of the music in my mp3 collection has been recorded from records, cracks and jumps included. If you're interested in that you need Audacity and LAME.

Anyway, when I downloaded the Zune social tagging software, it gave me a list of albums in my collection. I then right clicked on the ones that said they weren't matched and selected match.

The software then takes you through a wizard which is much like the one in Windows Media player where you are looking up album information on the internet.

If the names are different (e.g. Pt. instead of Part) then you have to match the tracks manually.

You have to have Zune open on your PC for it to work.

When you next connect your phone, you will get a message saying that several songs have been deleted, but when you check, they're all there.

Cheers

andrew-in-woking
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] davidebanks:
those of you who live outside of the US could try changing thier phone location to the US just to test if it works for you. i know it makes a difference on the pc zune if you do the same so i guess the same could be applied to the wp7 device

but so far the advice from pocket now is the best solution to sort this out.:)
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] geological1:
Partially Solved!!

OK here is what I did to get my non US based phone working like a US based version. This is confusing so I hope I can help

Firstly, I already had the following

- a US mailbox in Houston

- a Canadian Hotmail email (primary email)

- a USA Live email (secondary setup)

There are a couple of diferent level of achievement here over the last few days

Purchasing Music

1. Phone was initially set up with my CDN Hotmail account. The country is hard coded in any web based form you try and can't be changed. Calls to Microsoft departments (XBox, Zune) no one had a clue so just forget about it. Really...forget about it. Migration ain't working either.

2. I re-set up my phone again with the US Live account I set up years ago.

3. Don't worry about email as you can set up another Windows Live account for your phone or forward to your US based one. Live sounds more in tune with the times than Hotmail anyways.

4. Get a mailbox in the US and have your credit card company add it as a sec

ondary address

(Amex in my case). If you don't have a US based mailbox already then you are paying way too much to buy stuff in Canada and should have got one a loooong time ago :p. The address may be capped at a period of time - mainly 1 year.

5. I purchased Microsoft Points from Amazon with my credit card. Couldn't be done through Zune. I suspect they are checking IP's. Purchsed music no problem with points. Videos can't be purchased with points.

You can buy points on Ebay as well but the dude I talked to was Russian and sounded sketchy.

So after all this my phone was showing background art, Marketplace in the interface on my phone. Hurray!!!!!!!

Problem! Now I could buy music with points BUT I couldn't buy apps on my phone. I couldn't add my card via the phone or via Zune on my PC. Again, I suspect IP blocking my Microsoft.

Solution - call Microsoft and get them to add the US addressed card over the phone. Now I can buy apps on my phone.

The last hurdle I can't solve right now which is I still can't purchase videos or TV via the Zune software on my PC. IP detection for sure I think now. I haven't tried on my phone as yet.

All in all I am fairly happy as I wanted the true Zune interface AND be able to buy apps.

Now I just need to resolve how badly I want Hotmail versus Live as my main email.

For videos I usually use podcasts anyway.

Good luck!!
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] heisven:
Doesn't work for me. Anyway my location is Germany, so Marketplace is available and so there should be no problem.

But I figured out the following:

Anyone got the Registry Hack for USB Drive use installed?

Quit Zune and take a look into the following folders:

storage\albums\

and

storage\artists\

There are plenty of files.

Album folder files are called

artistname--albumname.alb

example: Marcus Miller--Free.alb

Artist folder files are called

artistname.art

example: Marcus Miller.art

I tried to figure out whether those are simply renamed jpg files or something, though I didn't succeed.

It's weird, but all of the files have a size of 0 bytes. Copying doesn't work. Direct editing didn't work with any image editing software I used. (Photoshop, Gimp, Picturemanager and ICOeditor)

Moreover, all my album art files show their pictures, but artist files are ALL empty.

Any ideas? I wouldn't mind editing the artist files manually...

Cheers
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] saldawop:
Why is it that when I click on an artists name I may get the background photo.Great, looks very nice.But when I play a song, I get the album art but NO background photo??
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] davidebanks:
Try downloading and using the using Zune social tag program. it goes a long way to fixing things but its not perfect, still tags one or two things incorrectly but i dont mind fixing the odd one here or there. other wise its very good.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] matthijs81:
I've now tried it on several computers (both my desktop and laptop) but the tool scans and then reply that all my albums are unlinked. Tags are up to date using mp3tag, my music is all on my NAS (added to the proper Library). I'm running W7ULT x64.

Anyone any clue?
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gorki247:
The Zune Social Tagger doesn't work for me as my collection is mostly aac files. However, I might have found another way to fix this, although I need to do some more tests.

I'm a UK user and am getting the background pictures for some artists but not all. For those artists without the pictures, the link to the marketplace doesn't work and when I look that artist up in the marketplace, the link to show albums in my collection doesn't work either.

However, when I download a song for this artist on my phone, it seems to fix the connection. The song can be deleted afterward if you want. The album I tried this with is now showing the artwork and the marketplace link works.

Try it and let me know how it goes. I haven't yet tried syncing the phone to see if it holds the connection.

I don't know if this trick will work for regions where Zune is not available. I'd be interested to hear from anyone giving it a try.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] 001mic:
Acctually I fixed it, for a couple of artist in a similar way. You don't have to purchase a song. (In germany we don't have zune pass)

I did it this way:

-Click on a song from the artist you want to link

-click on the artist

-click on the marketplace

-if it shows you stuff you could buy, click on any of the songs and play it (now it should show the artist picture in the background)

-go back to your own stuff and play it

-now the artist is linked

This reads way more complicated than it was in reality.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gorki247:
The only problem seems that certain artists don't have a background at all, even on the marketplace. This is especially the case where you have more than one artist that share the same name.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Saste:
found out an other interesting fact...

some albums in my library will not be showed up in marketplace as still in library but some do...

only those which are shown as in library do show the background image...

any solutions for that or reasons why some of the albums i have (most) do not show up as still in library?
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] theholder:
Solved Problem

As stated by many people here, the places where the Zune Marketplace isn't enabled have this terrible problem. Since everytime i tried to get a Zune Pass the MS banned my ip, I turned to other solution. In this website is an ip masker,

(search for Tor Project, since I'm not allowed to post links) , (in fact it comes with a lite version of Firefox, which hides the ip), and it'll allow you to get a Zune Pass subscription (I signed for the trial). Once I got the subscription, I logged in the Zune on the PC (change the Country to US, so the Marketplace appears), and was able to download a tune, which I sinced to the phone.

Now, everytime I play that tune (on the phone), the artist art is shown in the background, changing even the live tile.

So, anyone who wants to solve the problem, this is it. But beware: even though the website is free, and it seems good, use it at you own risk. I had to put my credit card number to validate the Zune Trial (and, by the way, I think they accept only International ones).

I just wanted to share with some people, because I tried a dozen different softwares to mask my ip to get a Zune Pass, and so far I couldn't. I haven't tried yet, but I think I can bough stuff on the marketplace now.

So long.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kieboy:
The only thing that worked for me after struggling with my Omnia7 back when I was in Singapore was to create a U.S live account, changed my laptops' system locale region to U.S then sync'd that live account to Zune.

Kindly check if this is your current setup already. HTH
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] MattJ1989:
Has anyone been able to open a confirmed working album and seen if it the images are in the metadata in Media Monkey, and can say what it's labelled as?

i.e. Album Cover, Artist, etc.

Or is it downloaded via the Zune software or over the air and saved as those .art files on the phone only?

I'm using Mango on a HD7 in Australia with an Australian Live ID. One of my songs actually displayed this for the first time and I don't know how and I've forgotten which one :(
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] boredtoday:
Zune Social Tagger fixes everything for me.

Just 1 gripe though, if a song has a different Song Artist and Album Artist, it will try to pull up the background of the Song Artist which are mostly non-existent. Mainly because Song Artist usually contains individual band member names instead of the name of the band/group.

There is a setting in Zune HD specifically to address this challenge, but I have not found that in WP7 so far (I have Mango B2)

So yea, best we have now is Zune Social Tagger.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Thunder_47:
Not meaning to revive a dead thread of sorts, but is is there a way to get the music videos live tile to show album art and not artists?

Tbh I really don't care about what my artist looks like, given that Zune doesn't even display most of the artists I have on my phone.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] AryaTwirl:
I have a workaround but this sounds so silly to do it.. Because it involves Mac in the process...

I always use Windows Phone 7 Connector from Mac App Store on my MacBook Pro instead of using Zune on my Windows PC because I frequently do it on school and when I'm home, I usually just do gaming with my PC as I rarely open Zune.. And guess what? Every single song that is in Marketplace will show artist background in no playing with 'Marketplace Arrow' trick.. And if I sync from Zune, I get no marketplace arrow that should help me to get that artists background.. So... Mac is the 'only' quick solution so far... And it doesn't mess your library or song tags... But, WP7 Connector isn't as flexible as Zune did because it can't select single song to be synced... It can only sync a whole album or artist songs...
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zerobalance:
Zune Background workaround

Ok i think i got it now, it worked on my phone and now i got all of the artist background except for those artist that zune doesnt have on their database specially indie bands.

follow these steps :

1. Open Mp3Tagger - if you dont have one download it.

2. Drag an album to mp3 tagger

3. then select all songs(CTRL +A)

4. Click on tag sources(you will see 3 or 4 options) or just select amazon, type in the artist name wait for mp3tagger to gather info > select correct album name . that way you can find the most accurate tag for the album.

5. open zune software - go to collection - click on that album - click on more about this artist and wait for the artist background to appear and bwallaahh.

6. resync the album/artist on your phone using zune software.

7. play a song and check if the artist background will appear(if not proceed to step 8)

8. (on the phone) go to music and highlight that specific album/artist tap on marketplace button below the album cover(then the info about that band will appear and also the background picture and thats it)

10. ENJOY!

on step 8 make sure your phone is connected to your network.

tag each album 1 by 1 using mp3tagger, do the same steps from 1 - 4 until your done with all of your music files.

tell me if it woks or not.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Nevermore.V:
I live in India and marketplace ain't enabled there, I use a marketplace enabler to get to it but there [today i noticed while reading this thread to get the background workin'] is only apps and games there, no music, videos or podcasts...

And thee is no option to get more info about the artist anywhere! The Zune Social Tagger thing won't show any results since marketplace ain't enabled here so that way does nothing as well...

How can I get them running then ? :(
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] circleofomega:
I only have one silly issue...but the solution is somewhere here...I click on Noisia (Artist name) and in the bG there is this ugly jittered image of three guys JUST BECAUSE they have an album called Hostile Takeover. DONT even know who they are...I want to get rid of them and more importantly, if it isn't too much to ask, want an Artist image of my choice for my Fav artist...

Is there a way I can reset the METADATA or whatever its called??
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Nevermore.V:
I finally got my artist images displaying... for that I just gave up and did a hard reset of my phone with a new US id...

Of the bad background image.. There's only 1 image I guess which the phone downloads from the marketplace network... So I don't think Noisia's image will change anytime soon..

Led Zeppelin's image sucks even more.. its just a little bit of neck of Page's guitar and abit of Plant's hair. :/
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zerobalance:
i have the same images. its soo pixelated that you dont know which pixel is the head of the artist. :D

i think i has something to do with zune's database. they need to update it.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Lord Reaver:
It's still not working for me...

EDIT:

It's now working... What I did was create a Live and Zune account that has a U.S locale... Changed my PC's locale to U.S as well...
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] StriderNo9:
Okay, I know this is a pretty old issue but for some of you guys that are still having this issue, I seem to have found a consistant solution. You will need a Zune Pass though. This is obviously because in the Zune Marketplace all the metadata is correct.

So it's simple, when I have a song that doesnt show artist artwork, I simple touch his name, and search for a song of his or hers in the marketplace. play a song, and wait until the artist art shows, once it does you can back out and play your song and boom, art art is there now.

Obviously, metadata has to be correct on your end, but if it is, the artist should have all his artwork there.

Edit: Someone has posted this already, well +1 to that because it works for me too.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] MrAlchemist:
I know this is abit "holy thread revival batman", but it's almost a year ago I posted in here last.

Now as of Nov 16th Australia has a Zune Marketplace for music, so, you would hope that this would magically start working.

I've not played with Zune Social Tagger yet, maybe I'll have to, but has anyone in Australia had success with artist backgrounds now that we've got a music marketplace?
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] MrAlchemist:
So I've got a solution, finally have these damn things working.

As discussed many a time, you need to be in a region where Zune Music is available.

Whilst Zune Music Australia launched back on the 16th of Nov, I've noticed that when you goto the Marketplace on your phone it's only apps, no music and I had zero joy getting artist backgrounds, even with the 14 day Zune Pass I'm toying with(with is actually not bad!).

Anyway today(27th Nov), magic happened artist backgrounds started populating for most of my large international bands, Foo fighters, Kanye, Nero, BEP etc. out of interest I checked the Marketplace, and now you can get music straight to your phone.

Basically play a track from an Album for about 5-10 seconds and if the Artist background is going to show up it will then. Also works nicely for the lock screen and the live tile.

Been a looooooooooong time coming for us Aussies, but glad it's working now. I have a feeling even without the Zune Pass now that the Zune Marketplace is available on the phone it will start working for most people anyway.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ne0cr0n:
For Interop unlocked phones this works

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1377210
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] webwalk®:
it was working flawless befor mango

but they disabled it, suckers.. (still mad)
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] 转身沧桑:
Need correct tag data.
[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] farooknaji:
I'm in the UK which has had access to Zune Pass for a while but I still can't get the artist backgrounds to appear. Album art shows up fine. All my songs are tagged well.

I've tried the trick of previewing a song in the Zune Music Marketplace and the artist background appears on those songs, but if I play same artist from my local mp3s then again there is no background.

I'm also unable to use Smart DJ. I get this error:

Smart DJ error

We're having trouble creating this Smart DJ mix. In Settings, make sure the Connect with Zune option is turned on, and connect your phone to your PC.

Obviously I've checked that Connect with Zune is switched on, i've connected to my PC (well, my Mac using the Zune Connector).

This is really frustrating as Zune was one of the big drawing points for me to switch from Android. I used to use Fede's UberMusic app which was a clone, and the Artist backgrounds worked fine on that.