Level 1

29 points

Apple Music "loading artwork" for hours and using virtually all of my system memory

I have a large music library

I upgraded to Catalina earlier

Since upgrading Apple Music has been "loading artwork" for my music

It's using all my memory (24 GB), has taken about 7 hours so far, and doesn't appear to be making much of a difference as most of the albums still don't have artwork

Is there any way I can stop this process?

Or better still, speed it up?

Or configure it so that it isn't slowing down my system to a snail's pace?

Any thoughts or ideas would be gratefully received

Thanks very much

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 7:26 AM

Top-ranking reply

Jesadomo

Level 1

18 points

Posted on Oct 13, 2019 3:10 PM

I might have found a solution: Delete the “Album Artwork” folder inside your User/Music/iTunes folder. I did this and now the Music app is no longer using lots of system memory (In my case is now around 250-300 MB, after taking almost 8 GB in less than 15 minutes). Hope this helps.

Apparently when you upgrade from Mojave it tries to import the iTunes artwork library. Just delete that folder and you’re good to go. After deleting it, I reloaded Music and all my album covers were still there.

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Similar questions

59 replies

Oct 11, 2019 2:56 PM in response to mrnigey

Same issue. I have unchecked the artwork option in Settings but it's still "Loading artwork..." and just consumed 36GB of RAM (24GB swap). What nonsense.

mrnigey Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 12, 2019 11:32 PM in response to yendoggy

Having got to what I thought was the end I now I have a new message in the bottom of Apple Music....

"updating artist artwork"

Thankfully it didn't stay there too long

yendoggy

Level 1

37 points

Oct 13, 2019 9:26 AM in response to Simon Stuart

nope still a disaster the next day after having it run all night... % CPU music ranging from 60 to 125 percent...

between that and the photo id service my computer is CHOKING.

njaussie

Level 1

4 points

Oct 14, 2019 6:16 AM in response to Jesadomo

Thank you!! This worked for me

jducoeur

Level 1

13 points

Oct 14, 2019 2:27 PM in response to Jesadomo

Thank you! Glad to find a reasonably straightforward fix to this (pretty much unforgiveable) bug -- I was starting to get a bit freaked out by it...

tayfos

Level 1

8 points

Oct 21, 2019 4:56 AM in response to jducoeur

Worked for me so far. Thanks. Have been on the phone for two hours and they don't have a clue to why this happens. I guess they should have read your post.

tayfos

Level 1

8 points

Oct 21, 2019 4:59 AM in response to Jesadomo

Works? Thanks for the solution that Apple support could not give me in two hours of phone call

jagotti2

Level 1

4 points

Dec 11, 2019 1:41 PM in response to tayfos

praise jebus!

Jan 17, 2020 4:34 AM in response to Jesadomo

Thanks, that was the solution for me.

mrnigey Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 8, 2019 11:37 PM in response to mrnigey

I left my Mac on overnight. This morning it was totally unresponsive and I had to restart it via the button at the back of the machine.

Interestingly Apple Music has stopped "loading artwork" for my music although I can see not all albums have been reunited with their artwork.

I have about 900 GBs of music so it's a lot of albums

Anyway, I'd rather have a load of albums without artwork than the memory hogging problem of yesterday.

Jaime E.

Level 1

8 points

Oct 9, 2019 4:11 PM in response to blackdogaudio

I had good progress during the night since roughly 10.000 songs got their artwork (through Energy Saver I prevented the hard disk to sleep). To my surprise, Get Album Artwork got almost 500 additional. It appears it's over and the balance is 2.000 artworks missing.

Stouters

Level 1

4 points

Oct 9, 2019 11:36 PM in response to blackdogaudio

What was hanging and eating memory hand over fist last night was accomplished in about five minutes this morning via the Music>File>Library>Get Album Artwork route, and looking at the activity monitor it was churning through the artwork at good speed. Not sure if something changed server-side or what, but for the moment all seems to be well. Which is nice...

mrnigey Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 11, 2019 5:45 AM in response to mrnigey

Apple Music is still working its way through my music. I'd estimate it's about 60% complete.

I'm quitting Apple Music every time that memory gets to about 35-40 GB on Activity Monitor. If I let it go on longer than that then my Mac just hangs and the only way to restart is to press the button at the back of the machine.

Oct 17, 2019 6:52 AM in response to mrnigey

same issue for me.

following this ....

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Apple Music "loading artwork" for hours and using virtually all of my system memory