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Maizo9 Author

Level 1

13 points

My iPhone 15 Pro with iOS 17.1.2 has some of the music in my playlist showing the wrong album art

My iPhone 15 Pro is running IOS 17.1.2 and a few days ago I noticed that some of the music in my playlist was showing the wrong album art. Interestingly enough the actual playlist artwork is correct but the individual entries are all messed up. In other words the Music DB seems to be corrupted. I must confess having a picture of JLo covering my Xmas playlist seems like little too much!!

I read several entries in the internet and have tried pretty much everything, from logging off from Media & Purchases, to Erasing All Settings in the phone and the problem persists. The Music library on my MAC shows the correct artwork so I believe it is not corrupted. The MAC is running Big SUR 11.7.10 and had a little problem syncing (MAC kept saying could not read phone at first) but I resolved the issue and synced up the phone multiple times and the problem persists. I also have a recent backup of this phone.

The only thing I have not tried is to erase the phone and restore it from backup. I'm writing here with the hope that I can avoid that.

TIA

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 15 Pro

Posted on Nov 30, 2023 4:48 PM

Top-ranking reply

kronius

Level 1

11 points

Posted on Jan 14, 2024 7:10 PM

This problem has happened to me every time I have upgraded to a new iPhone for probably 10 years at least.

I use windows and here is the fix:

Start iTunes
Connect iPhone to computer
Select the iPhone in iTunes and go to Music
Uncheck (Turn off) "Sync Music"
Click "Apply" - this will remove all music from the iPhone
Close iTunes
Locate and DELETE the iTunes Album Artwork Cache directory (mine is here: C:\Users\[My User Name]\Music\iTunes\Album Artwork\Cache
Disconnect phone from computer
REBOOT iPHONE!!!
Restart computer
Launch iTunes
Reconnect iPhone to computer
Select the iPhone in iTunes and turn "Sync Music" back on
Click "Apply" - this will put the music back on the iPhone
thank Apple for wasting your time by not fixing this bug for over 10 years

Apple is well aware of this problem but does nothing to fix it. They are aware because there are 5 or 6 questions about this same issue on this site every year.

I finally wrote down the solution and keep it handy because each time I have upgraded in the past, I have forgetten the solution by then and have to spend hours looking online for the solution all over again.

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23 replies

kronius

Level 1

11 points

Jan 14, 2024 9:50 PM in response to RaniaAZ

They have been saying this for years and years and years like you say. “Gone away and come back?” Yeah right.

Unfortunately, the only solution is to remove all the music from the phone and put it back on. (Note- this is not a “restore” in the literal sense of restoring from a backup).

None of my music comes from the iTunes Store. All of it comes from albums I have purchased and ripped. I have over 600 GB of music, so it takes a long time to load all my music on my phone. Hours. I literally just went through this process today because I upgraded phones recently.

The only reason you would not be able to delete and reload your music onto your phone is if you somehow lost your iTunes library. But if that’s the case, then you have a big problem because I don’t think you can ever sync your phone to iTunes again without it removing all your music from your phone.

Jan 30, 2024 2:43 PM in response to Maizo9

I've been having the same problem and some albums are just refusing to use the correct artwork. I have a large music collection so I'm syncing manually and some albums I can get to use the correct artwork by deleting them and recopying them over 3-4 times. But some just refuse to work and none of the tricks posted on the forums have worked for me yet. I'm on a MacBook Pro and using an iPhone so you'd think this basic function would work correctly.

Apr 19, 2024 6:11 AM in response to kronius

Thank you for these steps. They worked perfectly. This just happened to me. All my album art was black with either a note or gear showing in a black screen. It took quite a while to finish as my phone also re-synced all my pictures in addition to my music library, but in the end all my album covers are back. Definitely bookmarking this page. Thanks again.

Jul 10, 2024 1:31 PM in response to kronius

Thanks for the detailed instructions. The messed up artwork has been driving me crazy for the past 2 weeks. Upgrade from my iPhone X to 15 Pro looked great until looking at the album artwork while doing normal workouts or just walking around. This worked perfectly.

Luckily I only have 3.5 GB of music but was in the process of uploading a lot more from my mp3 lib that was ripped from old CDs. Once I saw the messed up artwork figured I would stop until I could find a solution.

Your process was a lot better then some of the other suggestions online.