The Ins and Outs of Album Washer

So you have purchased Album Washer from the Winamp for Android Addons Store, now what?

Album Washer is an album art and metadata (song title, album title, artist name, etc.) corrector. When you "wash" a track, the track is identified and any pre-existing album art and metadata are compared to the correct album art and metadata as supplied by the Gracenote music database. If there are any differences, Album Washer gives you the choice to replace either or both the album art and the metadata. If you choose to wash, Album Washer will make the changes and the selected tracks will be updated to have the correct information and art.

How do you start album washer? There are two entry points. The first is from the list views. When you are looking at lists of songs or albums (list views) you may long press any song or album name and select "Get album art & metadata." The second entry point is from the now playing screen. If you are unhappy with the artwork for the currently playing song, you can long press on the album art (or default art) and again, select "Get album art & metadata."



What happens next? If you started Album Washer with a song, Album Washer will ask you if you want to wash just this song or all songs that have the same album name associated with that song (which we call the "seed song"). If you started Album Washer with an album, it will by default wash the entire album. The washing process requires data connectivity and as a result the speed of the wash depends on your connection.

When Album Washer has finished identifying the track(s) in question and searching for their associated album art and metadata, it will display to you what it has found. Note that you can tap on the newly found album art to see a larger version of it. Album Washer defaults to washing both the album art and the metadata. If you don't want to wash the track or tracks anymore select cancel. If you want to wash parts of the track(s), deselect either album art or metadata and Album Washer will only save what is selected. If you started from a particular track, as opposed to an album, you will see a small seed to the right of the track on the results page. This seed is a point of reference in case the track you started from has a different track name or in case it is not actually present in the album you thought it was.

In the results detail screen you will see two categories of tracks, "tracks to be updated" and "tracks not found in this album." The tracks in the latter section will not be washed because Album Washer has determined that those tracks are not actually in the album. If you want to override this, you can select the checkboxes to the right of the tracks and they will be "forced" into the album.

If the results Album Washer has found don't look correct to you, select the "Find More" button and it will begin a broader search. Once you are ready to wash select "Apply". Album Washer will then save the new info and art for the track or tracks you selected and will drop you back where you came from.



If you selected find more, Album Washer will present a bunch of options and display their album art thumbnails, album names and release dates to help you pick the correct one. Select the one that looks correct to you and Album Washer will take you to the detailed results screen for your new selection. To help you pick the correct album data, small dots appear on the thumbnails. The closer to green the dots are, the more confident Album Washer is about the correctness of the information and the quality of the match. If you get to the detailed results page and you decide you want to try a different one, simply hit cancel and you will be dropped back on the page with multiple results. If you decide to give up entirely, from the page with the thumbnails, hit back and you will be returned to where you started.

As always, find more in our help section.

Happy washing!