Wrong album artwork in iTunes for Windows

This is such an absolutely idiotic problem to have... how is this not resolved after apparently being a known issue for several years with a half dozen apple support forum users coming up with random workarounds (like deleting your entire library or changing all the id3tags??)

It seems like a total crapshoot here -- none of the solutions suggested have worked 100% of the time for me.

I'm having the same problem it's REALLY annoying. It's insulting to the artists and a misrepresentation of their work. It's misleading and erroneous on so many levels. Is there going to be a fix? If I were and artist, I'd be upset about my album artwork not being aligned with my music.

You are right. It worked in my iphone but not in my wife's. Same as you, some coivers were not fixed. Apologies.

I run the process deleting and reinstalling everything, not just in the iphone but in the compuer. It worked for my wife phone that had an almost unusable library.

It is a lengthy process and you need to be confortyable with manipulating windows folders. See the updated process below. Basically you delete and reinstall everything.

There is not excuse for apple not fixing a problem that have years. But the solution below is the only one that I have found that worked (at least for me).

Process Summary

1.  Delete your music application and data from your iPhone

2.    Reinstall your iPhone music application.

3.    Delete your music application and data from your Desktop Computer

4.     Reinstall your Desktop Music Application

5.    Recreate music data in your Desktop Computer

6.   Recreate music data in your iPhone

 Process Details

 1.    Delete your music application and data from your iPhone 

In your iPhone, navigate to

       Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music > Delete App

 That will delete all your iPhone songs and the Apple Music Application

2.      Reinstall the iPhone Music Application

In your iPhone execute the App Store and reinstall the Apple Music App.

3.      Delete your music application and data from your Desktop Computer

In your desktop

·     Backup your desktop music folders

      Copy the iTunes Folder located in

         This PC > Music > iTunes

      To

          This PC > Music

      At the end you will have two sets of iTunes folders, the original and  the backup.

          Original ---> This PC > Music > iTunes

          Backup ---> This PC > Music > iTunes – Copy

·      Delete your Original desktop music folder

Delete the folder

    Original --------> This PC > Music > iTunes

·    Delete the Desktop iTunes application

      From Windows, execute the Control Panel Application and Uninstall iTunes.

4.      Reinstall your Desktop Music Application

From Internet, reinstall the last version of the iTunes Application

At the end you will have a new empty Music Library at:

      This PC > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > iTunes Library

5.     Recreate music data in your Desktop Computer

This process will store your backup music in the Library created above.

In the Desktop:

·     Copy the backup music. Place the cursor in the file below and  enter <Ctrl> C to copy the following folder to the clipboard

          This PC > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music

.     Paste the copied data in the following folder. Navigate to a

This PC > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Automatically Add to iTunes.

and enter <Ctrl> V

This process will include the pasted music in the new iTunes library. The process ends when the

Automatically Add to iTunes folder does not have any music files.

·     Execute iTunes as follow:

Press the <Shift Key) and click on the iTunes icon.

. iTunes will popup a window for the user to select or create a music library. Click on the Chose Library

button.

·     Enter o select the name of the library created above:

          iTunes Library

      and press the Open Button

. iTunes will show your new desktop library. All Album covers should be OK.

6.    Recreate music data in your iPhone

In the Desktop

. Connect you iPhone to the computer and run the synchronize process.

This process will copy all your music to the iPhone

At the end of the process your covers should also be OK in the iPhone.

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

I have similar problem. Some of Artists/Songs have correct cover art but some are completely wrong artist/song. Like they are totally out of order. Something happened since an update. It is correct on iTunes on laptop but even if re-sync it is still wrong in my library (on iPhone). For years there was no problem... what has changed? anyone had this issue?

For the benefit of everyone here and anyone else who looks at this discussion in the hope of a solution:

timitunes wrote:

I'm having the same problem it's REALLY annoying.

It's no longer clear which of the two totally different problems, that have been mentioned here, that you are referring to. If your problem is:

1. 1. the artwork in the iTunes Library being incorrect (as defined in the original post) - follow my advice
   2. the artwork on a portable device (iPod, iPhone etc.) being incorrect - follow tt2's advice

The two posts:

• • the original, from SarahMA
  • everyone else

... are not the same description, symptom, problem or solution.

Copy the appropriate artwork (the correct artwork) from your online choice and paste it into the album in iTunes.

Effectively, there are two methods for adding the artwork to an album. Select all the songs on the album and from iTunes' top bar menu, use Edit/Get Info/Artwork. (answer Edit Items when iTunes asks if you are sure you want to edit information for multiple items). Delete the existing artwork by tapping on it (a blue border will appear around the picture) and tapping your delete key on your keyboard:

1. to copy-and-paste the new artwork, simply copy the picture from its source (CTRL+C or right-click/Copy image) and then click in the artwork area of the songs and use CTRL + V to paste it in
2. Add Artwork button: this method only works if you have a saved copy of the picture on your computer. Tap Add Artwork and navigate to and select the picture you want. Tap Open and that's it (well press the OK button as well).

To clarify the issue I’m having is:

I upgraded to an iPhone 13Pro Max / synchronized my phone with iTunes.

It’s my phone Album artwork that’s all messed up. On Apple Car play, when it shows up on the car screen it’s also incorrect.

All the album artwork on my iPhone is incorrect. It’s still correct on my mac.

example: this cover is showing George McCrae on Bronson Know Me. (Feat. Gallant)

timitunes wrote:

To clarify the issue I’m having is:

It’s my phone Album artwork that’s all messed up. On Apple Car play, when it shows up on the car screen it’s also incorrect.

All the album artwork on my iPhone is incorrect. It’s still correct on my mac.

Then please re-read the suggestion I made in my previous post.

Hi there,

I have been having this same issue myself, since I upgraded to an iPhone 13 Pro and my 11 year old macbook finally couldn't keep up. I bought a new MacBook Pro so they could talk to each other.... and then discovered this whole mess was happening. It seemed to be everything I had added since the switch was all jumbled up. Fine on my MacBook, but everything went bonkers when synched to my iPhone. I was NOT a happy bunny.

I have searched and searched online forums to see if someone had any other answer than "delete your entire Music library and the app then reinstall then resync your entire collection and hope everything is all better YAY" as I have about 150gb of music on my phone and the thought filled me with dread.

So I tried something different, and for me, it seems to have worked. Crossed fingers emoji.

I went into Apple Music (iTunes RIP) on my desktop and for the albums (home-made mix compilations where I'd made my own jpgs for artwork) where the artwork was jumbled on my phone, I selected all the tracks and then went to the top bar menu to Music - File - Convert - Convert id3tags. I selected v2.4 for them all, and synched. Hallelujah, it worked on 70%, I'd say. On the ones which persisted on being stubbornly set to the Pretty Woman Movie poster artwork or something similarly random, I went back in and changed the id3tags again to another version, 1.1 for example. Re-synched and.... they have all come good.

I don't want to suggest this is a cure-all - I daresay next time I add a mix that I want to synch it'll go crazy again, but for now - my artwork has come home to mama and I am happy.

I have the same issue. When I sync my Iphone 13 pro with my Imac (late 2013) running Catalina a significant amount of the album artwork gets scrambled, artwork from completely different artists appears on a bunch of the albums. The artwork is correct on my Imac so the fixes suggested so far don't work because they're for fixing it on the computer and not on the iphone.

The whole situation is really annoying. Clearly this is an update problem, never had this issue before "Music" replaced iTunes.

I do not understand why apple does not publish the solution of the problem. A simple one is:

1.     Delete your music data from your iphone

2.     Reinstall the Music Application

3.     Resync itunes

Delete your music data from your iphone

               In your iphone, navigate to

                              Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music > Delete App

               That will delete all your iphone songs and the Apple Music Application

Reinstall the Music Application

In your iphone execute the App Store and reinstall the Apple Music App.

Resync itunes

            In your iphone execute itunes and synchronize your library .

The only thing that has worked for me is adding the artwork within iTunes. (I have v. 12.12.3.5)

1. Add music as usual.
2. Highlight/select all songs for that album.
3. Right click and select "Get Info", confirm you want to edit multiple files (if alert appears).
4. Go to "Artwork" tab.
5. Click "Add Artwork".
6. Select the artwork image file you want to use.
7. Click "Open".
8. Click "OK".

I generally use an mp3 tag program to add song info and cover/album art and when I add it to my iphone most artwork would be mixed up - from files that were in a completely different folder on my computer. Even the itunes "song info" would show the correct artwork, but on my phone the main album art could be one and each song have different ones! They would be correct everywhere except in Music on my phone. So frustrating. After too much time trying to figure this out and solutions not working, I gave it a shot to remove the artwork and then added it with the steps above once listed in itunes and showed up on my phone. Presto...correct artwork.

Hope this helps someone else...

Caveat: I just discovered this, so am hoping it works next time I add music!

This tip worked. Thanks.

Occasionally the artwork cache in iTunes/Music can get out of sorts even when tracks have the correct artwork embedded. It may help to blow away the existing artwork cache to force the application to rebuild it. In iTunes this is the Album Artwork folder inside the iTunes folder. For Music the path is User Library/Containers/com.apple.AMPArtworkAgent/Data/Documents.

tt2