Q: Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5

That I can disprove.  I've never once bought music off of iTunes Music and I have two artists that popped up and the remaining 100 have no images, just the pink microphone.  So this is definitely poor programing...

So I erased and restored all content from iPhone yesterday, and now iOS 10 shows more artists artworks on the phone but no changes within iTunes itself. Left image from iTunes. Right from the phone. Artists artworks are showing for artists bought on CDs, not from Apple store. Puzzled.

They also seem to have done away with the option of organizing music by date, etc.

It is the usual Mommy Complex, I'm afraid. This notion that they know what is best for everyone and that one size fits all.

I've been to Apple store today, their macs have similar setup with iTunes music samples and none of them show artists artwork but exactly same artists do have artworks on their iPads. May be it has something to do with Sierra release next week.
You can organize music by date within Library>Artists then Top Menu>View>Sort Albums by>Album/Year
Same applies to Library>Albums, but if you select view albums as a list iTunes keeps changing sorting by albums name.

Thanks very much for the sorting-by-year tip.

Same problem here. Hundreds of artists with pink microphone, two artists with art.

However, in my case it clearly has nothing to do with purchased music (as others have also confirmed). I have not purchased music from iTunes by the two artists with art. Previously nearly everyone had artist art.

Album art seems to be in place, although over the years I've manually added most of that so that there's an actual jpg file for iTunes to pull from.

Same here! I would like to fix this .

ive been told after having a back and forth through Apple

that this is done through itunes. If the artist doesn't have a

pic on their iTunes page it won't show up. I'm seeing

a few that do and it doesn't show up. For most this

is correct. Seems like this is an error in apples update.

Needs to be fixed so we can load something in that

tthumbnail.

@jamesfromthemars It seems unlikely that the rep is correct. I suspect your rep just didn't know what they were talking about. All the artists had artist art before the update, and then not after. They were all originally pulled from iTunes (I never added artist artwork to anyone). Unless Apple went through and deleted thousands of artist's artwork, it is an error in the update.

(I think I'm agreeing with your overall point - just adding that the rep sounds clueless.)

I don't think that's the case, as I have Apple Music and even for artists that I've only added through Apple Music to my Library, there is no picture for the artist, only the stupid microphone.  For another artist, every song is Purchased except 1 song which was added via Apple Music and only the microphone is displayed. 

But it's even inconistent for Purchased Music.  I have found several artist that every song is showing as Purchased, but yet only a microphone appears.  But yet for Aerosmith, I see the picture of the band, yet only one of my songs is Purchased. 

So there is little rhyme or reason....

Here is the behavior I am seeing related to artist artwork in iTunes 12.5 and Music on iOS 10:

• iTunes 12.5.1 on macOS 10.11 - seeing artist artwork for all artists which I have purchased music for. The vast majority of my music, from disks or purchased elsewhere, has the placeholder microphone icon for the artist.
• Music on iOS 10 - I see artist artwork for *most* all artists in my library. Among artists missing artwork, some are legitimately valid (multiple artists collaborating - like "Elton John & John Lennon", or "Grace" (my daughter)). Other artists missing artwork are mainstream enough to warrant artwork (Journey, Matchbox 20) but don't have it.

I find two things strange:

1. Why iOS / macOS are exhibiting different behavior. Shouldn't they be consistent?
2. Why there is no pattern to missing artwork.

It's not the end of the world for me. That said, I can clearly see this as concerning for those who take pride in the quality and completeness of their library. I'm guessing this is a bug or oversight on Apple's part.

Until this is fixed, I've moved over to Album view. Thankfully, the albums are arranged alphabetically by artist. It takes a little more scrolling to find what I want, but I can see the cover art and no microphones.