All albums without specific album art are now showing the same random image on iPhone (but not Macbook that houses library)

Question

Level 1

9 points

All albums without specific album art are now showing the same random image on iPhone (but not Macbook that houses library)

Some of my music has album art and some does not. For the music without any album art I am used to seeing a generic thumbnail image as the album cover, but now all of that music (many artists, albums, etc.) shows the same thumbnail (an actual image) as their album art. Oddly enough, the image that has been adopted is actually the image of a podcast show I listen to. In other words, any music on my iPhone that does not have its own "proper" album art now displays the cover image of the same Podcast show as the album art. When I look at those albums on my Macbook (where the Library resides) it does not have the podcast image for those albums, just the generic thumbnail I am used to.

Somehow my iPhone got confused and now uses that podcast show image as the default generic album art if the music doesn't have any of its own. I have tried removing the albums and re-adding them to the iPhone via the Sync process, but the issue remains.

Both the Macbook and iPhone are on the latest version of software as of the time of posting (iOS 16.6, Ventura 13.5).

Anybody have any ideas of how to remove the incorrect image from all those albums on the iPhone?

iPhone 7, iOS 15

Posted on Jul 31, 2023 11:18 AM

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Answer 1

Omar_A1

Community Specialist

Aug 1, 2023 8:44 AM in response to typical_user

Hello typical_user,

Thank you for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.

You can update the Album art on your Mac and sync to your iPhone using these steps:

"Add artwork to content in Music on Mac

Songs, albums, and music videos you buy from the iTunes Store or download from Apple Music come with artwork. You can also add your own artwork to any song or other item in your library.

You can add many types of still-image files, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and Photoshop. You must convert WAV files to another format before you can add artwork to them.

The album art on the left of the banner with a song playing.

You can also change the artwork for any playlist in your library.

Add artwork to music and video

In the Music app on your Mac, click Songs in the sidebar.
Select one or more songs in your music library, choose Song > Info, click Artwork, then do one of the following:

Click Add Artwork, select an image file, then click Open.
Drag the image file to the artwork area.

To retrieve album artwork from the iTunes Store for your entire library, choose File > Library > Get Album Artwork."

Additional details can be found here: Add artwork to content in Music on Mac

If the issue persists, can you provide a few more details? Are you subscribed to Apple Music? When did you first notice this? Also, when was teh last time you synced your iPhone with your Mac?

Cheers!

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Answer 2

Collide

Level 1

5 points

Jan 25, 2024 7:34 PM in response to typical_user

exact same thing has been happening to me. a generic image of a podcast that I listen to is the image for songs without an image assigned. It's not that I can't assign one, but why have that image there if there isn't one?

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Answer 3

Apr 13, 2024 12:58 PM in response to typical_user

This just happened to me as well! I don’t have a fix yet, but I found a photo I like that I’m assigning to all of my albums with no artwork to see if it fixes the issue. The podcast photo imusic picked is jarring and I hate that it shows up on almost all of my music now. What a weird glitch.

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Answer 4

typical_user Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 15, 2024 8:39 AM in response to Charisse.S

I still have the issue as I originally reported in Jul 2023. The random image for me was also a podcast cover image, which is the same as the other user that replied to this issue. Best of luck with your manual reassignment. I never tried that but may have to get around to it. I was hoping the issue would be fixed at some point but it looks unlikely

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Answer 5

Apr 20, 2024 5:20 AM in response to Collide

Exact same problem on my iPhone 15 Pro. Cannot figure out how to remove a random Podcast image from all of my albums that don't have album art. Very frustrating that there's not an easy way to set the default image.

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Answer 6

typical_user Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 1, 2023 9:27 AM in response to Omar_A1

Thank you for the response. Unfortunately those steps do not address the problem I described. This issue is about removing an incorrect image being used as the "default" artwork when no specific album artwork was downloaded for a given album.

I am not a subscriber of the Apple Music service but do not suspect that would be related to this Library management issue.

The issue has been going on for several weeks. I have synced 15+ times since it started without any change in the symptoms I described above. I have tried syncing both using the "manually manage" method and the "sync selected" method but the incorrect artwork remains unchanged.

Any ideas for correcting this?

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Answer 7

Vero_F1

Community Specialist

Aug 1, 2023 9:59 AM in response to typical_user

typical_user,

As both of your devices are up to date and this happens to multiple songs no matter how you import them, your next step should be to contact Apple Support here Get Support as you've done all the troubleshooting you can from your end.

Take care.

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Answer 8

Tilly04

Level 1

8 points

Apr 26, 2024 7:03 AM in response to typical_user

Did you ever resolve this issue (it's happening to me too).

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All albums without specific album art are now showing the same random image on iPhone (but not Macbook that houses library)

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