Album art missing under artists tab on iPad 2 running iOS 5

No, Apple doesn't read these forums for bug reports or post here. This is a user-to-user technical help forum.

Report bugs like this directly to Apple at: http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

OK, I've been fighting this too...amazing how such a small thing can cause so much frustration...(never mind past the beta testers and permitted into general release).

I've found a work-around for myself and thought I'd share (it's a combination of some previously mentioned steps):

1) On my iPad 2, I went to Settings -> Music -> Group by Album Artist and I set it to OFF

I think it's worth mentioning that, when a song is 'tagged' there is both an "Artist" and "Album Artist" field

and this can be confusing, so by turning "Group by Album Artist" OFF, I think we can focus now on just

the "Artist" field used for tagging.

2) Generally I used MediaMonkey to tag/manage my songs. Regardless of what you use, I've found (and this was mentioned earlier) that the artwork used by the iPad Music player seems to be closely-related to the artwork assigned to the 1st Track of an Album [at least this seems to be the case when sorting by Album].

That said, use whatever method you want (Media Monkey, iTunes, etc) and ensure ALL tracks have artwork associated with them. I've found that if artwork is assigned to track 5 only (for example) it will look good in some parts of the iPad player but missing from the Albums directory. Ensure all the tracks have Artwork!

* Media Monkey has a nice 'apply artwork to all selected tracks' option that can help you out.

3) Sync and Check your Progress

4) Finally, I found that even though MediaMonkey did it's job. iTunes would sometimes still not recognize the artwork. This was apparent in iTunes as I selected the track and the artwork box was still empty.

When this happend, I pasted new artwork to the first track, directly in iTunes and sync'd again.

This solved the problem for me.

* Note, I keep my media tags pretty tidy.... if you still have problems with your Albums sorting into 'Other' categories... check the 'Artist' and 'Album' tags using the "Get Info" option [change as needed].

This can be a lot of work....but try a couple and see if it's worth if for you.

Work-around not a solution. I deleted all of the offending albums from my pad, left them alone in iTunes, and re-synched. They all appeared, no others changed, and all work with "Group by Album Artist" on OR off, which are nice options since I have a lot of various artist collections that can get unwieldy."

tracefromlafayette you are a total genius!

I have tried everything recommended on this and all the other forums debating this issue and nothing made any difference but for me, manually deleting the offending albums fom 'Music' and then resyncing via wifi worked perfectly and I now have everything back 100%

A dare say this is one of those issues where a different solution will work for different people but for me - sorted!

Many thanks.

I am having the same concern. Deleted all the offending albums, resync'ed and still had issues. I put album art on my music myself and use iTunes exclusively. Is a bug with the software for sure. As irritating as this is, I will wait for Apple to fix the problem, hopefully they will recognize how this kills the look and feel of the application and will fix it quickly.

Paul

I was missing some album artwork too - it would appear in iTunes but not on my iPad 2.

However, I discovered that my problem was due to the fact that not all of the songs in one album actually had album artwork!

When I clicked on "Get Info" in iTunes, some of the songs would have album artwork but not all of them.

I fixed this problem by clicking "Get Info" on one of the songs that DID have album artwork, copying the album artwork from that song (Ctrl + C) then selecting all of the songs in the album, clicking "Get Info" again for all of the songs that were selected and pasting that album artwork for all of the songs in the album. I did this for the playlist that I created for my iPad 2.

I then went to "manually manage music" to delete the offending albums from my iPad, and re-synced the iPad with the updated playlist (i.e. the new playlist that had all of the new album artwork "forced" onto each of the songs by being pasted in the Get Info screen).

Every single album now shows album artwork in the "Albums" tab!

Hope this is helpful in some way. I think that for the iPad, all of the songs must have album artwork pasted in the "Get Info" screen, otherwise the entire album will show a blank.

That's all fine but the problem being discussed is that artwork does not appear in the "Artist" view not the "Album" view.

Actually, the itunes doesn't save album artwork on each song when you apply a artwork to the album(this way it saves space on the music files). To apply the artwork to every song, you need to select them all, go to Get Info and then copy the artwork to the field. This is an old issue on iTunes. You will get larger song files, but all of them will have their own artwork.

I think I found the solution...Make sure each track under a given artist has the same artist listed for Album Artist (select all tracks by that artst, click Get Info, update the Album Artist field and click the Apply to All check next to the Album Artist field) and resync. All album art that was originally present under the Albums tab that was missing under the Artists tab updated correctly once I made this update. Hope this helps.

I've had the same issue. A few things I noticed.

1) Even though the artwork didn't show up under the artist tab, it showed up everywhere else.

2) Some artwork, even from the iTS, was huge, over 300k. If I shrunk it to 500 x 500 and kept the file size small, the artwork showed up.

3) Some smaller artwork didn't work either, just deleted them and put them back in worked, sometimes

The fixes I've thought of are a pain, anyone hear any better options?

I've had the same problem, was driving me mad. Think I've fixed it.

I noticed that the artwork missing in the artist view was attached to albums/tracks where the "Album Artist" field was blank - or in some cases complete for the first track in an album but not the rest. I've now been through my library and made sure all the Album Artist fields are correctly completed.

Seems to have fixed the problem...for now!

EDIT: Just noticed this is the same solution as MART1NS posted...

Message was edited by: wilmo1979

Not only do I have album art missing, but when I look under Artists, certain whole albums SEEM to be missing!

My solution is time consuming, but may work:

While simultaneously checking iTunes on your iPhone/iPad, check your iTunes library on your PC. If art is missing on your iDevice but not your PC, try selecting whole albums and entering the artist's name under Album Artist. Also, select individual songs where art appears, then copy and paste to whole album.

I tried it on my iPhone and it worked. I'm following suit on the iPad next.

Nope, art still missing, but I can find most of the artists' albums now...

If you go to settings under music switch group by album artist off it works, or at least that worked for me.

Yes it works, but I like grouping my albums, so all that I can hope for is that Apple will fix this.

Right.