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iTunes Match artwork reverting to old version

On my primary iTunes Mac, embedded artwork that I've changed since turning on iTunes Match reverts back to previous artwork. For example, if I have a 500 dpi cover artwork in a track that iTunes has matched, then today I go upgrade the artwork to a 1000 dpi version, the next time iTunes Match updates it will wipe out my 1000 dpi version and replace it with my old 500 dpi artwork. It is NOT grabbing the iTunes Store artwork, it is somehow recovering MY old artwork from the cloud.


I've tried DougScripts Re-Embed Artwork script - no luck. I've dried deleting artwork, updating iTunes Match, pasting in desired artwork, updating iTunes Match again - pulls back old unwanted artwork. The only solution I've found is to upgrade the artwork, drag the tracks out of iTunes before Match updates, delete the tracks from iTunes and iCloud, and finally drag the tracks back in to iTunes. iTunes Match appears to keep my new artwork from now on (so far at least!).


I REALLY wish there was a setting that says "Never mess with my artwork!" It's great that Match doesn't change my iTunes audio files unless I tell it to. Why in the world does it change my artwork?

Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 Quad Core, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Dec 4, 2011 11:32 AM

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Apr 25, 2013 8:47 PM in response to Andy Abernathy

Dear fellow sufferers. If Apple has not yet fixed this bug means that they won't do!

Many friends have migrated to Google Play and they told me that works fine, really easy to use as it once was Apple.

Totally disappointed of iTunes Match service, the next year for sure I will no longer renew!

Such a shame!

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Apr 28, 2013 12:20 PM in response to Markino

Yes, I completely agree with Markino. If it hasn't been fixed by now, it's unlikely it will be fixed. I've moved over to Google Play already and it's easy to do. In addition, with Google Play you have almost all the function of iTunes Match and being able to play your music from Google's cloud, but yet it's $0.00 per year. Compare that to the $25 I am paying for iTunes Match and it was an easy decision. No renewal of Match this year for me, I'm sticking with Google Play. The one feature Play doesn't offer that Match has is the ability to upload your playlist, but as I had numerous playlists that never functioned correctly with Match, I'm really not losing functionality anyway. Google Play also functions across various device types as well so that makes it even better.

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Jun 6, 2013 1:31 AM in response to Regodedor

Nope, it won't.


So just to reassess my view on all this ****, over a year after I originally posted...


Basically, using iTunes is still an experience fraught with crashes of various kinds, and although the new interface is better, the seemingly simple task of choosing album art for an album is still a witless chore. If iTunes can find an exact string match of the artist/title of an album, the "get album artwork" option works. Otherwise it doesn't, and you have to go trawling the Internet for an image to drop into place. This alone is idiotic - why can't they offer a list of closest matches within iTunes, via the iTunes Store??


In my experience iTunes and iTunes Match will always keep the manually chosen artwork if you add it BEFORE its been added to your iTunes Match cloud. You just have to be quick. If you're too slow to sort out the artwork after adding new music, it may never accept your post-matching artwork mods. Until you delete and reimport the music.


Finally though, consider this - the music apps I use on my phone are never the apple one. I use Groove or Scrobbler, because they just smarter and more pleasant to use, and enable last.fm scrobbling.

What's more, they pretty much download artwork themselves from last.fm, ignoring what you have in iTunes Match. Thus making all the effort to get iTunes artwork working in the cloud, somewhat redundant.


Groove in particular is a pleasure. All my music ends up with the correct artwork.

Apple's default music player has lost out to competitors. Now if only the iTunes desktop app was also crushed by a smaller, nimbler opponent as well.

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Sep 22, 2013 3:40 AM in response to Mr. Bellamy

I can confirm that as of iOS 7 and iTunes 11.1, unsurprisingly, this issue still persists. Additionally, the bug introduced in iOS 6 where iTunes Store artwork appears after downloading iTunes purchased music on iOS devices also still exists.


I encourage everyone affected by this problem to send Apple feedback on this matter, as that's seemingly the only way they'll do something about this. Or better yet, for something more direct to Apple's engineering team, send a report through Apple's Bug Reporter, which only requires a free developer account. This bug has to be taken care of.

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Feb 25, 2014 12:49 PM in response to TekLord1

Others have posted solutions, and I thought I'd share what's worked for me, similar to solutions that have been posted in this thread. This method requires having iTunes Match on two separate computers. I might add that one of the maddening parts of this is that changes to metadata do seem to propogate through iTunes match, but not changes to the artwork.


The gist of this method is that you have to remove the album from iCloud, change the artwork, and then upload it back to iCloud to make the changes stick.


I have iTunes on three computers (shared through match): A main family Mac Pro at home, a Macbook Pro at home, and a work PC. I use the Mac Pro as the "main" computer for this purpose. Obviously, make sure Match is updated on the computers you are using. I generally do all this in Album View on iTunes.


1. On the "main" computer, delete the album you wish to change (I usually find the album in Album View, select all the songs on the album, and press delete). Check the box to delete the songs from iCloud as well, and send the files to the trash can.


2. On the other computer, select the album (which should have the little "x" symbol next to the songs indicating that they are no longer on the cloud - if they don't then you may not have deleted them in step 1 above). Select all the songs on the album, choose "Get Info", check the box next to the artwork on the metadata page (under the tab "Info"), click in the artwork box and press "Delete" on your keyboard (not sure if this last step is necessary), and then click "Okay." If you are in album view, the artwork for the album should disappear.


3. Go find your new album artwork. I use Google, and set it to look for 500x500 sized images, but obviously your preferences may vary. Once you find the artwork, simply right-click on it and "Copy" (or command-C). Make sure you're clicking on the actual image you won't, not a preview-sized image. There doesn't seem to be a need to save the image locally.


4. Go back to iTunes, and again select the songs on the album you're working on. Choose "Get Info" again, and click on the artwork box and Paste (command-V). Once it's done, you should see your artwork appear; click on another album and then back on the one you're working on if you need to double-check.


5. Finally, once again select all the songs on the album. Right-click on them and choose "Upload to iCloud." iTunes should then start updating Match.


6. Once it has finished updating, the album should be available in iCloud, and you can go to your main computer and redownload it.


One note for step 5, if you do multiple albums at one sitting, the update process doesn't seem to work right. When the iTunes Match update process ends, it will likely have only uploaded the first album you did. Once I finish a session, I'll stop the updating process (click the little "x" in the status box at the top right next to where it says "updating iTunes Match information" or somesuch). Then go to the "Store" menu, and choose "Update iTunes Match." Everything you've already flagged for uploading then should upload properly.


Hope this helps. It's a pain, but it actually goes pretty quickly, and I find it pretty easy to do on my Macbook while watching TV.

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Feb 25, 2014 12:46 PM in response to pryoung

I really appreciate your long explanation but I'm wondering why I have to lose such a long time for a bul__it like this! I just cancelled my subscription and found another service to listen music.

I am a Apple supporter but iMatch is not a good idea at all. I just waste time and money using this horrible service.

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Feb 25, 2014 12:54 PM in response to Markino

Oh, I agree. It's ridiculous to require such a work-around to fix this, but as others have pointed out, if it hasn't been fixed yet, it's probably not going to be fixed.


However, this issue largely aside, I've been pretty happy with Match so far. I've had a couple of albums not survive the initial matching process intact, but that's out of > 1000 albums and > 13,000 songs, and those have been easily fixed. So far, though, it's worked pretty seamlessly among my various computers, iPhones and iPads. It's far from perfect (at times disappointingly so), but at $25/year, the benefits have generally greatly outweighed the bad parts.

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Nov 10, 2014 5:52 PM in response to pryoung

This may not be what people want to hear, yet I finally solved my iTunes Match artwork issue - I stopped caring that my artwork looked like krap and now simply "live with it". I finally realized that Apple, as a company, doesn't care about certain things and, for those things they don't care about, they let them languish into oblivion.


I've spent years trying to get some of my Apple products to work correctly and, I realize now, it was an exercise in futility.

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Mar 23, 2014 5:20 PM in response to Andy Abernathy

Ha! It seems they've finally added this in iOS 7.1!


After seeing a change in an album title (of a purchased item) being reflected on my iPhone I decided to try it once more. The new artwork was almost immediately visible when playing the song. And visible in the list view after I restarted the app.


I'm very, very happy with this! I can finally start replacing the crappy (badly scanned) artwork on some of my albums. It has been a while, but better late than never!

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Mar 25, 2014 5:34 PM in response to TheIceMan223

Thank you very much for this update. To confirm, has the updated artwork continued to stick across all your devices? With me, changing artwork has always immediately been reflected across my devices when initially done, but what would happen is that after 2-3 days or so, the artwork would eventually revert when iTunes Match updated, either manually or automatically.

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Mar 25, 2014 7:52 PM in response to Mr. Bellamy

Thank you. So it appears I would want to be more careful... it has been a while since I tested it and back then it wouldn't update the artwork at all. Therefore seeing it appear on my other devices was new to me. So far it hasn't reverted back though.


As a test I created a new user on my mac. I was glad to see that the new artwork was still visible when I turned on iTunes match. And on the phone it appeared to work fine as well - the artwork was still there after I turned it off and on again.


But it would be nice if others could confirm this also! In case artwork reverts back I'll post an update.

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Apr 20, 2014 5:07 PM in response to Andy Abernathy

Hey, is there anybody who has same situation on the new update about this f***ing problem on ios 7.1?


I was very satisfied with TheIceMan223s notification, but my artwork still does not change at all.


I was so stupid that when I first uploaded Wings over Amercia album to itunese match, I was confusued with this album to Ringo Starr's solo album (Y' Not on 2010).


So every time I try to listen to Wings, I always have to see Ringo's 70 old years face (still better than McCartney's 70 face anyway) on my iphone.


It never changes and I feel like I have a discurse of Ringo Starr.


Plz let me know if there is anyone who can fix this problem.

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iTunes Match artwork reverting to old version

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