Bill St. Clair

Q: iOS 10 Music App Missing Artist Icons

When sorting my Library by Artists, the iOS 10 Music app is missing an icon for most of my artists, even if all of that artists's albums have cover art. I would much prefer to use the cover art from one of the albums if iTunes can't find an artist image.

 

For the image below, every one of those artists has album cover art for every one of their albums.

 

missing-artist-icons.png

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 10

Posted on Sep 13, 2016 11:58 AM

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Q: iOS 10 Music App Missing Artist Icons

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  • by ics4ajd,Helpful

    ics4ajd ics4ajd Sep 14, 2016 6:55 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 14, 2016 6:55 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    I have the same problem and raised it as an issue through the Feedback App during beta testing. It was so much better in previous iOS releases when album artwork was shown when there was no official artist artwork. Looked much neater.

  • by ArtemiyPavlov,Helpful

    ArtemiyPavlov ArtemiyPavlov Sep 14, 2016 7:37 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Sep 14, 2016 7:37 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Exact same problem here. In fact, it's not only on iOS 10 that most artist icons are missing, but in the latest iTunes 12.5.1 update as well. For the very same artists, in fact, so it seems they use a common method for getting artist images and indeed not using album artwork for when there is no artist image (like it used to be before).

  • by AtomicVariable,

    AtomicVariable AtomicVariable Sep 14, 2016 9:25 AM in response to ArtemiyPavlov
    Level 1 (13 points)
    iOS Apps
    Sep 14, 2016 9:25 AM in response to ArtemiyPavlov

    Add me to the list. Some of the artists that are missing are quite peculiar for there not to be a loaded image. Jay-Z? Linkin Park? I have a carefully curated library where 99% of my songs/albums have album art embedded in the tag. Come on Apple, really?

  • by AtomicVariable,

    AtomicVariable AtomicVariable Sep 14, 2016 9:27 AM in response to AtomicVariable
    Level 1 (13 points)
    iOS Apps
    Sep 14, 2016 9:27 AM in response to AtomicVariable

    Seems sorting the Library tab by Albums instead of Artists is the way to go for now but not the ideal way for most of us to browse I'm sure.

  • by Scottyboy99,

    Scottyboy99 Scottyboy99 Sep 18, 2016 11:44 PM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (85 points)
    Apple Watch
    Sep 18, 2016 11:44 PM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Yes, this totally irritates me too. What was Apple thinking? As someone who uses the artists biew for navigating (I remember artist names much better than song or album names) this makes that view look a bit rubbish. I would happily circumvent this issue if there was an option to download artist art of your own but there is no way to do this. I'd say 75% of my artists  have artist pics but the other 25% seem to/will never have one and so that generic mic picture is there to stay unless Apple sees sense and brings back the ability to display one of the albums covers as a replacement when no artist pic is available.

  • by jonmach,

    jonmach jonmach Sep 19, 2016 1:56 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 19, 2016 1:56 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Same problem.

     

    I have to say that this is the worst music experience.  Apple have decided that I need an app where all I want to do is stream from their music store using their content and in a way that they see fit. Actually, I have a load of my own music with my own images that I can now no longer find easily because it doesn't fit in with their idea of how they want to direct me to their content. I uploaded a bunch of images directly (missing). I added Disc numbers to the meta-data (missing).

     

    On reflection, I really want the basics I had with the iPod. What can be so hard about that?

  • by Matahan,

    Matahan Matahan Sep 20, 2016 12:01 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 20, 2016 12:01 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Same here. I started using Picky, foobar

    Music app keeps getting worse and worse

  • by gmsmax,

    gmsmax gmsmax Sep 21, 2016 3:16 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 21, 2016 3:16 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Me too. This latest release really *****

  • by ArtemiyPavlov,

    ArtemiyPavlov ArtemiyPavlov Sep 21, 2016 3:21 AM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Sep 21, 2016 3:21 AM in response to Bill St. Clair

    You know what, I am looking at this again a week later and I think there are more artist icons out there... definitely less generic icons. I think Apple is well aware of the issue. Strange that they do not rely on the artwork already present in the files themselves... But I am hoping they will eventually provide artwork for every artist.

  • by jonmach,

    jonmach jonmach Sep 21, 2016 3:47 AM in response to ArtemiyPavlov
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 21, 2016 3:47 AM in response to ArtemiyPavlov

    The point is that I specifically added my own artwork.  I should have the option to ignore Apple's view of an artist and use the artwork that *I* choose.  Otherwise, why bother letting me add it?

  • by ArtemiyPavlov,

    ArtemiyPavlov ArtemiyPavlov Sep 21, 2016 3:51 AM in response to jonmach
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Sep 21, 2016 3:51 AM in response to jonmach

    AFAIK we have album artwork in each MP3/AAC file but not artist artwork? The issue is they used to use album artwork if they did not have an artist image on iTunes, but now they throw a generic icon instead. Not good, I agree. Just saying that it does seem like they're working on it. The problem would remain, though, for stuff that is NOT on iTunes at all - such as something old/rare or even your own tracks if you're a home producer...

  • by Scottyboy99,

    Scottyboy99 Scottyboy99 Sep 21, 2016 6:33 AM in response to ArtemiyPavlov
    Level 1 (85 points)
    Apple Watch
    Sep 21, 2016 6:33 AM in response to ArtemiyPavlov

    They certainly need to address the whole artist art thing. Another thing that really frustrates is when the wrong artist art displays. Sad as my musical tastes are but I have several tracks by Dana. The Irish singer from the 70s and of Eurovision fame. Yet here artist pic is of a completely different person. probably some young hip artist who uses the same stage name of Dana. But of course there is no way to change it! I tried renaming the artist in iTunes to Dana (Ireland) and whilst the name change did register across the cloud to my phone - the picture remains as this other Dana Artist.

  • by mrtew,

    mrtew mrtew Sep 22, 2016 7:58 PM in response to Bill St. Clair
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 22, 2016 7:58 PM in response to Bill St. Clair

    Yeah and it's bad enough with a generic icon but why such a hideious one???   The baby blue and pink colors are fine for new parents but so horrible looking to normal people.    And why a microphone when half of all music is instrumental with no vocals at all.   Grrrrrr.    Getting closer to trying Android the more Apple makes stuff worse and worse.

  • by Caeton,

    Caeton Caeton Sep 22, 2016 8:03 PM in response to mrtew
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 22, 2016 8:03 PM in response to mrtew

    Don't compound the ridiculousness of this issue with something even more ridiculous. Music on Android is hideous at best. On the music side alone, although I am sure there is software to make life easier, the out of box experience of manually dragging and dropping media files is horrific for me when I have such a highly structured folder system comprising over 20,000 songs.

     

    This does stink like a money grab to force more folks into Apple Music and away from their own collections. Not cool, but let's keep our heads here!

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