AMPArtworkAgent using 90% CPU

Yes, I'm seeing this problem also.

My fan started whirring, and a few other apps slowed down, which I didn't expect on this new iMac with lots of RAM and CPU, so I checked Activity Monitor and it shows both AMPArtworkAgent and AMPLibraryAgent at 100% CPU or higher. Quitting these processes and then starting the Music app worked as expected (with ~2% CPU usage with just normal Music window, not MiniPlayer).

My Configuration

• macOS Catalina 10.15.6 (19G2021)
• iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)
• 3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9
• 128 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
• AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB

My Steps to Reproduce (your mileage may vary)

1. Have the Music app running for several days in MiniPlayer view
2. Play Radio station off and on, but likely paused for at least 8 hours, then attempted to resume playing radio station again

Expected Behavior

I should be able to close the Music app, and the processes should not take 100% of my CPU(s)

Actual Behavior

• The Music app would no longer respond, the fan started whirring, and some apps were noticeably less responsive
• After Force closing the Music app, with Activity Monitor, AMPArtworkAgent, AMPDeviceDiscoverAgent, and AMPLibraryAgent were still running
• AMPArtworkAgent was using 102.4% CPU
• AMPLibraryAgent was using 100% CPU

I had this issue too. The important part of that statement is "had". I tried everything, as all of the other reporters of the issue have done. And nothing helped in the long term.

For YEARS i've had Apple Music MiniPlayer in the corner of my screen with no problems, so i never considered it to be the culprit, but for whatever reason, once i opened Apple Music in its normal window (no MiniPlayer), the AMPArtworkAgent, AMPLibraryAgent, etc high CPU usage went away. That was several weeks ago. Never came back.

Now, i am starting to experiment with running Apple Music in the MiniPlayer again, to see what happens. If the issue returns, then i will be right back to using the full window. But maybe it will stay calm and not come back. That would be great because i really like having the MiniPlayer available on all of my desktops.

Greetings, lew_b.

I see that there's a service using most of CPU on your MacBook Air. Good job in isolating the issue to AMPArtworkAgent, and I'm glad to help with this.

How to update the software on your Mac -- Make sure your Mac is up to date. If an update is available, please be sure that you have a recent backup of your Mac to keep your information safe: Back up your Mac with Time Machine -- Once the update has completed, see if the Music application is working as expected.

If your Mac was already updated or the issue persists, see if the Music application is downloading album artwork for your music collection. If it is, give it some time for it to complete. If it isn't, Quit apps on Mac quit the Music app, if it's open, then restart your Mac: How to turn your Mac on or off. Once it's back to the Desktop, see how the Music app is responding.

Let me know how that goes.

Take care.

Ha, wow, that fixed it for me too. Just running fullscreen or in a normal window instead of the MiniPlayer brought my load average while streaming Apple Music down from ~15 to <2. Not sure why the MiniPlayer is broken, but that's unfortunate because it's a really nice feature. Music has been significantly more buggy than iTunes ever was, at least in my experience. Maybe it'll be better in macOS 11?

Glad it seems to have helped you, Tim. I've been running MiniPlayer as i mentioned above and so far everything has been fine/normal. I'll report back if anything negative returns but for now it seems good.

Today the culprit processes AMP'd up again (pun intended). As soon as i went to the regular window view of Apple music everything calmed down again. So here's to hoping macOS 11 makes some noticeable improvements in this, as Tim Kite said in his post.

The same thing just happened to me with Catalina (ugh).

I was running iTunes Music in MiniPlayer mode. I noticed the artwork for some songs weren't coming up (along with the up next list of songs).

I pushed pause to answer the door and when I came back AMPArttworkAgent had the fan running fun blast and ate up 100% of the CPU.

Force quit the process and it all seems fine again.

This is very tentative (it's only been a few hours), but by shrinking the mini player to its minimum size (so it doesn't show artwork), I've not been seeing CPU spikes while streaming music with the mini player. Expanding it so it shows artwork seems to (fairly quickly) show the CPU load increase.

You can use the mini-player without high CPU use (in my experience), but the artwork needs to be hidden (so shrink the mini-player vertically until the artwork disappears). Otherwise, yes, the full window doesn’t seem to exhibit the issue either. It’s kind of a shame since the mini-player’s artwork view is typically the best way to see the album art.

I just did a restore of my library and I'm seeing the same high CPU usage by AMPArtworkAgent. But when I open the Activity window (under the Window menu), it appears that album artwork is indeed being updated (it reports which songs it's currently working on). I have nearly 24,000 songs and it's only been running for about 4 hours at this point. But I have my Energy Saver settings set to "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" and I expect it will finish eventually. Will follow up in a few days either way.

Doug, please check back in next week with an update of all good or... oh no!

Although i have been running AMP in regular window mode without issue for several weeks, i am giving your suggestion a try right now to see if i can get back to using the miniplayer without album art like i used to.

Nope, i saw the post. I'm asking you to report back on the long(ish)-term results of the library rebuild. My experience has been that the symptoms can come back after a period of time so i stopped trusting anything that happens or doesn't happen in the short term. ;-)

As i mentioned, i gave it a try as well and will see what happens. Hopefully we both experience minimal CPU usage going forward while using the MiniPlayer.