How to change album cover on Apple Music

Okay, in case it helps, this did the trick for me:

1. In iTunes, I unchecked the music sync, and then synced the phone.
2. Confirmed there were no more playlists on the iPhone.
3. Checked the lists of SONGS -- yep, they were still there.
4. On the iPhone went to settings >> iPhone storage and deleted all the songs and playlists.
5. Back in iTunes, did another sync (making sure that the "sync music" was UNCHECKED)
6. Checked the phone -- no songs, no playlists.
7. In iTunes, checked a few TEST playlists on to sync to the phone.
8. Synced the phone.
9. Playlists were added AND they had the proper artwork
10. Satisfied, I checked all the playlists (meaning, I did not check "sync my whole library")
11. Clicked sync.

And then I waited...

And that did the trick. Like magic!

-

Rationale: I reasoned that for some bizarre reason, the iPhone was pulling images to build playlists from the songs, and so somewhere that process was garbled. The albums and songs had the proper images, but the playlists did not. So I figured "resetting" those relationships might work. So, I experimented by deleting all the songs and albums of a single playlist, and then reloading from scratch. My guess is that this "reset" the song >> album >> playlist image association.

My reasoning might have been wrong, but hey, I can't complain about the results -- 13,000 + songs all look perfectly lovely now with all their correct images, and I did not have to reload images from any source.

I figured out the simple fix. Couple iPhone to your iTunes account. Go to the MUSIC tab and unclick the "SYNCH Music onto iPhone" button in the upper left. Then, click SYNCH on lower right. Once done, start the process over except CLICK the "SYNCH Music onto iPhone" button in the upper left and then click SYNCH on lower right. Whalla.....all the album art is immediately corrected!!

Just got a 12 Pro Max yesterday, transferred everything via quick start. Everything went great except my music. I first had duplicates of everything... and I mean everything! I went to my settings > music > downloaded music > edit > deleted all songs. I then resynced my phone & with itunes and that took care of the duplicates. Unfortunately it started another problem... it was showing the same album cover for multiple albums. So, I did the same thing again: settings > music > downloaded music > edit > deleted all songs. This time, I rebooted my phone & resynched with itunes with the "sync music" option unchecked. Then went back & selected that sync music option again & chose the albums I wanted. Re-synched & everything is correct again. Hope this helps some of you with the same problems that I had.

I actually just resolved my issue. It began with switching from iTunes to the Music app on my iMac. In MUSC go to your phone on the left. Once in your phone select the music tab. Check the and uncheck the Sync music onto... . I chose to SYNC selected artists. Then chose an artist that I may have only one album of. I then selected SYNC at the bottom and that artist will be put on your phone. I have over a TB of music so I can't select my whole library. I think the issue lies between creating a new "library" file between the old iTunes app and the new Apple Music. Anyway, it now works.

I have sorted this out now. This is what I did:

• remove all the music from my phone
• synchronised it with the computer and re-started it
• selected "sync selected albums, artist, songs, and playlists"
• chose the albums I wanted on the phone, and the corresponding artists
• synchronised the phone again. This time it showed the process of transferring all 1,500 or so songs
• re-started the phone again and checked that the album covers matched the albums
• changed the settings back to "manage music manually".

I'm not suggesting all of those steps were strictly necessary, but choosing both the albums and the artists seemed the key thing that made it work.

I followed advice from below, thank you so much. But - I had to go into settings>>music>>show all purchases --- and turned it off. Then, it worked like a charm.

Edward_Martin_III

User level:

Level 1

(9 points)

Nov 30, 2020 8:46 AM in response to Edward_Martin_III

Okay, in case it helps, this did the trick for me:

1. In iTunes, I unchecked the music sync, and then synced the phone.
2. Confirmed there were no more playlists on the iPhone.
3. Checked the lists of SONGS -- yep, they were still there.
4. On the iPhone went to settings >> iPhone storage and deleted all the songs and playlists.
5. Back in iTunes, did another sync (making sure that the "sync music" was UNCHECKED)
6. Checked the phone -- no songs, no playlists.
7. In iTunes, checked a few TEST playlists on to sync to the phone.
8. Synced the phone.
9. Playlists were added AND they had the proper artwork
10. Satisfied, I checked all the playlists (meaning, I did not check "sync my whole library")
11. Clicked sync.

And then I waited...

And that did the trick. Like magic!

-

Rationale: I reasoned that for some bizarre reason, the iPhone was pulling images to build playlists from the songs, and so somewhere that process was garbled. The albums and songs had the proper images, but the playlists did not. So I figured "resetting" those relationships might work. So, I experimented by deleting all the songs and albums of a single playlist, and then reloading from scratch. My guess is that this "reset" the song >> album >> playlist image association.

My reasoning might have been wrong, but hey, I can't complain about the results -- 13,000 + songs all look perfectly lovely now with all their correct images, and I did not have to reload images from any source.

I followed a previous post and it worked for me. :)

1. Connect to iTunes and uncheck ALL your albums and playlists etc. Then press apply. So according to iTunes, there should be no music on your phone.
2. Go to Settings >> General >> iPhone Storage >> click on Photos. Then you should see some Photos storage, despite unchecking all music. You should be able to delete this here.
3. Connect to iTune and recheck the music you want and APPLY. Hopefully that should fix it! :)

@macforthewin

General point: We add music to the iPhone by checking playlist/albums/songs(etc) in iTunes and then click APPLY.

If it says SYNC, then you have not changed any choice of boxes (but a playlist may need to be updated with a SYNC, eg extra songs).

@macforthewin - you said there was no APPLY, so I assume you made no changes. Are all music boxes unticked?

So, you need to connect to iTunes and make sure you UNTICK all ticked boxes in the music section on the iPhone. There are many sections, eg. Playlists, Albums, Songs, Artists etc. Make sure ALL of them have NOTHING ticked. Then press APPLY (assuming you have made at least one change).

Unless you do the above, you cannot delete the data from this route:

Settings >> General >> iPhone Storage >> Music (not "Photos" as I wrote earlier!)

But if you have unticked all music, iPhone does allow you to delete the data that is there, because it's the music+artworks are connected to anything in iTunes.

In my experience, it was because all the music and data was transferred to a new phone. Then iTunes got confused when making a change for the first time on the new phone.

So if all is unticked you can delete the data in Settings >> General >> iPhone Storage >> Music

Maybe restart and then check the storage of Music in Settings is zero.

Then re-connect to iTunes, tick the choices you want and press APPLY. That should be it.

(Host Mac: M1 MBP running 11.4; iPhone 12: iOS 14.6)

Glad I found this thread. Bought an iPhone 12 mini recently and just today, I was out on the road when I noticed an album was missing. Entirely missing - no songs, no art, just >poof< gone. The iPhone had over 90GB unused. No way to be sure if it was the only missing album. I just waited to get home and sync. Once home, I confirmed that the album was still on my Mac's Library. The sync successfully copied the missing album to the iPhone - but afterwards, about one out of three of all my albums had some other album's cover art. The host Mac's cover art associations appeared to still be correct. I turned off music syncing for the iPhone, re-sync'd to remove all music, then re-checked the box to sync music and left for dinner. When I got back, the sync was done and some random sampling failed to find any remaining mismatched cover art. So.. just wipe it clean, then re-sync. I recommend doing this before bedtime, esp. if you have a large library and don't want to do without your phone while it copies.

Had this exact problem. Have had iPhone 12 for 2 months, and finally synced it with USB cord to update a few playlists. After, half the songs had the wrong music album covers. 4 hrs of Apple online tech support and phone call later (after updating to Big Sur 11.4), tech help amounted to: delete all your music from phone, attempt sync again (this is for 17GB of music). Ended tech support and did the following solo: first, backup your library & playlists on an external drive and export your playlists just in case something goes wrong. If you have thousands of songs on playlists (some from old CDs, too) like I do, just do this step for peace of mind. Second, with the phone not connected to your computer, get rid of all the music on your phone: go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music and swipe on All Songs and hit Delete. Then go to the Music app and delete all the playlists, so you see no songs or playlists when you're done. Connect you phone to your computer, and uncheck Sync Music. Sync your phone to confirm that there are no songs or playlists that are synchronizing. Check Sync Music, and test one playlist to make sure it works. If it does, sync the rest. If anything goes wrong during this process, no worries, you have your backup music/playlists on the external drive. Note: upgrading to Big Sur likely had no effect on this issue and was an unnecessary step, because the problem persisted afterward. My guess is that there is a database issue between my old phone, new phone, and iTunes, so that the problem only showed up once I tried to sync the new phone to my laptop. If that's the case, the problem has to be fixed by Apple to avoid the issue altogether.

I tried again, this time rebooting my phone after deleting all songs (and then setting up to sync again with iTunes). So far so good. All songs I've checked so far including ones that had wrong album art before have the correct album covers.

Thanks for this post and many of the answers.

This happened to my 12 Pro Max, most of the songs had wrong album covers. After reading many comments here, this is what I did and I got back all my songs with correct album covers.

1- Connect my phone to iTunes on my laptop. Unchecked the “Sync Music” box then confirm to “Remove” all playlists on my phone. Then hit “Sync”. So at this point all of the playlists and songs were gone, my phone had 0 songs.

2- Checked the “Sync Music” box then hit “Sync” again. All of my songs/playlists are transferred to my phone with the exact settings I have on iTunes and with the correct album covers.

Hope this helps someone!

Try unchecking the problematic playlists from your iTunes iPhone page, then synchronize your phone, and after your iPhone is devoid of music, resync after rechecking wanted playlists. You may well need to reinstall some album covers via iTunes Get Info, but now my phone is completely accurate.

Thanks for this post. This was pretty helpful. It appears that when you're in iTunes, if you click on to your device and then MUSIC and you try to sync your "Entire music library", you'll bound to experience the mixed up art work situation.

In order to combat that, I went into my device, then MUSIC, and while I had "Sync Music" checked off, instead of "Entire music library" being checked, I selected "Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres" and then started selecting a few Artists at a time to see if I was experiencing issues. Surprisingly, I wasn't. So I started selecting a few more artists at a time while clicking the sync button. While a little inconvenient, it seemed to do the trick.

Hope this helps!

This appears to have worked for me ...

First make sure your music is backed up somewhere besides your phone. For me, my MacBook Pro is one such place. So, with a backup in hand, do this on the iPhone 12:

• Go to Settings/General/iPhone Storage/Music
• Swipe left on "All Songs"
• Press Delete

Then

• Connect the phone with MacBook Pro via USB/Lighting
• Ignore the MacOS message that a software upgrade is required to connect the iPhone.
• Select iPhone in Finder
• Select the Music tab and press Sync

I checked the problem covers that I had noticed before, and all were correct. I have about 85Gigs of music, so I have not checked exhaustively. I will report back if anything goes amiss or otherwise pops up on my radar.

A word of skepticism: This is the third time in the two weeks I have had the phone (iPhone 12PM) that I synced music with the MacBookPro. Granted, iOS has been updated during that time, but updates not withstanding, I have no idea why this sync would work and earlier syncs would not. ¿Go figure?