iPhone13 - wrong album covers after 1st time synching with iMac

I had the same issue with my iPhone 13 Pro, now running software version iOS 15.5, and I do not use the cloud..

SOLUTION:

1. Delete all songs on iPhone (make sure every song is in your iTunes on desktop first). You can do this a little faster by going to Settings>General>iPhone Storage>Music and deleting each album by swiping left and hitting delete.
2. Plug your iPhone into your desktop, open iTunes, click the Sync Summary tab. Under the Options section, select the checkbox next to "Sync only checked songs and videos." Now under the Music tab, I recommend manually deselecting all Artists, Albums, Playlists and Genres. Run a sync with no music selected to ensure all music is removed from iPhone.
3. Finally, run a new sync through iTunes, only this time select each individual Album you want to add to your iPhone. I used to add individual "Artists" to my iPhone but this seems to screw up the album artwork (I would see a Coldplay album cover while playing an Avett Brothers song, etc.). If you sync individual playlists, this seems to sort out the album artwork correctly as well, just avoid selecting individual "Artists".

This is what worked for me and I felt compelled to share! I hope Apple fixes this issue with the next software update, but this is a temporary work around.

What worked for me is even simpler than ClarkT's suggestion.

1) Deleted the Music app from my iPhone (13 Pro with iOS 15.4.1). That also took all music of the iPhone.

2) Synced, using the lightning cable, with my iMac (macOS Catalina 10.15.7)

I have 700 albums, 7000 songs, all but a few copied from CD's I have. I didn't select each individual album or song, just selected "sync: Entire music library"

And voila... cover art is now correct.

PS: Of course it is essential that all music resides on the iMac, by backing it up, before step 1)

I have been struggling with this exact issue for days. I have read all 8 (9?) pages of this thread. Here is what I have and what WORKED (!!!!) for me:

iPhone 13 Pro Max running OS 15.5

Mac (purchased February 2022) running Monterey 12.1 and Music ver. 1.2.1.40

Mac backs up hourly to Time Machine.

My music library is stored on my Mac, not on the Cloud. My library consists of 1,802 songs across 163 albums. 95% of my library is CDs burned to the Mac via external hard drive, mostly in AIFF format. The remainder are songs/albums purchased from iTunes.

The album art problem happened last week when I burned a new CD to the Mac and then synced the iPhone. Result was all the artwork totally screwed up. (CD was Ben Levin, "Still Here." Great stuff; highly recommended!)

Based on a combination of all of your helpful suggestions, here is what I did:

1. Spent yesterday making sure my library, as it appeared in the Music app on my MAC was clean and correct as far as album art and playlists. I had to add album art to about 20 albums.
2. Today I synched my iPhone to my Mac (using Finder since I no longer have iTunes on my Mac) using lightning cable. I included a backup to the Mac, with no options selected in the "General" window and NO music selected from the "Music" window. This appeared to successfully remove all music files from my iPhone.
3. I double checked that the Music library on my Mac was still fine. It was.
4. I deleted the Music app on my iPhone.
5. I turned off my iPhone and restarted it.
6. I added the Music app to my iPhone via the App Store.
7. Using Finder (since I no longer have iTunes on my Mac), I synced my iPhone to my Mac, via lightning cable. This time, I backed up "important information" on the iPhone to the Cloud (NOT music; there was none anyway) because, for whatever reason, I didn't want to overwrite the backup I did to the Mac in #2 above. Again, no other options were selected in the "General" screen. In the "Music" screen, I selected "Entire Library" and no other options. Clicked Apply.
8. It WORKED! All album art is where it should be. Playlists are intact.

Thank you to everyone here who took the time to say what worked and what didn't! For what its worth, I reported the bug to Apple, but I'm not holding my breath. Thinking about emailing Tim Cook. If I do, I will post a copy here.

I don't know if you still have the same problem? I have my iMac since 2018. I bought my iPhone 11 last year and performed data transfer from my iPhone SE to iPhone 11. And I realised that a lot of the Album covers were not sync correctly. I ignored this errors initially but it eventually drove me nuts. I contacted Apple via Chat and they helped to fix may problem. Now everything is in sync. Here was what I was asked to do:

1. Backup my iPhone onto my iMac (and not on iCloud!).
2. Then I need to reinstall my iPhone to the latest IOS.
3. Connect iPhone to iMac.
4. Backup iPhone now to iMac. This might take a while
5. When the backup is done, you can look up the backup of iPhone data by Typing or coping and pasting this: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
6. Now in Finder, click on the connection to your iPhone, then select the option Restore iPhone.
7. Skip the Q to 'backup the settings' as it has been done in step 4.
8. Select 'Don't Backup' (as it has been made already in step 4) and now it will restore your iPhone.
9. You will see messages such as 'downloading software update...'. It will take several minutes or longer depending on the data volume.
10. Next message shows 'now preparing iPhone to restore...' It will take sometime again...patience is required.
11. Next message shows 'Your phone has been restored to factory setting.'
12. The iPhone will be restarted..then when prompted 'Set up manually' or 'Quick Start'? Choose Set up Manually option!
13. Another Q: 'do you want to set up as a new phone or restore from backup'? Choose restore from Backup from 'iMac/PC' (and not from iCloud'!!)
14. Message...'connect to Mac...' and 'restoring...' should appear.
15. Message now says 'restoring xxx from backup on iMac and restore in progress on phone.' This will take a long time....
16. After a successful restoration, now the iPhone is restarting.
17. You would have to reset FaceID etc....as usual like getting a new phone.

This process worked for me and all the albums on my iPhone are in sync with the original album covers!!

Hi everyone, i found the solution!

I also stumbled upon this problem this morning and here’s what i did to fix it

1) Delete all the songs you have on your phone

2) Go on itunes on your computer, and hit « song information » on the first song of your library

3) Click on illustration (where you can see the picture used

4) Navigate to the next song with the right arrow in the left corner of the window

5) Do this for all your songs **

6) Hit « OK »

7) Re-sync your phone and music

8) Should be ok!

**I have ~1500 songs and it really took like 5 mins max, you can just spam-click like a madman through it. I also recommend using your pad, it’s less tiring and you can use several fingers.

This process worked 100% for me. BUT note that if you ripped songs from a CD and did not add them to your iTunes library then you will lose them and will need to rip them again. That may be a non-starter for those folks that have imported many CDs.

These were my steps:

1) Synched iPhone with iTunes on my iMac

2) Confirmed that songs with the correct album art was in my iTunes library on the iMac

3) Disconnected iPhone from iMac

4) Removed the Music app on my iPhone (deleted all the songs)

5) Restarted my iPhone ...why... because for me at least when I did steps #6-7 the first time, all album art was still messed up

I believe restarting clears any cached data relating to the previous Music app

6) Reinstalled the Music app

7) Connected iPhone to iTunes on my iMac and resynched

Voila!... all the album art was now correct...I am not a happy camper!

I did lose some songs ripped from CDs but was not an issue for me since it was only 3 CDs.

Wow, this was super helpful! Especially Step 2 -- doing a sync to the phone with no albums or artists selected. Reason being...

For some reason in prior sync tests I took steps of deleting all music on the phone, when I connected the phone for a sync, clicking the phone name in the sidebar of the macOS/Music app shows that ALL SONGS were still on the phone. It must be some sort of bug in the cached files. Anyway, your step to sync nothing to the phone cleared it out. Bravo!

So after unchecking all Artists and all Albums, I performed a sync to the phone using a dozen albums from 1 Artist and the album cover art is all correct.

Have you done any other sync tests? I ask because I have over 1,500 albums in my macOS/Music app. Syncing them only a few at a time is real PITA. I wonder if now that I've got the old files cleared off the phone, maybe a full sync will now work?

Thanks again. Your solution was a quantum leap forward.

I spent 2 hours on a call with Apple Tech support.

Here is what worked for me (iPhone 13 Pro 256):

1. Back up your iPhone
2. Sign out of Media Purchases (Settings/Account/Media & Purchases)
3. Remove Music from iPhone
4. Restart iPhone
5. Sign in back to Media Purchases
6. Reinstall Music on iPhone
7. Sync your music with computer

Good luck!

I was able to fix this last night. I wasted a ton of time on it. It took hours to transfer my music back over, so I did NOT try to repeat the process a second time, to test the solution.

Similar issue - iTunes on my PC looks fine. No album art issues. When I copy albums from it to my phone, suddenly Regina Spektor album covers (and other people) where all over the place, where they shouldn't be - totally messing up the visual.

First thing I did (FAILED) was try going to Settings -> General ->iPhoneStorage -> Edit -> All Song -> Delete (yes, I'd had enough - wiped everything). I started the awful process of moving music back over from my PC. Instant failure!

Second thing I did (SUCCESS) was to repeat the same deletion process from step one, but this time I went into the Music App on my phone BEFORE I restarted the copy process. Even though, technically, I'd deleted everything out of there, there seemed to be the 'ghost' of albums that I guess I'd purchased from iTunes. I suspect they were placeholders from my purchases. They had not re-downloaded yet, because I'd not tried to play them, but they were still there. I clicked on each one (about 20 in my case) and said chose "Delete from Library". Once I REALLY had nothing showing listed on my Music App, I went through the hours of selecting hundreds albums I'd made from my personal CD collection and copied them back over (AGAIN). When I awoke this morning, all the albums had transferred. All the album art was correct.

Horrible bug. I wasted hours working around it. I sure as **** don't want to buy anything else, until I know I'll never have to go through this again...

I was about to give up my Music library too over the weekend but I thought I'd give it one more valiant attempt.

I'm happy to say I managed to somehow get my Album Artwork back. I believe I've also figured out the cause of so many songs in my library being corrupted -- songs' audio would cut out during playback before the song was actually done playing. I'm guessing this issue was caused by my copying music library files from an old Mac to a new many times -- vs. downloading fresh copies from iCloud to the new machine.

Also note: probably 1/3 of my library is comprised of songs ripped from CDs plus a few purchased from Amazon; the rest are iTunes purchases. So some of these steps how I handled those types of songs.

In terms of hardware/software, I'm using the latest version of macOS for my 16" MacBook Pro M1 Max and latest iOS on my iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Here's what I did:

1. I went through my macOS library and identified all the non-iTunes songs. Those were copied to a new folder on an external SSD.
2. I selected all songs in my macOS music library and deleted them. [Sweating a little now.]
3. I signed out of macOS Music.
4. I deleted all .plist files and preferences in my system/library that have anything to do with Music or iTunes.
5. I restarted my MacBook Pro.
6. I launched macOS Music. At this point Music thinks it's running on a new Mac and is ready to listen to/import songs.
7. I signed back in with my iTunes ID (which is different from my Apple ID) and downloaded ALL songs I ever purchased from iTunes. 6-7 reported download errors so after all were downloaded, I viewed all songs and sorted by name. The download icon indicates any that weren't download. I re-tried those and the downloaded properly.
8. I signed out of Music, then signed back in with my Apple ID. This is because over the years signing in to iCloud with my Apple ID on my Mac and making iTunes purchases puts my music into 2 different databases on iCloud. Cool eh? Meh. Anyway, downloading albums from both IDs puts all my music into a single macOS library. All albums will stay in the library and won't disappear regardless of which ID I'm signed in with. So far so good.
9. In macOS Music, I needed to re-import all those non-iTunes albums. Go to File>Add to Library>go to folder on external SSD and I selected the folder that contained all the albums and clicked Open. They imported in a couple minutes. Done.
10. At this point, I've basically rebuilt my entire macOS library. 3-4 ripped albums were missing artwork so I found art on Amazon and updated those manually.
11. On my iPhone I deleted the Music app. This deletes all music and files.
12. On my iPhone, I launched the App Store app and re-downloaded the Music app.
13. I connected my iPhone via USB cable and in the Finder/Sync settings for my phone, I made sure to un-select Sync Entire Library. I applied the change and did a sync to my phone with nothing selected. This cleared out any residual music files.
14. I selected Sync Entire Library and let her rip. I swiped through my entire list of Albums on my iPhone and all have the artwork. No more generic music note icon where the album art should be.
15. It remains to be seen if this whole process has remedied the songs whose audio would cut out during playback. My gut tells me it has. Prior to this rebuild, if I came across a corrupted song I would delete the album from my iPhone, delete it from macOS Music, re-download and re-sync. This would fix the song(s). I hope the steps I took today has now fixed all of them in one fell swoop.
16. Cheers. I hope this gives you all some hope.

I had the same problem and solved it simply as follows. This assumes you don't have any music only on your iPhone that you want to keep, i.e. you want to replace everything on your iPhone with what's on your Mac:

1. Uncheck "Sync music onto X's Phone", let it resync with the phone.

2. (Optional) If for whatever reason there's anything left in your Music app, delete it from your phone (Settings -> General -> iPhone Storage -> Music), then left swipe on All Music to show a Delete button.

2. Click Delete App to delete the actual Music app.

3. Reinstall the app from the App Store.

4. Check the "Sync music onto X's phone" again, and let it copy over all the music.

This should result in all your music back on the phone, with the correct album art.

Go into settings on your phone and delete all music. Then delete the Music App. Reinstall the Music App on your phone, hook your phone up to your computer, go to your phone in ITunes. Select the music you want on your phone and sync. Worked for me and mine was all mixed up with artwork not matching.

My iPhone 13 had similar problem whereby Album artwork messed up on iPhone but all good on Windows PC iTunes.. iTunes on my PC is where I store all my music and then download (sync) to my iPhone. Corrected the album artwork cover problem by deleting all the Downloaded music on my iPhone 13... then used iTunes on my windows PC to restore music on iPhone. Steps I used as follows:

1. Connected my Windows PC to my iPhone 13 via cable.
2. Started iTunes on PC. As a precaution, backed up iPhone to PC via iTunes and sync music from iTunes to iPhone.
3. on iPhone, go to Settings / Music
4. Selected/press  "Downloaded Music" and thereafter on the Downloaded music screen you see a list of all the song titles. Note the first line says "All Songs". Left swipe the "All Songs" line to display the red Delete button on the iPhone.
5. Press Delete to delete your entire music library off the iPhone.
6. Sync music again from PC iTunes to iPhone
7. Problem should be resolved. ( Was for me)... But not sure if the problem will start up again?

BTW, I have 2000 tracks on my iTunes on windows PC, 99% of the tracks added by myself from various sources, including Album artwork. Interesting to note that the size of the downloaded music database on iPhone before deleting all,  was about 45gb and then after restore (sync) was 28gb, for the same music database. That seems to indicate that the sync from iTunes on PC to iPhone is buggy (obviously not news to all of us). There are various solutions on this forum that have similar success. The steps above don't require much work but there is a time to wait for PC iTunes to repopulate (sync) to  iPhone.

Thank you John!!

That worked, but with one proviso I would add;

-when syncing music back on to your phone, dont select "Manually manage music and videos" to mange the importation of your music etc., dragging playlists and songs etc., that did NOT work for me ( the album covers were still screwed up).

For reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, ( after wiping music from my phone many times after much experimentation) I selected "Sync only checked songs and videos" , Playlists can be checked off there too, and viola, 99% of my album art came back accurately.

I think mine fixed itself via the following steps:

1. In Finder, open Sync Settings for the iPhone 13
2. In Music tab, unselect "Sync music onto iPhone 13".
3. Click Apply. Wait a bit for music to disappear from iPhone. I still had a handful of single tunes that I had bought through Apple that remained, with incorrect artwork. I ignored them.
4. Re-checked the Sync music onto iPhone 13 box.
5. Clicked Sync.
6. The albums began to reappear on my iPhone, with the correct artwork.
7. The Purchased music album art appeared to be corrected, too.