Q: iTunes Match not showing all artwork on iPhone

I tried this, seems to have added all the album covers again for each song (I saw iTunes list through the updates to the device) but now whenever I open Music on my 4S, it is constantly showing the rotating wheel as if it is connecting to the internet...

What's it doing?

Adding your songs and artwork to the iPhone library?!

I've been experiencing the same issue. Even music that was downloaded to the device did not show artwork let alone those songs stored in the cloud.

Since then, I have been tinkering...

I have ensured that in Music Preferences (Settings App) 'iTunes Match' and 'Show all music' are set to ON and I have gone back into the Music App. Selecting the Albums tab and scrolling through the albums allowed the device to cache the album artwork (I had to pause scrolling for the images to load) and all artowrok is now showing up. I am not sure whether this is a permanent fix; however, for the time being, the library is looking as it should.

Let me know if this works for anyone else.

I noticed that where my artwork was missing, there was usually a problem with the name of the album (I revised some of the titles to make them easier to read on my iPod).  I opened iTunes, went to each of the albums missing artwork and selected all of the songs on the album.  Then I right-clicked and clicked on "Get Info" and fixed the album to reflect the correct name (I did copy/paste from Amazon).  In a few cases, I also dod a copy/paste of the album arwork from Amazon and put it in the artwork box (this is likely unnecessary if you correct the name).

Every album now shows artwork.

It worked for me. Great!

Thank you.

I've found that many times the issue is related to the size of the cover file. It needs to be under 256k. The problem is that iTunes fakes you out unless you follow certain rules. For example, you have a 100k JPG file for your cover and you do a Get Info on your album and paste the image into the Artwork square. You think you now have a 100k cover, but the cover doesn't show on the iPhone. Wrong! The problem is that when you use Get Info to add artwork, iTunes converts everything to a PNG file. PNG is a lossless format, and your file could have grown in size by 3 or 4x. To see this, select any track and then drag the image from the lower left selected item box to the desktop.

What you need to do to ensure you have the correct cover info:

1. Select all the tracks for an album

2. Get Info

3. Clear out the current art work by selecting the checkbox next to Artwork

4. Back out to the album view and select the album you want. You should see no artwork now.

5. Drag your cover art file to the Selected Item box in the lower left of the window.

To verify everything worked, go back to the album and drag the image to your desktop from the Selected Item box in the lower left. It should be the same, small JPG file.

FYI, I'm on a Mac.

Great!  Glad it did the trick for you!

Thank you! this seems like the best way to fix this when just using the iPhone. You have to scroll through the album list, it only downloads artwork for the page you can see.

Just an addition to James Calvert's fix - once in the iPhone Album list you can flick down through the list of albums as quickly as you like - the iPhone will play catchup as long as you remain in the album list.

- Go to the Music player app

- Go to Album view

- Flick down from albums in 'A' all the way down to the end - do not leave the album view

- The data wheel will spin and download all the artwork

I'm still missing a number of albums but this is a great way to get the majority of artwork back!

Thank you again, James!

This is without doubt frustrating to say the least. Apple have been frustrating me for a while now especially with this. I've spent hours maintaining my iTunes library on the mac, the art work is one of two problems I've got. The other is an issue with the ipad2 differing to the iPhone and mac. But to stick to the original post I spent a few hours and there is a fix to this if you can be bothered to mess around.

Go to iTunes library.

Go to album with missing album artwork. (yes the album artwork is there on my mac but not in iTunes match!)

Highlight first track in album.

Get info.

Delete artwork individually.

Then drag tracks to desktop

Then delete album from iTunes

Check the box delete from iCloud and delete files from library.

Update iTunes match in the store tab.

Drag tracks from desktop back into iTunes

Update iTunes match. The upload will be quick because the tracks aren't deleted from the iCoud? I've noticed this with none purchased tracks also?

Go to iOS device  delete all downloaded music and toggle iTunes match off and on again.

Hopefully missing artwork should appear?

Long winded I know but please sort it Apple your driving everybody nuts!

Im probably late to the conversation but after having so many issue with cover art on my devices ive noticed that if I actually download a track from iTM it seems to add the artwork to the rest of the album as well.

For me this is the quickest workaround but one i'd rather not have to do.

Alirght I'll chime in on this as it has been bothering me as well. After playing around with iTunes Match the first from what I can see iTunes match is very picky with being as the same as the track/album in iTunes Store so make sure you album in your library matches the iTunes Store album title.  The second thing I did was to highlight the whole album then click get info and make sure they are all the same that way on the tabs.  Also I noticed on a Bob Dylan track that I had to put "Bob Dylan" in both the "Artist" section and the "Album Artist" section. Just the Bob Dylan in the "Artist" section did not show the artwork on my iPhone. This was also the same for a Nicki Minaj track and many others.  Another thing to look for is on invidual songs from an album some of track "in a compilation" (also under get info) checked while others did not. Also having a songs downloaded from the album from cloud or iTunes match on the phone sometimes made the artwork show up sometimes as well?

So in short: Highlight all songs, hit get info, under the info tab make sure "Artist" and "Album Artist" sections are the same. 

If I notice anything else, I will let you know.

Oh and obviously have the same artwork you want in the artwork section when you are doing all of the artist and album artist switching for the album.

I can tell you that I have the artwork for each album in my library visible at my mac. But on my iPhone some album covers are missing. I tried to replace them and here this ugly BUG appears.

@see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3546099?start=45&tstart=0

Scrolling through the list of albums in iTunes either on the Mac or on my iPhone did not solve this problem for me.

But strangely, doing a Get Info on the album and just hitting OK (or typing "Return") causes the album art to appear. The album art was associated with the album for the albums I purchased or got correctly matched by iTunes Match (you could see it in the Summary tab of the Get Info window). But it was not appearing in the album list until I did this Get Info thing.

AFAIK, this is an iTunes bug.

BTW, this trick did not work for albums where iTunes did not have album art (despite the fact that it matched the album and all its tracks via iTunes Match.