Iphone 4 shows wrong Album art when playing music.

It struck me as really odd that this issue still exists after 2+ years, but it does. I got my iphone5 in Novemmeber, choosing it primarily because it has the best camera on the market and I wanted to be able to manage all of my music in iTunes. Managing my music worked great, for about 3 weeks, then I started having the same issue as everyone else here with my album art.

I am an admittedly old school guy when it comes to music, I want to own it. I prefer having it on my device as opposed to streaming it. I am also a Graphic Designer by trade, so the art is something thats pretty important to me. So I set out to find the fix for this, and unfortunately it comes with a cost. The root of the problem, at least for me, is iTunes and how it handles the art. Now, I don't pretend to know exactly what all goes into that, but I do know when I remove all of my music from the phone and add it using another program the art shows up properly. The moment i try to use iTunes to add any music or playlists it starts messing up the art again. Once the art is messed up again, the only way to fix it is to remove the affected files and re-add them, which unfortunately will mess up any playlists you have made on your iPhone.

So this comes down to a choice, you can have your art but you will have to use another program to add/remove your files to the iPhone. Here is how I currently manage my music:

The first thing you have to do is tell your iphone you want to manage your music manually. This is done on the summary screen for the phone, in the options pane at the bottom. The you have to use something else to manage your files, I use a program called MediaMonkey to add/remove the music I want. I am sure there are many options for this. The downside to this method is if you want to use playlists, like I like to do, you will have to manually re-make them all in iTunes AFTER you have added the music you want to the phone. To be sure there are no conflicts I make sure iTunes is closed, open MediaMonkey and add all the music files I want and then close out of it once it is done. I then open iTunes and make my playlists.

Needless to say when you are working with 20+ gigs of files this is a combersome process and may not be for everyone. I hope this helps someone, but in the end I would hope Apple would fix this issue. With apple being such a image driven company, basing so much of their marketing on the "look and feel" of their products, I am kind of surprised this issue has lingered for so long.

I too am surprised this issue still exists. I have had the iPhone 5 for several months now and I am just stating to have this problem for the first time ever in the many years of owning the iPhone.

Hi,

iPhone 5 iOS 6.1 Same issue.

A restore from backup did the trick for now. Time consuming but seemed to do the trick with minimal effort.

-J-

I have the same problem with my iPhone 4s. Very frustrating.

Hi,

Have you tried backing up the device then restoring it from backup? This should solve the issue

Try the solution from this post below. Seems to have worked for me. If Apple wont do anything, at least you can probably fix it quickly.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3801919?start=180&tstart=0

This is a very strange problem. However, fix for me was easier than most: erase current album with wrong album cover from iPhone 5 (iOS 6.1.2) and resync with iTunes like normal.

Some interesting things to note though,

• both of my albums that had the wrong cover were relatively recent purchases (within the last week)
• both bands started with letter N
• the two wrong album covers that were used were both from older purchases but from same band (different Beatles covers)

Strange and I hope Apple finally fixes this. They've addressed many other issues, might as well figure out this one as well.

The media library on your iPhone has been corrupted. Look at above post or go to http://www.doctorchewy.com/album-artwork-woes/ for the solution. Re-syncing and such are only a temporary fix before the issue shows up again.

The sad thing is this issue has been going on since before 2007 (do a quick search and look at the dates).

Hello,

I'm having the same issue as well. One day I put a bunch of music onto my iTunes and the album artworks on my iTunes messed up entirely. I tried using Rinse to see if it can fix my problem but it mixed it up more. The album artwork on iTunes is correct, but when syncing onto my iPhone, it doesn't show the correct album artwork for each song, and I'm getting more frustrated the more I keep doing this. I've tried a few things mentioned here but did not work. ****, I'm about to switch to a Samsung Galaxy if they don't fix this!

To the question. How can I correct the album artwork on my iPhone?

Disregard. I finally fixed it! I had to move the ones with the wrong album covers out of the iTunes library, delete the unnecessaries that also had the incorrect album artworks, and then reapply and sync one/a group of music at a time. Time consuming but I finally fixed it.

My iPhone 5 is having this problem.

WHY?

The number of people reporting this problem over a period of six years suggests Apple just dont care. Or are completely incompetent.

A bit like the useless iPhone maps that are the excuse for the previous Google association. (Not that Google's App is any better compared to the former mapping system).

I have a solution. Get away from Apple. I am seriously looking to break my long association with them as they assume that no one will ever leave, but my next computer and phone may be on a completely different OS.

Resolution (iPhone 5): Delete song(s)/album in question. Re-downoad them/it from iCloud. Easy-peasy.

I am well aware of that.....so you are suggesting that everyone does this everytime and with every song? What if the song is not a download but an upload via an original CD that is 200 miles away? This abum art issue happens repeatedly.

The answer is not 'easy peasy', it is a fundamental flaw in the Apple system. That is what needs addressing. If it was easy peasy then why are Apple incapable of dealing with this two year old problem?

Sorry, it was easy-peasy for me since this has only happened to two of my albums (which I bought off iTunes) and this fix did the trick. So, yes, if this keeps happening (which it apparently does), this isn't a solve at all, but merely a bandaid. Apple should definitely fix this but those prospects don't appear to be great considering how long this has been an issue.

Hi Jarbones

This solved my issue, unchecking genius and then updating ArtAlbum via Itunes. Then the album pictures all came up correct on the iPhone 4.

Cheers Casper