Q: Artist Photos Missing in iTunes 12.5.1

I am having the EXACT same issue. This update made iTunes worse and overall made the iPhone a less intuitive device. Bravo, Devs.

Yet another peeved 12.5.1 victim. As previously noted this has nothing to do with purchases. Many of my purchases have no picture. I tried manually adding artwork to an artist and even that didn't work.  All I see is that hideous pastel icon. Going to downgrade to 12.4

Apple, fix this s***!

While I agree with you all and I can not offer a solution as it's in Apple's control.

So let's all send them the appropriate feedback: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Requesting an option to disable artist profile photos, so it would revert back to the way it was before (using an album cover instead.)

In the meantime you can do the following to at least make the missing icon artwork less distracting.

1) Go to Applications

2) Right tap on iTunes

3) Show Package Contents

4) Op the Contents folder -> then the Resources folder

*You will be asked to type your username password a couple times, this is because iTunes files are write protected.*

5) Delete or rename 'MissingArtworkArtist.png'

5) Find 'MissingArtworkNoText.png'

6) Right tap -> Duplicate

7) Rename the 'MissingArtworkNoText copy' to 'MissingArtworkArtist'

8) Restart iTunes

Actually, I've noticed that that isn't true. I purchased new music to test the rule that Apple purchased music gets the artwork. The new albums, which I both purchased and downloaded after this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad update, don't show the artist artwork and have the hideous microphone circle image. I didn't own anything from this artist before. Albums/artists I have never bought through Apple music sometimes have artist artwork instead of the microphone. There doesn't seem to be a discernible pattern that can explain why this is happening, at least to me.

I don't know what Apple is thinking, but it feels like with each update their software and devices are becoming exceedingly difficult to use and troubleshoot. I want to pull my hair out every time something changes because things no longer change for the good. I've set up all of my Apple devices not to auto-update because it screws up everything (but someone my laptop changed it back, which is why I am cursed with this awful update.)

Just go back, while you can. I went back yesterday to iOS9 and iTunes 12.4.3. Everything back to working as it should and it only took me 15 mins.

This is terrible, and it's happening on iOS 10 as well. I don't want to see some random artist image that Apple provides, and I don't want to see that microphone – I want to see the album art from one of the artist's albums, which is the way it has always worked until now.

See also iOS 10 Music App Missing Artist Icons, as well as others, I'm sure.

Yup, disgusted at Apple yet again. it really has gone down the pan. Worst thong to change since they did away with Coverflow. My iTunes library, created from my OWN CDs, now just looks terrible. Have given feedback.

I'm lucky that my iTunes Library is unscathed.

I'm hoping that someone could post full-page screenshots of iTunes in Artist View - where we can see the problem. No one has done this yet, which is unfortunate.

NNot sure what your reading but I've sent some as have others. In fact there's a pic at top of this page?

That's a good question.

When I take a screenshot of the "Artist" page, it looks like this:

There's the oft-maligned "microphone" image, and the round artist "badge." But my album artwork is wholly intact.

Is this what users are talking about when they mention missing artwork?

Yes poikkeus1. The picture of the artist on the left column, not for each album (no problem there).

Many people prefer an album artwork to represent the artist, like before.

Not the promotional photo of the artist pushed by Apple.
Who really wants to see a photo shoot of a 75 years old Ozzy Osbourne to represent his Black Sabbath albums? That's ridiculous.

Anyway, now there's no picture at all so...

Thanks for your confirmation.

I think I know what's happening, now. There may be other issues here, but that circular microphone/artist pic seems to be bothering some users - especially since it can't be edited.

(Frankly, I don't care for the circular microphone/artist pic, either; but I use album view almost exclusively. It's not as much an issue for me.)

I just came back from the Apple Store, where I checked several iMacs/MacBooks for this issue.

ALL had 100% pink microphone icons under Artist View.

Presumably, all iTunes content at Apple Store is downloaded from iTunes.

What this means, I don't know.

But I hate looking at a column of pink microphones.

I could easily stand missing photos, but these ugly rainbow microphones are hideous! We need an option to kill them or pull in an album cover.

This won't solve the missing artwork issue, but if you are feeling daring, you can easily replace the icon asset from within iTunes itself:

It looks like it's a just standard 1200x1200 PNG image.

WARNING: I would make a backup copy of iTunes before doing this.

Here I just made the icon grayscale.