Apple Music no longer shows album artwork on playlists

Okay, I'm going to try to document how I get my album art in my playlists. It may get messy, as this Apple Community forum format isn't the best to work with but I'll try it and hope it helps someone. Apologies in advance if this method doesn't work for you.

Please note: This only works using the Music app on a Mac. I can't find a way of doing it on the iPhone but if you then sync your playlists from Mac to iPhone, the playlist artwork will also show up on the phone.

Playlist Step 1 :

Select an album in Music (on Mac) using the three dots that show up when you mouse over an album and click on them. Then, from the pop up menu, choose 'Add to Playlist', then 'New Playlist'. You'll now see the new options we all know... and hate!

Playlist Step 2 :

Use the left arrow or just click on the small image icon (shown here with a red arrow) to the left of those dots to select this blank option.

Do not click on the plus sign or add any artwork.

Playlist Step 3 :

Now just type in a playlist title and click create.

Playlist Step 4 :

If you now go to your list of playlists and select the one you've just created, you should see it has had your album artwork automatically added, just as it is in your list of albums.

Playlist Step 5 :

Now go and select some more albums and use 'Add to Playlist', making sure you add them to this new playlist, whatever you've called it. When you next select that playlist, you should see that Apple Music has created a collage just as it used to do.

I’m using the artwork from Apple Music. I screenshot 4 covers in the Mac version of Apple Music, put them in. 2x2 grid in OmniGraffle, then export as PNG before adding to the playlist. I use the Press Shift-Command 5 keyboard shortcut on Mac to get a capture box that I set to just be the size of the artwork on screen. If you do Get Info on a track in the playlist you can choose a tab with the artwork, and use the chevon’s to go to the next track. Tacking screenshots as you go. See this Apple page for how to use screenshot in various ways Take screenshots or screen recordings on Mac – Apple Support (UK)

SOLVED! On a iMac, you have the option of duplicating an old playlist which contains artwork. Once duplicated, add new music and delete the old songs from the original playlist. Duplicated playlist will continue using artwork like before.

Hey guys -- so, I duplicated old playlists (that did have the 4 album artwork option) and when I deleted the songs and pasted in the new playlist (from the one withOUT artwork) it worked! An annoying work around, but for now, it seems to provide the option I want. Until Apple decides to take that away too for whatever reason. The four albums are VERY useful - not just for the visual appeal. But what Apple doesn't seem to understand (or perhaps care about) is that it is a quick shorthand for mixes. I have 100s of hours of mixes -- for various moods, settings and events. Glancing at the four albums immediately lets me know if this is a good mix for the occasion (ie., I'm not putting on my trippy/spacey/70s jazz mix with my mom). There's no legitimate reason to get rid of this feature. But at least this work around lets us restore it. An absolute unforced error on Apple's end. But so it goes...

On the iPhone, this seems to behave differently if you create a new playlist from "playlists" in the main apple music section versus if you go to "downloads" and select a song and add to a playlist with the "create a new playlist" option. The former will let you add songs and will use the standard 4-album artwork cover correctly (as of Feb 16th). If you do it from your songs in "downloads" it adds the boring new pinkish covers. However, I've also found that if you select an existing playlist which has the 4-album artwork cover from within "downloads" list of playlists and click the 3 dots at the top and select "add to playlist", click "new playlist", swipe the covers to the left to the camera icon (do not click on the camera icon to select a photo, just swipe to it), and then enter the new name, you will effectively duplicate the playlist and get the 4-album artwork cover. You can then add new songs to this one and delete the existing songs that you don't want. Covers will update as needed. Both of these options have worked for me to get albums with the 4-cover artwork.

Hi Bob, 

It's perplexing that this doesn’t work for you because using MacOS Sonoma 14 it works flawlessly for me. I've included an image below with screenshots of the steps I took; although you may have already tried these steps, they might help to demystify the issue.

Let me walk you through the image:

1. In Apple Music's 'Today’s Hits’, I clicked to add the first four songs to a new Playlist. The New Playlist window pops up.

2. In the popup window, click the playlist artwork arrow to the left and select the red Plus icon.

3. Enter the playlist name (in this case, I used 'Hits').

4. In my case, next the playlist is created with artwork.

Since the first four songs were all from the same source, their images were identical so I then added three more songs with different Album art (this is not shown in the screenshots below), and lo and behold, we now have four images in the playlist artwork!

If you did exactly the same steps, I am puzzled why it doesn’t work for you.

Yes, I think this is a very important point. Apple employees don't spend their time reading through the forum posts but they do get to see the Product Feedback from users. There's no guarantee that anything will change but at least we're then making our opinions heard in the right place and obviously, the more people who do complain and politely explain why they are unhappy, the more likely they are to take notice.

To narrow it down here's the link to where you can leave feedback on the Music app.

Apple Music Feedback Link

I have a temporary workaround that does the job for me on mac OS (I haven't tried on iOS because I never create playlists that way).

If you still have an old playlist that displays the artwork mosaic, then that playlist somehow still has the ability to update the artwork mosaic. So...

Create a duplicate of the playlist, empty it, and move to this playlist whatever music you want. The playlist will update the artwark mosaic based on the new music's artwork.

SOLVED! On an iMac, you have the option of duplicating an old playlist, which contains artwork. Once duplicated, add new music and delete the old songs from the original playlist. Duplicated playlist will continue showing artwork like before.

Your welcome. ;-)

SOLVED! On a iMac, you have the option of duplicating an old playlist which contains artwork. Once duplicated, add new music and delete the old songs from the original playlist. Duplicated playlist will continue using artwork like before.

Your welcome! 🤗 

SOLVED! On a iMac, you have the option of duplicating an old playlist which contains artwork. Once duplicated, add new music and delete the old songs from the original playlist. Duplicated playlist will continue using artwork like before.

Your welcome! 🤗 

If you have an old playlist which still generates album artwork, duplicate it from a iMac as many times you want. This gives you the option of having multiple new templates of new lists to create which will display the 4 top album artworks.

If you don’t have a list which contains artwork (an old version which will show artwork) , try and find somebody who will share one , so then you can duplicate it.

Of course we would, it's Apple they think they know best. Don't get me wrong, all the OSs have issues. I make it myself now!

on Mac, screen shot in album view of your playlist. Double click to open in preview, file, export as jpeg. (Another issue where "Apple knows best" as music app edit wont accept the png file) Then in music edit your playlist and click on the bland new playlist picture and go all the way to the left you can chose that jpeg you just made. See one here. https://app.box.com/s/v1s4cgcls6s3cjdwv4a4b6o1bk9mdy68