Getting artwork on iPod classic

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27 points

Getting artwork on iPod classic

I have the last gen IPod classic and there are no updates for it. My Macs running 10.15 Catalina and 11 Big Sur. My music collection has artwork added manually (dragged to the bottom left box in iTunes on a previous Mac with iTunes).

I’ve loaded up my iPod with the Big Sur Macbook Air M1 previously. The artwork didn’t load on the iPod then. I’ve just tried with the 10.15 machine. I also added the artwork via Apple, hoping I could just resync it it would appear. i’ve tried adding an album and the artwork still doesn’t appear.

Is this something Apple has disabled, or is there a way to get artwork on an iPod?

Posted on Jan 14, 2022 3:22 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

274,252 points

Jan 16, 2022 10:44 AM in response to richard177

If it has worked before then you could try restoring the device and then use the break-up large transfers method from my user tip Corrupt iPod Classic - Apple Community to reload it. This may be more successful than trying to sync everything in one go.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

274,252 points

Jan 15, 2022 6:00 AM in response to richard177

Artwork should sync at the same time as the music. It will work best when all tracks of an album have embedded artwork. If a particular album doesn't show art when it should you can try removing that album from the device, then add it back again. Failing that it may be necessary to restore the device and reload from scratch.

tt2

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Answer 3

richard177 Author

Level 1

27 points

Jan 16, 2022 9:44 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank you Mr TuringTest2. I forgot to mention that the music is converted to AAC from Apple Lossless when transferring and that the iPod was loaded with a previous version of OS X that had iTunes.

Apple seems to make it increasingly difficult to transfer music on a file to iPod/iPhone. With the Music app, its difficult to drag and drop files into the sidebar, with many attempts creating playlists instead. At least with iTunes you could drag and drop to a separate window.

I suspect I'll need to create a separate AAC library and embed the artwork for it to work. It's such a pain to load an iPod, I'm just going to live without artwork.

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

274,252 points

Jan 16, 2022 10:30 AM in response to richard177

That makes sense. The convert to AAC function creates a file without metadata. It is possible that artwork is still supposed to be added to the device's cache, but it isn't something I've explicitly tested. Once including artwork was optional, and turning the option off and then on again would often fix things, but now the only option is a full restore and reload.

tt2

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Answer 5

richard177 Author

Level 1

27 points

Jan 16, 2022 10:39 AM in response to turingtest2

The artwork has loaded onto the iPod after converting to AAC from ALAC in the past. I can't say I'm surprised that Apple hasn't chosen to fix it after breaking it or has deliberately broken it.

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Getting artwork on iPod classic

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