Missing album art in Music on Big Sur

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Level 1

22 points

Missing album art in Music on Big Sur

I upgraded to Big Sur and decided to start over. I had backups of my data stored on a separate drive. I copied my music library to my new home music folder. Music successfully pulled in all my music files after I mounted the NAS drive where they are located. However, as typical for bringing in a library, I was missing all my album art. Music slowly read the album art from the music files, but it was very slow, and a few days later, I'm still missing much of it.

I discovered a way to manually speed up reading the art from the music files. First, I created a smart playlist matching "Album Artwork" "is false." That playlist shows songs missing artwork. Well, some of the files anyway. Music apparently fills in that playlist in its own good time. Now for the manual updating part:

Click on Albums in Library in the sidebar and scroll down until you see the generic music symbol instead of artwork. (The scrolling part isn't absolutely necessary, but it seems to speed up the process.)
Click on the new playlist.
Select the first song and hit Cmd-I (or right click and select Get Info).
The artwork won't show initially, but hit Cmd-N (or click the right arrow) to go to the next song until the list of songs in the playlist disappears.

I know it's tedious, but it does seem to work.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Nov 24, 2020 10:02 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dartagnancoe

Level 1

9 points

Mar 13, 2021 7:24 PM in response to DMWallis

Found workaround, though lengthy, no thanks to Apple.

So I have this same problem and I guess I should be careful what I say since my first post, Apple did not post. Lost ALL album artwork in the album view in Music. When I play the song, I can see the artwork on the top bar that shows the song playing. However nothing in album view or when going into the Info for either the track or the album.

SO this all started for me again when I "upgraded" to Big Sur so I could sync my new iPad, when my phone synced just fine. I run my Music off an external drive because the amount is so large (150+GB). when I started up Music (2 months after my upgrade, to add a new album), the pathway and last library was completely missing! So I had to choose one from 2019. Yeah, thats how many libraries were wiped out by Big Sur. (this is by using the process to hold the "option" key when opening Music. Initially I just opened Music as before since establishing what library to pull from.)

Tried the "get album artwork" and it works for only about half the albums if that. This is seriously ridiculous and not customer friendly (unless you want to scrap all your music and just 'subscribe' to apple music and be beholden to whatever they want to make available. might as well just listed to corporate radio...but I digress). So many of the albums are main stream albums that are common (ABBA - Gold) and yet no artwork avail. So its hit and miss.

Mind you, I have over 150 gigs of music. Many of the albums are local music, not sold on iTunes or on Apple music.

So I had to do the following. Mind you, there was no option to remove the album from the library without sending the files on my external drive to the trash. So, I remove the album from my library. Then go into the Trash and pull them back over into the external drive, re-creating that folder to move the files into. Then, double click each track to re-add into Music. There is the artwork again.

-- Now I tried a few other options and when I delete from Library, there is the option to Keep Files; CHOOSE THAT! (hey, I'm doing this by trial and discovery :) ). Then go into that file folder for that track (wherever that is) and double click; it will add it back to Music and boom, there is the artwork for the Album view. HOWEVER, if you want the album art to show up in Info for each track, you have to do the removal and double click process for each track.

I am a semi-serious audiophile with all genres of music so I am going through this process for all my music. Will likely take me days, if not weeks. Will be searching for a different and more secure music organizing app, but seems Apple has a bit of monopoly on this.

Apple, its seriously time to start putting more effort into protecting the Music app from your upgrades. This is NOT the first issue I and others have had with Music/iTunes during upgrades. Not everyone wants to subscribe to Apple Music, as cool as it is, and have their entire music beholden to what you offer.

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Answer 2

DMWallis Author

Level 1

22 points

Jan 11, 2021 7:33 AM in response to TricksterFilms

After using this approach for about a month, I've found that it isn't perfect. When I play music, the program still shows some artwork as missing, but I think I finally have all my artwork imported after repeating the steps multiple times. You don't actually need to take these steps, Apple Music will eventually fill in the missing artwork without intervention, but following my procedure usually speeds the process.

One bigger issue: If you have your music files on an NAS shared folder, and the folder isn't mounted when you open Apple Music, artwork goes missing again, and you have to start all over.

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Answer 3

DMWallis Author

Level 1

22 points

Feb 17, 2021 3:34 PM in response to paulqnn1

That article isn't particularly helpful, and it doesn't address the underlying issue. The article also omits the method I usually use to add artwork to a song; that is, I copy the the artwork to the clipboard (usually from the Internet) and paste it into the Artwork tab. You have to click in the artwork area to get this to work. Finally, the Update Artwork command only works on purchased music. Most of my music is ripped from CDs.

The problem in Music is twofold: (1) The songs already have artwork in the music file (mp3, m4a, or m4p), and Music doesn't retrieve it immediately, and (2) When the music files are located on a server, at least on my system, changes made to the Artwork tab, or the other tabs for that matter, don't stick--when you Get Info on the same song, the updates aren't there. Consequently, I usually use Music Tag Editor to change tags in unprotected music files. For protected files purchased from the iTunes Store, I sometimes have to move the file to my hard drive copy the song to the Music app, make the changes, and move the file back to the server. (Other times, the changes actually do stick.)

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Answer 4

DMWallis Author

Level 1

22 points

Mar 15, 2021 6:37 AM in response to DMWallis

For this to work:

The music files must have artwork embedded. If the artwork was stored in iTunes library instead, you won't get your artwork back. You can use a separate program to see if your music files contain artwork. I use Music Tag Editor Pro, but free programs are available.
It takes a very long time for Music to update artwork, and it can take multiple sessions. After months, I'm still seeing relatively rare instances of missing artwork, but if I close Music and reopen it, the artwork appears. I have just almost 6,000 songs in my library.
It helps to have a fast NAS or external drive. I suspect that slow drives time out before the artwork loads. I don't have any way of testing that theory though.

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Answer 5

paulqnn1

Level 1

4 points

Feb 17, 2021 2:36 PM in response to Playfoot

Have you seen this info? Looks like in Big Sur iTunes has just been renamed as 'Music' (in the dock), and you can redownload album artwork under the File>Library menu in Music.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/music/mus1c6803257/mac

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Answer 6

Mar 15, 2021 7:30 AM in response to DMWallis

I recently converted my old iTunes folder to Music.app library folder structure. I could download some extra Album Artwork via Music.app > File > Library > Get Album Artwork.

Additionally I grabbed some missing album covers from the old iTunes/Album Artwork/ folder. There are lots of folders so browsing them is difficult. So I put them in the same folder and with GraphicConverter > File... > Browse Flat... > Edit: Select All > press Delete key to move them to Trash (make sure it is empty before doing that) > move all from the Trash to a folder. Then convert .itc to .png with GraphicConverter > File... > Browse > Right-click: Quick Convert into same Folder as PNG. Then GraphicConverter > File... > Browse > View > Show all in Slideshow and check if there is anything that might be used for missing album covers (there might be lots of duplicates and low-res covers). Then copy & paste in Music.app to the album art.

Some purchased album art was currently somewhat higher quality than those DRM-less files I had so I temporarily downloaded a fresh .m4p copy and copy & pasted album art to some songs (I first deleted the existing lower-quality album art with the Delete-key).

That required somewhat fiddling but I don't have very many song in the library (many albums still miss art but I leave it like that for now).

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Answer 7

Feb 18, 2021 12:47 AM in response to DMWallis

Many Apple's apps like the "old" iMovie HD 6, current Photos.app don't reliably save their data libraries on non-Mac filesystems (FAT, exFAT) or NAS. I wonder if Music.app is the same so the edits don't stick?

Is album artwork always saved in the file (.mp3, .m4a, m4p, .aif etc) or do some formats have to store it in a database?

I recently copied and manually arranged my 2006 created old Mojave iTunes folder to Big Sur Music.app folder structure and a missing step is how to deal with old album artwork:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252151523

With that workflow many album's artwork was preserved and even if the old "Album Artwork" folder is trashed, the album art is still there (I tested that on an external test disk).

Now I also tried Music.app > File > Library > Get Album Artwork and some new artwork was downloaded (thanks for the tip paulqnn1!) but I guess it is still missing from numerous songs ripped from vinyl but it seems some old ripped .mp3 albums got artwork anyway so I am not sure what is the logic here.

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Answer 8

Mar 2, 2021 3:24 AM in response to DMWallis

I've spent the last year + re-updating album artwork in my collection after the Catalina upgrade.

Much of the music in my collection is local or unknown artists whose music cannot be downloaded automatically.

Now I'm reluctant to go to Big Sur, seeing that people are STILL having this issue.

Why is album artwork lost so easily. I pasted it in the artwork tab myself. Even the files themselves get updated with the artwork metadata but Music cannot seem to interpret it unless the files are re-imported.

We should not be wasting our days on workarounds. Computers are supposed to SAVE time, not eat it.

Apple, please, put some resources on stabilizing your album art feature in Music.

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Answer 9

Mar 14, 2021 3:13 AM in response to dartagnancoe

This!!! Apple Music loses artwork like loose change through a pocket hole, on upgrades. For those of us with huge libraries of indie stuff, it causes many many hours of work to recover the collection in its original form with album covers.

Steve Jobs used to celebrate how well Apple devices display album art. Do his legacy justice.

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