album artwork in Catalina Music

I used "select all" for my album covers in the Albums display, then right clicked on "Get Album Artwork" and most reappeared.

I have not checked my entire library however what I have checked has the artwork that I embedded into my tracks before I imported them into the Music app. I created a new Music Library and imported all the tracks into it because I was consolidating several libraries into one which is not synced. This more or less confirms the assumption of BitPerfectRichard above that if you use the conversion process the "Music App" does not use the embedded Art but if you import a new file it does.

Also FYI I ran into another problem as I originally was planning on maintaining my multiple iTunes libraries until I discovered that the Music App now stores all of the tracks for multiple libraries into one Music Folder. I set up three libraries with a separate Music folder for each library and imported the music and all went well. Then when the latest revision of Catalina was installed the Music app was also updated and when I opened each library to import a new file it changed the music folder and stored the new imports for each library all in the same folder. The worse part was that it did not move the existing files that I originally imported when I set up each library, That was when I gave up and consolidated all of them. Since then no problems.

I have a small Synced iTunes Match library on another computer running High Sierra and will not be converting it to Catalina until Apple makes up their mind what they are going to do.

Good luck, the only thing I found that worked was to reload all my music into a new library. Luckily I had it backed up. I deleted everything and started over. That was a three months ago and everything is still working fine with Catalina Music. Nothing else worked. However all my music is local and I don't sync with iCloud.

Here is a fix for some of you:

So, I've been posting to and following this thread for a few months now. One thing that has come to light is that while each contributor to this thread has an Album Artwork issue, these issues actually vary quite a bit - in reality each issue should probably be broken out into a different thread. For example, here are just a few of the different scenarios:

1. Artwork shows up in the Music app, but the artwork is not embedded (and will not embed) into the actual MP3/AAC file. Here is how to tell if this is your problem: (1) Open the Music App, (2) Select "Albums" under "Library" in the left-hand column, (3) In the right-hand pane, the artwork for all of your albums will show correctly, (4) Now select "Songs" under "Library in the left-hand column, (5) In the right-hand pane, right-click on a song that you know is problematic, choose "Get Info", and then go to the "Artwork" tab in the resulting window. If the "Artwork" tab is blank that means that the artwork is not embedded into the song itself - it is just stored in a database somewhere (which is how you can see the artwork when using the "Albums" view.)
2. Artwork is embedded in the MP3/AAC file, but the artwork does not show up in the Music app.
3. Artwork is embedded in the MP3/AAC file, and the artwork does show up in the Music app in certain places but it doesn't show up everywhere within the Music app.
4. Artwork is embedded in the MP3/AAC file, and the artwork shows up just fine within the Music app on the primary computer, but the Artwork does not show up in the Music app on other computers that are sharing the library.
5. Artwork is embedded in the MP3/AAC file, and the artwork shows up just fine within the Music app on the primary computer, but the Artwork does not show up in the Music app on other users' profiles (i.e. different user logins) on the same computer.
6. There are many other scenarios, but the above are the ones that seem to crop up the most in this thread...

If your issue falls into the category represented by item #1 above, then the following might help you:

1. Go to www.dougscripts.com and get the "Tracks Without Embedded Artwork" script, which is located here.
2. Go to www.dougscripts.com and get the "Re-Embed Artwork" script, which is located here.
3. Read the instructions on how to install and run these scripts - there are a few steps to follow but they aren't difficult to do. The instructions are located on the download pages for each script and are also included in the downloaded files.
4. Instal the two scripts.
5. Open the Apple Music app and select a swath of songs that you want to analyze (Note: you might want to start out by just selecting a couple of songs until you've tested the solution and you're satisfied that this method will work for you).
6. Now run the "Tracks Without Embedded Artwork" script. This will analyze all of the songs that you have just selected and it will determine which ones don't have artwork embedded into their MP3/AAC/etc files. All of the songs that are determined to lack embedded artwork will automatically be added to a custom playlist (i.e. _Tracks_Without_Embedded_Artwork).
7. Now go to the newly-created "_Tracks_Without_Embedded_Artwork" playlist and select a swath of songs (Note: again, you probably want to start out by just selecting a couple of songs until you're sure everything is working as desired).
8. Now run the "Re-Embed Artwork" script. This will go out and find the artwork that the Music app is using and then it will embed that artwork into the song files (e.g. MP3, AAC, etc.) themselves.
9. If this fixed your problems, go back to www.dougscripts.com and give that guy a ten'r or at least a five'r. :) Note: I am not affiliated with dougscripts.com in any way whatsoever.

Of course, you could just get the "Re-Embed Artwork" script and skip the first part of the procedure above, but then you'll need to manually find all of the songs that are missing embedded artwork. If ALL of your songs are missing embedded artwork, then this would probably be the easiest way to go, but if only some of your songs are missing embedded artwork, then I'd do the whole procedure using both scripts.

All of this "script" stuff probably sounds intimidating to a lot of folks, but dougscripts has made it very painless - you won't be running anything in Terminal or typing commands or anything like that. These are basically just little apps that you have to manually copy into a specific folder before they can be launched. Follow the instructions and it should be easy peasy.

NIKMS - Are you still having this issue? I purchased a new MacBook Pro in January... out of the box on Catalina... After hours and hours (and to date 4 months), I have gotten to the executive team support. We've recorded the issue... engineering has been able to re-create the issue. They seem to know what the issue is and that it does exist.

The issue as it seems is that changing any metadata and then playing a track will create an issue (sometimes you have to leave the Music app before it explodes your album). It seems that this is also related to missing artwork. I've stopped using my Music app completely because it's wrecking my library.

The good news... they know the issue exists now. The bad news... my executive rep can't commit to when the issue will be resolved. Great experience with them after reaching the executive team and in working to identify the issue, but now it's up to me to wait and see if and when it is resolved. So basically kicked to the curb with no commitment from them to follow up with me unless engineering needs more info. IMO it should've never made it through beta testing.

I'm hopeful that the update will happen in the next iOS update, but there has only been one of those in the four months I've owned the newest laptop. I would urge you to contact the executive team and report the issue -- I emailed Mr. Cook (once) and Mr. Federighi (twice) before being contacted.

To see the issue in action, simply change the name of any album (add an extra word to the end to make it easy to find). Play tracks off the newly named album... exit the app.... wait for awhile... and ta-da your stuff should be jacked up when you enter the app again.

As you can guess, with over 12000 album titles, I'm kinda cranky about the mess!

I started setting up my new Mac mini 2020 on May 3. The artwork was broken many different ways. I had to ask it to forget the downloaded art, quit the app and ask it to download the art again. I had to use Doug scripts to resurrect embedded artwork that was showing up in half the places, but none of the main ones. Epic amounts of copy/pasting. I wound up basically redoing my entire library, roughly 1000 albums. Some artwork grabbed from the old computer with working iTunes. some new ones google image search style. Not all my files had the artwork embedded even though they displayed art in the old iTunes and on my phone. Also, new Music app doesn't embed the artwork it downloads to all the tracks, usually just track 1 of the album. Feature loss of multiple artwork for albums was noticed about halfway through the nightmare, I never invested deeply there. But all told it was a total mess.

The broken artwork would cause the AMPArtwork agent to go crazy on CPU use in Activity Monitor. The visualizer was down to 25-30 FPS with serious chugging-- on a brand new machine. Music App crashed often. After fixing it all manually, background CPU use was back to normal, visualizer back to solid 61 FPS and smooth, no crashes. It took me about 21 days during the covid shutdown, so it was all I did, day and night, for 3 weeks. I stopped cooking and eating properly, thinking it would only take a few days. Still touching it up now. Basically the entire month of May. My wife was wondering why all the drama, and why wasn't I cooking for her anymore? I really had to touch almost each and every song (about 9000) because the problems were all over the place, no quick fix. Also the amount of time any database changes would take was insane compared to my old iTunes 12 on my 2006 Mac Pro which is still superior to the new product in many ways, but software updates nerfed its ability to sync with iPhones. The hardware is indeed better and everything is faster on the new machine after I fixed it all, but it was an F/ing nightmare. New phone has all the fixed artwork, it's a beautiful thing. Now if only the Photos app will ever get done scanning its library in the background constantly......Agreed they probably don't read these pages, don't care, or don't respond. But like any cult I still haven't left and probably won't. Steve Jobs is dead. Long live Steve Jobs.

@VT67: similar issue, I want to use the same library (on external drive) on different devices, same problem. just talked to apple support. They say it's working as intended. Music in Catalina saves album artwork in a location away from your library, so you cannot use the same library on different devices. I even tried putting that folder on dropbox and symlinking to it on both devices. that doesn't work either.

I personally have had it Music and went back to iTunes. There's a nifty little app called "retroactive" so it can run in Catalina. Now I can at least use my library again.

The only way I found to keep my cover art was to make my iTunes Library in Catalina ( Which is now called Music ) strictly local with all tracks stored locally and the only way to do that is to isolate it from Apple. In preferences make sure that Show iTunes Store and Automatically Update Artwork are not checked. In other words don't sign into your iTunes account from the Music app and everything will be local so if you add artwork manually it should stay with your music files as your library will be isolated. This may not be possible for you depending on how you add files and purchase music. I either rip CD's or add files manually, As I said before I keep another library on a separate Mac running High Sierra and iTunes that is connected to my Apple Music Account and all the tracks are stored in iCloud. If I purchase music I do it there, download it and then add the files manually to the Music App on my MacBook Pro by importing the tracks. I hope this makes sense to you. It is the only way I have found to keep my custom album art and not have Apple replace it or delete it. It seems to me they could fix these problems but it appears they just don't care. It is a shame as otherwise I like the Music App.

Now if I could only find a way to prevent the Catalina Music App from determining gapless playback on all of my locally stored tracks every time I add an album. I can stop it after it starts but it is just annoying that it try's to check my entire library every time I import new music. It seems there is always some issue you can't resolve.

Let me know how you make out.

Roger

@tko54321 you are seeing a regression Apple introduced to music app with version 1.0.4. Sadly the regression remains unaddressed in version 1.0.5.

Also see: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251226822

It’s not a solution but if you right click on each album and select ‘get info’

If you can see the artwork thumbnail you can left click on ‘Artwork’

Then left click on the large picture and it should add a green tick to the thumbnail. It’s a bit temperamental on my Mac but two ore three clicks in different places on the large picture generally does it

As I said not really practical for thousands of albums though and add album artwork doesn’t work either

Don't underestimate the importance of "cleaning up" media files, as this probably helps resolve many issues highlighted (OS bugs notwithstanding). Also referred to as garbage in, garbage out :-)

Most (or a great part of) media today is downloaded or copied from a variety of sources and third parties, legit or less so. In other words, metadata mayhem. Use apps like MusicBrainz and editors like Tagr, Yate or others before importing any media into iTunes / Music. Also, periodically run apps like BeaTunes or some of Doug's great Apple scripts for maintenance purposes.

dburke, if you're comfortable running Python scripts, try this one- it retrieved all my missing artwork, including stuff that "Get Album Artwork" couldn't find:

https://github.com/regosen/get_cover_art

Here's the solution:

https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=mxreembedartwork

Re-embed artwork is what you need! If you proceed in the way suggested in "Read me" file you'll solve.

I'm doing it right now. I first tried with 350 of my 4200 songs and it works perfectly!

Take a look at doug's scripts, very usefull tools there: https://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php

I'm having a similar experience, I lost the Album Artwork in Music on MacBook in Album view (it's still there in Song info) after switching to iTunes library on external disk. After rebuilding MacBook's Music library, the Album Artwork is back, but now it's lost on external drive's Music. Every time I rebuild the Music library on either MacBook or external drive I get the Album Artwork back on that device, but loose it on the other one (although it's visible in the Song info). The artwork is stored in User Library/Containers/com.apple.APMArtworkAgent/Data/Documents, but apparently it cannot be shared by multiple Music libraries.