How to change album cover on Apple Music

I’ve read quite a few comments on this issue in this thread as well as some others. There seems to be some consensus around the problem being tied to a check box for syncing the entire music library being checked as opposed to manually selecting what music to sync. So, if I understand this correctly my album art displays perfectly on the base model iPad I’m using, because I have insufficient storage to sync all my music. However, on my iPhone 11 Pro that I felt was worth spending extra on for the improved cameras and paid too much extra just to get the increased storage so that I could sync my entire library, the software isn’t capable of allowing me to use the check box for syncing all my music without mixing up the album art? The apparent solution to this appears to be that Apple feels it’s incumbent on their customers to resolve this problem by following unclear instructions from other users having the same problem. If Apple doesn’t feel that it’s important to support this functionality anymore they should allow 3rd party developers to offer better software for supporting music organization and playback.

I noticed the other day that one or two of the albums on my iPhone were showing the wrong cover art. I've also spent a bit of time recently converting LPs to digital files and adding them to the music library on my computer, and wanted at least one of those on my phone too. (I use an iPhone 12 Pro and a MacBook Air, both fully up-to-date.)

It seemed like a great opportunity to review and refresh the music selection on my phone. (I have always added music manually, not during the synchronisation process.) But each step I took seemed to make matters worse. Eventually I removed all the music from my phone and put it back manually, as someone suggested in this conversation, but that didn't work. Next I tried to use the "sync selected albums" function. Now I'm in the position where all the music I want on my phone is there, but it will be nigh-on impossible to find the album I'm looking for because they almost all show the sleeve of "Woodface" by Crowded House as their cover.

Is there a definitive explanation of this, and a way to put it right?

This worked for me. Thanks bestofboston9. It’s a little tedious but if I delete album on my phone with wrong artwork and/or dupes, then sync with my iTunes library on my computer, the correct artwork shows up again and the duplicates are gone.

Apparently apple doesn’t care about the fact that there’s 6 pages worth of problems with this. I totally feel you, I upgraded from an iPhone XR to an iPhone 12 Pro Max and I’m still having problems with my artwork.

i hate this. sucks and been happening now for a long time and apple will not fix the issue.

i delete the song form my phone. power the phone off. hook my phone to the Itunes hardline in. sync the phone and now I get new different album art. I done this type of steps in many way and still same issue over and over never the same art work and never the right art work.

IF apple ever reads these post PLEASE for the love of DOG fix this issue for us OCD people.

I had the same problem with my SE - followed your instructions and it worked. I had a bit of a heart stop at one point when all the music was gone from my iPhone, but it did magically reappear. I hope it doesn't happen on future syncs - but at least now I will be able to remember that there is a fix --- not that I'll remember the fix -- but hopefully be able to come back here and say, "oh yeah - I did this before."

Thank you so much! It was odd looking at "Mozart Requiem" artwork and hearing Sufjan Stevens.

John

did not work.

there is no apply thinking you meant sync so did that

the 2 step you have down is strange. I think you want me to go into my phone and Go to Settings >> General >> iPhone Storage >> BUT when i go to photos just gives me the Documents & Data. ..............So i click on music and deleted that from my phone and went to the next step. selected all the music and added it back to the phone by syncing it.

and DID not work made things worst. Now none of my music has the right art.

@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.

Perhaps a silly question, but since I'm having the same issue with the album art being mixed up, I'm going to go ahead and ask anyway. I don't check albums/playlists/songs in iTunes, but add songs from my laptop's hard drive. I drag them them into my iTunes music folder and then add them to my playlist. (Probably very old school and cumbersome, I know.) The above doesn't seem to fix the issue for me. It actually fixed some of the album art, but not all of them. Could that be because of the way I add music? Thanks in advance!

ETA: I should probably note that I manually edited every song's info and album art via another program before adding them to iTunes.

Yes, using the tick box system is the best, once you get used to it.

You can add a song to the playlist on your laptop, then just SYNC to update the playlist. The new track should be added to your phone AND into the playlist.

I suggest removing all music from your phone. Check that your Music in Settings >> General >> iPhone Storage >> Music is zero. If not you should be able to delete the data on that page. But only if your music has been deleted. It seems some music gets left there by mistake.

Then create your playlists on your laptop and then connect the phone to iTunes, tick the playlists (adding a playlist will automatically upload the needed songs to your phone) and albums etc. and APPLY to make the changes.

That should do it! :)

Hi...so i've scrolled through all 7 pages of this thread and have seen the reply that seems to be working for lots of folks to remedy the rogue incorrect artwork problem transferring from MacBook(Pro) to iPhone. i got a new iPhone SE with 256GB memory in part so i could fit at least most of my music on phone (i don't use Apple Music or any streaming services, nor iCloud for storage...it's all on computer and auxiliary drive for back up). When i loaded most of music on to the phone, i did it by dragging and dropping each artist/album/playlist that i wanted manually (i've never used the box to automatically sync music because i've never ha a device that can hold it all). That initial upload onto the new phone transferred all the music and artwork correctly. Upon switching to Catalina (yes, not even Big Sur yet) on my Mac, the switch included moving everything from iTunes to Music. That's when the album artwork problems began. Every new album that i have attempted to drag and drop onto my phone since has come up with the wrong art work (yes, 'Woodface' by Crowded House seems to be a popular album cover in this new system, along with random covers from R.E.M. and Joe Jackson for me). Music purchased in iTunes store works (of course). i called Apple Support, spent a long time on the phone, got a case number and everything, and haven't heard a thing in months. Sounds like i'm not alone in this. My fear is deleting all 248GB of my music that took hours to load onto my phone in order to fix incorrect artwork for a handful of albums and then having it NOT work. Any advice out there for an old school old soul who just would like to manage his own music in a simple, old fashioned way? Thanks so much.

Hi Simon...thanks for the reply. i may have slightly exaggerated the music total...just looked and it's 208.5GB for music, 8.5GB for photos/videos (so not a whole lot), and then other apps, etc.

i wish i hadn't 'upgraded' to Catalina...but i was getting more and more messages about some of my apps not being able to be updated further until l upgrade to it. So i gave in...and it's mucked up some of the album artwork (among some other inconveniences). Funny how i became a Mac user over 20 years ago in part because they gave you options to maintain older formats and platforms and even provided updates for them while the 'bad guys' (Windows) didn't and made you buy new upgrades, etc. Now it appears Apple is more the one who tries to shoehorn consumers into accessing information only in certain ways (i.e. making it more difficult to manually manage one's music, especially for those of us who still purchase some physical CD's and such). Not enough of a knowledgeable computer user to know what other kinks are in the platform.

If you wouldn't mind kindly reminding where your instructions are located on this huge thread, that would be most helpful. I may give it a go in spurts...erase the music, then add it back gradually since i do it all by dragging and dropping.

Thanks again for the help and support!

SimonBeer,

Thanks for checking back. Yes. It appears as though the process worked. My problem was with audio talks that I labeled "audiobooks" to keep them out of my music files, e.g., there'd be the art of an opera singer on a recording of a talk unrelated to opera.

Anyway, the process worked, except that the files that I manually removed from the device (iphone XR) are not synching even though they still reside on my computer. I had removed them to see if doing so and then resynching would solve the issue as was suggested on this --or a similar-- thread. It did not. I cannot seem to get those files back onto my iPhone.

Thanks so much.

Dianne

Hi Dianne,

i think iTunes needs to be “told” what you have removed manually.

With the phone plugged in, go to the sync page where you can see tick boxes of playlists, albums, songs etc.

I would guess that your talks are still selected in iTunes. Deselect them and click APPLY. This should mean the phone and computer are now back in sync.

Then reselect the talks you and APPLY.

GENERAL INFO:

When you have not made any changes to the tick boxes, it says SYNC, because you may have added songs to a ticked playlist, as an example.

When you tick or untick a box, it changes to APPLY.

if this does not work, remove ALL music via iTunes. Then delete any leftovers in:

Settings>>General>>iPhone Storage>>Music

then re add everything you want with iTunes. Good luck!☺️

I already did those steps. That's how I got the album are to synch with the correct talks. But, as I said, the talks I removed manually from my iPhone do not return even through the process of removing all and re-adding all. Never mind; I can live without them. Just wasted the afternoon with an Apple calendar program which they daytime engineers will fit in four days (!).

Wow. Why has the Apple brand become. The core precepts of premium brand, customer satisfaction and easy UI are gone.

Waste of an afternoon and the bread I was making got ruined from my inattention.