Q: Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5

Yes, the same problem here. Apple should fix it I hope

Well, here's what I've experienced:

I had Apple Music subscription in the past but I've canceled it for months now. Having zero purchases of Apple Music all my album artwork in Artist view was replaced by that super-ugly mic, except for 3 artists, no obvious reason why. Yesterday I renewed the subscription for a month, and when I updated the library, almost all the artists have now their photo in the small circle.

Better than the mic of course, but still ugly and meaningless, as most pics are bad, and besides there are artists that I know a song or two, but I don't know (and don't care to know) their face.

I hope they'll fix this soon, although something deep inside is telling me that they won't.

Sadly, Apple is ruining step by step what once was great piece of software. Just like OS X...

These is already a huge thread on this issue created and added to by hundred's of users in the past few days.  It appears to be a 'change' that Apple introduced, though no one seems clear if its a mistake or not - no word from Apple on the sudden arrival of the microphone.  Some users report Artist art appears for material purchased through iTunes but others have found the source of the material makes no difference.  Some users appear to report the problem exists in both OSX and IOS, or only in OSX.  It appears in the main from the thread this isn't about Album Art, that remains in most cases reported, this is about Apple now deciding seemingly to replace Album Art with Artist Art which seems to originate from Apple Music Promoted Artist graphics (seemingly lots of artists don't have an Apple promotion picture hence the pink microphone of death).

There are last time I checked no fixes being provided by Apple, nor no quick and simple solutions in that thread.  I understand some users have reverted back to a previous version of iTunes and turned off auto update, though I'm unclear how you actually do that (can anyone provide instructions?).

So for now, it appears we are stuck with the pink microphone of death in place of album or other art.

FWIW, I posted a radar to Apple on this issue. My radar was closed as a duplicate of another issue (which I can't see). So know that Apple is aware of the issue.

The "Apple Recommended" answer posted by the Granto102 on this thread doesn't solve the core problems of this issue:

1. Artist artwork does not appear on iTunes on macOS.

2. Artist artwork is different between iTunes on macOS and Music on iOS. iOS typically has more artwork than iTunes.

There is no reason why iOS and iTunes should be different. They should be consistent. I think we should realize these apps are based on different backend data sources.

I'm really surprised this bug exists. Certainly music and the iTunes ecosystem is high priority to Apple. Artwork is important, but more importantly I think consistency between iOS and iTunes is essential.

This is pretty sick! Not only is the artist artwork gone, and the microphones that suck, now also several of the few pics that appear on some artists are just wrong! Look below; this is not Terje Rypdal, it looks more like Jack DeJohnette to me. Where are thos images coming from? When is this going to be fixed? Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!

Hi all, experiencing exactly the same issue as Grant in the 'Artists' view of iTunes 12.5.1.

All of my music in my library is purchased, but a significant number of artists are missing the artwork (just showing the default microphone). The actual album artwork shows when an artist is selected.

I've tried deleting artists tracks and then re-downloading, but this makes no difference. I cannot find any reason why certain artists have no artwork. Apple have obviously not got this working correctly.

Running iTunes on a Mac, 10.11.6.

Pete.

@ Granto 102:

Here we are talking about iTunes 12.5, not about iOS.

Did you try this in iTunes? If not, please post your iOS concerns elsewhere, thanks.

WOW! I got so excited when I read your post. However, I do not think it works unless you subscribe to Apple Music. I do not have any of those preference options and I'm using Sierra and iTunes 12.5.1 and iOS 10. No apple Music options are available on iOS or macOS.

Well, it's only a guess... Since I do not subscribe to Apple Music. If it is true, it does lend evidence to the idea that Apple removed this feature and turned it into something you get if you pay...