Iphone 4 shows wrong Album art when playing music.

I am having the exact same issue. But it happens on my 3GS. I have noticed this with several albums but not all of them. If the album is not in the active position (center) it has the correct at but as soon as it is in the active position the art changes to another album on my phone. I have at least 30 albums were the art is getting replaced. (ex. Bad Religion - Against the Grain is getting replaced with 7Seconds Old School). I first noticed this in the beginning of August.

Thanks

First you can try unsyncing all your iPhone songs:
* Open iTunes via computer
* Plug in the iPhone and pull up the summary screen
* Click on "Music" tab on the top and uncheck "Sync Music" and apply to remove.
* Then recheck the sync music and apply to readd.

If that doesn't work, you may wish to update your album art via iTunes which replaces the artwork on it with a new verision:
* Open iTunes via computer
* Select "Music"
* Click a song, then Control or Command and A to select all
* Right click the song and press "get album artwork"

If iTunes can not find the artwork, try clicking on the -> arrow next to your album in question to pull up the album info. If the album is not on the iTunes store it won't be updateable.

If the title of the album has been reworded, you can update your album on the local system:
* Copy the title of the album from the iTunes Store version
* Open your local music tab
* Select the songs related to the album, right click, then get info
* It will ask to edit multiple songs say OK
* It will then ask your album title name to update and you paste that info
* Press OK and it'll progress to change
* Then perform the get album artwork

JoeZinVA,

This is a very old issue with a few threads in the Apple Discussions & there has been no permanent fix, only work arounds that last a short time. Those include, resync, restore (longer term fix but it comes back), unsync & resync music, re-creating iTunes library, etc.. The last time it happened to me was around the release time of iOS 4.1 and my updating to it.

The symptoms, as clearly as I can put them are:

Music, Audiobook, video (movies and podcasts), and audio podcasts will have either the wrong art from another album/podcast/video/audiobook or a genius playlist 4 part album art replacing the correct art. This occurs only on the iPhone (in my case that's all I own & can't speak to other idevices) and not in iTunes. iTunes displays all the correct art. I've experienced this over at least 3 versions of iTunes and OS's and iOS's and 3 different iPhones (3GS's & a 4). It will just suddenly happen one day with no cause I've been able to pin down.

I'm happy to send screenshots from my phone and you are free to email me for a quicker response.

I'm going nuts trying to fix this, especially now with the retina display and all the money I've spent in iTunes!

Help us JoeZinVA, you're our only hope! ;0)

All,

I believe I've found the solution...

Genius Playlist icons seem to be a recurring theme in all the threads I've seen out there. I have disabled Genius in iTunes, unsynced and resynced all my iPod media on my iPhone (every-thing), and all my album art is good to go! At the writing of this it's only been a day but I've changed my library with podcast updates & iTunes U updates. I've synced a number of times and they're still good to go! I'll update again soon & good luck!

I recently started having this problem as well on my iPhone 4, iOS4. It had been working fine for the last few months, and my 3G's before all worked fine. One day, my entire iPhone artwork collection was messed up, both music and videos. Not just a couple of albums, but EVERY album.

A few days ago (after this started showing) I added some new music, and the new music has the correct artwork. Before finding these similar reports in the various forums, I tried unsyncing Music (only) in iTunes, and then resyncing again. It improved the situation, with a number of albums being correct, but still about 50% of them being incorrect.

I tried again, unsyncing again, this time, Music, Movies, and TV Shows (basically everything that shows up in iTunes on the iPhone). I resynced them all again, and now my entire collection is fine. Hopefully it will continue to stay clean for a while. If not, I'll post a follow up.

I loaded The Best of The Band from CD. Went on the internet and found the album art work and inserted it into I-Tunes as well as into the I-Phone library. The art work is correct until it goes into screen saver mode. When I open it back up, it is reverted to The Best of KC and the Sunshine Band. This is not just annoying, it SACRILEGE!!!!!!!!!.

Does anybody have a permanent fix for this yet?

I keep getting jumbled artwork. Sometimes splitting the screen into 3 random album art covers merged into one square when playing the song on my iPhone 4. Then, I flip to see the track list, and the artwork in the upper corner is something completely different like a genius playlist 4-album thing. This is so ridiculous! Such a simple thing to link a photo with a song.

I had this problem just now so I turned the phone off then back on and fixed! Hopefully it stays that way.

Has anyone found a solution to this yet? Like most people here, my album art is fine in Itunes but is messed up on my iPhone. In many cases, the iPhone is just displaying the artwork for a different album, but in some cases it has actually mashed together two different album covers, or an album cover and the genius playlist cover, and is showing that instead.

The problem gets worse over time. At first, my iPhone was just messing up a few albums, but it gradually started to mess up all the albums. Even songs I bought on Itunes would have their album cover changed on the iPhone within a matter of days with no real rhyme or reason. Moreover, it may be noted that the problem gets worse regardless of whether you sync the iPhone with Itunes; the iPhone appears to be doing this all by itself.

Also, it should be noted that I also have an iPod Classic that syncs my whole library. It always displays the correct cover art and has never had an issue.

I have done the following things to try and fix the issue:
1. Turn the phone on and off (didn't do anything);
2. Turn off genius playlists (didn't do anything);
3. Unsync and Resync all my music (partially fixed the problem; all covers are correct now in normal view, but the tiny icon for the album when you click on it in cover flow is still incorrect).

So I am looking for a solution. Something good that actually solves the problem. I think it is clear from the above, that changing the metadata is not a fix, since the iPhone messes up the album covers all by itself (even albums which are downloaded from Itunes and have never been messed with). My iPhone and Itunes both have the latest software, so don't pitch that as your cure all.

Looking for a new idea. Thanks in advance for your help.

When my iPhone 4 displays the wrong album art the inner psycho in me comes out.

Beyond the wrong album art I'm also getting still shots from some of the videos I have loaded on my phone. After I sync I usually reboot the phone then play a few songs to make sure it's displaying the correct album art and it's usually okay until I get to that one track/album that's coming out wrong.

Normally a reboot of the phone does the trick but that doesn't seem to be working like it used to and, again, it's driving me bonkers. I'd expect this if I were getting music from different "sources" but I buy all my music via iTunes so I really shouldn't be having this issue.

CoverFlow always show the right album art work and the thumbnail in the top right corner is fine but all other views (iPod app portrait view and the lock screen) are screwed up.

Please Apple, for the love of Jobs, fix this.

*IT WORKS!!!* After the most recent update to 4.3.2 it seems that my album art is back in shape I didn't test every song on my iPhone but so far, so good.

Just to be sure, after the update I rebooted the phone. Then I un-synced all my music. Rebooted again. Synced music back to the phone. Rebooted.

Not sure if all that was necessary and again I can't speak for the entire library but there were a few songs that (for whatever reason) continued to display the wrong art or displayed video stills but those same songs seem to be okay now.

UPDATE PEOPLE! UPDATE

Let's hope it stays that way.