We’re becoming experts in troubleshooting MP3 album art problems with various MP3 players. This time, a listener of one of our podcasts informed us some of our shows were causing his Samsung YP-Z5AS MP3 player to lock up when it tried to play some of our MP3 files. We got the exact model number from the listener, and purchased an identical one online. It came via Fed Ex today, and we got down to business.

What we discovered was that it was the album art image we were using that was causing the problem. By removing the album art, the YP-Z5 played the file just fine. In a code editor, we opened the JPG file we were using as album art, and discovered something interesting:

What we’re seeing there is metadata embedded by Photoshop in the JPG file itself. Using Photoshop’s “Save for web” functionality, we produced a JPG file with no metadata in it. Using this “saved for web” file as album art in the MP3 file caused the YP-Z5 to work properly. The wildest thing is that we had been using the JPG with metadata as album art for a long time, and a lot of other MP3s with that JPG played just fine on the YP-Z5. There must be some combination of JPG file and other data in the MP3 that sets the YP-Z5 off.

The takeaway from this: always use the “Save for web” functionality in Photoshop if you are saving a JPG for use as album art in an MP3 file. Using the “Save as” functionality in Photoshop, then saving as a JPG embeds metadata in the JPG file, which can cause MP3 players to choke.