Playlist Art on iPhone after IOS 13

My playlist art, once I moved to iOS13.1 and later to 13.2 were scrambled and incorrect. I finally solved this by adding the artwork that I wanted for the playlist in iTunes and then re-syncing the phone.

Step-by-step

1) In iTunes, choose Music to see all your playlists on the left side.

2) Select the playlist that has the wrong cover on your phone so that the playlist and songs appear in the right pane.

3) Double-click the album art on the top of that list (yes it works) and a popup window will allow you to select an image. Just select an image that you want. I used a 500x500 pixel jpg or png image that I copied from one of the songs in the playlist.

4) Do this for all the playlists that you have.

5) Sync your phone

This worked for me - after trying unsuccessfully to solve by

1) changing all the artwork on each song,

2) deleting all music and re-synching,

3) deleting the Album Art cache and rebuilding.

I found a workaround that did the trick for me, but it's slightly labor-intensive, and not the same thumbnail as you had before. Assign each playlist it's own thumbnail. Tap the playlist thumbnail in Itunes, and you'll be prompted to save an image of your choice. I used album covers or pictures I found on Google Images, and saved to my PC. I added my own text to some of them, using MS Paint. I changed the thumbnails on iTunes in my computer, synced with my phone, and no more incorrect, shifting images.

I have iPhone SE with iOS 13, and iTunes on Windows 10, and, like you, I create/edit playlists in iTunes, then sync my phone. However, before syncing, I noticed that the playlists in my phone had the option to upload a different thumbnail by tapping the existing thumbnail on the phone itself, so that's probably another thing to try for those who don't sync with iTunes. I'm actually happier now in a way, because I got to choose my own thumbnails instead of the default, so a happy accident.

Here is how mine got fixed.

1. On the phone, I permanently deleted all playlists. This also deleted the playlist in iTunes.
2. Sync'd the phone (removing all music/playlist).
3. Created playlists manually again in iTunes. (I know, its a heck of a work if the collection is large).
4. in iTunes, selected the playlists I wanted to Sync to phone and hit the sync button.

Playlists are back on the phone without any issues with the album art now.

I'm on iOS 13.1 and iPhone 7.

Hope it helps.

I have the same problem with my iPhone X and iOS 13 through 13.2.

TL;DR: it still isn't fixed for me after going through Apple support., i went with an alternative music app. I do have some workarounds but none that good.

I called up Apple and tried to explain to support my problem and I even made video recreating the issue and the support person on the other end could not seem to understand what my problem was. Eventually after giving a frame by frame explanation of what was happening, they went with the old faithful "get 'em off the phone" response of having me do a complete wipe and treat the phone as a new device and sync again. He said that if it still continued through that, then we could start the process of filing a bug request.

Throughout every step of explaining the bug reporting process he made sure to mention how much work it is and how it may take a long time to get an answer if ever, and everything possible to dissuade me from wanting to do it for my apparently small issue.

I finally had the time to do the complete wipe and factory restore and then sync my playlists all from scratch and the issue STILL EXISTS.

In the end, I picked up Cs Player off the App Store and moved the built in Music.app deep into my iOS app junk folder.

The only "solution" I was able to find, and it is hardly a solution, is that in iTunes (and I guess Music in Catalina but I haven't even thought about upgrading to that dumpster fire) if you go to each individual playlist that you sync and add album art to the playlist and not the song (click on the playlist and then add the art to the box on the top next to the playlist name) that will carry over between syncing.

You need to use iTunes to add artwork to your playlists. Even if it looks like there is artwork there. Copy from one song and paste it into the Playlist artwork. It seems the phone will just choose art work at random is not added specifically to the playlist. I had to do this for all my playlists. Tough.

Looks like the 13.3.1 update has finally fixed this issue! I just updated my iPhone X and all the playlist cover art is back to normal.

To anyone else having this issue, do the update and fingers crossed it will be resolved for you.

I have an iPhone 6s. I was having the same problem with scrambled playlist art for the past 6 months, since iOS 13 at the end of September 2019..... until NOW. I have just downloaded iOS 13.3.1 and my playlist art is FINALLY back to normal and no longer scrambling each time I play a new song in my library. Better late than never! Whew! I hope my act of sharing this good news will give others enough hope to download iOS 13.3.1.

It seems this issue finally got resolved with Ios 13.3.1 - at least with my iPad. ****, it only tok Apple 6 months to fix this. I am going to be very cautious in installing any new Ios in the future until they've worked out all the bugs.

I just did the latest IOS update 13.3.1 and it’s corrected!!! Yay!! All the album artwork is now correct and working. That sucked! But it’s fixed. Grab the update. 😀

Problem fixed for me after updating to iOS 13.3.1 ... did Not need to resync my iPhone XS Max with my Windows 10 iTunes.

It is doing the same for my Iphone XMax too, it is frustrating because I have the correct art of each single album and now that I have some new songs of artists I like I don't want to sync because of this problem.

I don't know if this would help guys but what I do is go to the playlist, duplicate it by putting any name then erase the wrongfully displayed playlist and then rename it with the actual artist and it is fixed. I must say that it's kinda a pain in the butt, mostly when you have 50 to 60 playlists like I do :/ I hope this helps guys and the next update fix this problem.

I found the same problem after upgrading my iPhone XR to IOS 13.1.2

I have been testing and looking at the results with both the Apple Music app and CS Music Player app on the same iPhone.

The results were interesting as well as surprising:

There is a definite artwork disconnect in playlists when using the Apple Music app.

There is NO PLAYLIST/ARTWORK DISCONNECT WHATSOEVER when using the CS Music Player app on the same iPhone!!

To me this means that playing around with the music library on my iPhone would be a total waste of time. The problem is not a library or database problem: The problem is with the IOS 13 version of the Apple Music app. I am sure Apple with look at these posts and eventually fix the problem. Since this is probably not a priority for Apple, I would suggest using the CS Music Player app from the App Store. (I purchased this years ago when the Apple Music app had a different problem that Apple was slow to fix, so I don't remember how much it costs but I am pretty sure it was under $5)

I might have found a work-around for this issue:

In iTunes ”get info” on one track in a playlist.

Copy the artwork from one song (for instance).

Click at the top of the playlist where it might show the artwork for the playlist.

Paste the artwork you copied.

Repeat for the 100 or more Playlists you have.

I had to do this even where a Playlist was only one album.

Sync your phone.

Hopefully you will see the artwork you copied for each list.

iTunes seems to create artwork showing bits of several album covers for say, a band. When they transfer to the iPhone, that artwork either doesn’t exist, so it reuses what it has, which is different from what iTunes had.

Hope this helps some.

My iPhone 7 died a week after the iPhone 11 release date. The artwork was all messed up on my 7 when I purchased the new phone. I posted this before but Apple took down at least one of my posts. Have no idea why. Anyway I had to start over. I did the old “drag and drop” of each playlist one by one. I edited the main artwork for each playlist after they were successfully on my phone and the iTunes phone playlists. It worked for me. I took screenshots of artwork off the Discogs site and have had no problems. All 400 plus playlists have the correct artwork. My playlists are cd’s, iTUNES music, a mix of both etc. I gave up on the Syncing of playlists when I had my 7. An Apple supervisor answered yes to me on the phone when I asked if “drag and drop” would work for the ios13. Just don’t add too many songs at once was all she said. The only issue I had was with just one song I purchased off iTunes. It wouldn’t show up in “Music” on the iPhone side of iTunes but eventually I got it in. Time consuming, yes. Worth the time, yes. I’m retired so time wasn’t an issue like it would be for anyone working.

I had this issue. I had to replace the playlist artwork with a new version of the art. The actual track art was fine. I found it wasn’t all of my playlists though and once I had fixed the specific ones the rest sorted themselves out. I have spotted a new odd issue where one or two playlist art would swap to another if you touched the art of the playlist. Again replaced the art on those ones and now all good.