iTunes Match Lost Cover Art

Tried this out, now going on 24 hours now with no luck. I think that for now I will disable iTunes match on my phone. I'll leave it enabled on the Apple TV and see when it starts to get the artwork. Perhaps then I'll re-enable it on the phone. There are other problems that I notice now that I've tried to investigate this issue. Most noticeably, playlists are not synchronized whatsoever. Songs appearing in Smart Playlists are completely different between the iTunes Library, iPhone, and Apple TV.

I've had this problem for years with iTunes so it may not be specific to match. I used to store my music on a file server and drop them to itunes to add them to the library. Every once in awhile when opening itunes or scrolling, art would disappear. I could get it back with the command I trick. All files had art imbedded in them Problem is still occuring under Itunes match for a few of my files and in fact it is now occuring both on an iphone and ipod. All different files with the problem on different devces. It seems to be an update bug of some sort and I think the artwork is always there - it just needs to be kicked somehow to show it. On the ipad and iphone, if I go and bring the song up in now playing and back out, the art work that is misisng will then show up. It's random and I can quit the music app and relaunch and different ones will then have the problem, Sometimes as I scroll, ifI stop and wait, the art will eventially update. I'd say at any onetime 95% of my artwork is ok. Still bugs me to see every few lines one or two boxes with generic artwork when I know the artwork is there.

I don't think waiting will resolve the missing album art problem.

1. I have some missing in iTunes on the Mac, but they all show up when I open the song info. I keep a few unapdated, I want to see if they show up on their own.

2. I have a different set of album art missing on my iPhone, and there is nothing I can do to get those displayed. I tried to download the albums from iCloud, open now playing, rati it, cover flow it, re-start the iTunes app, re-start the phone. Now I waited 24 hours and they are still missing from the phone (they are present on the Mac). I clicked on update iTunes Match on the Mac several times, nothing is being uploaded.

All these were ripped from my CD-s, album art pasted in to the artwork field manually.

My thoughts on the topic after further research:

Last night I tried a couple of additional things, the biggest thing that I tried was activating iTunes Match with the same ID on a different computer (iTunes Library).

The artwork that was missing on iOS devices was also missing on that machine. I downloaded one of the tracks, verified that the artwork was missing and chose "Get Album Artwork." Then, I turned off iTunes Match on that machine and turned it back on. When I did that, the artwork appeared on my iOS devices for that particular track.

The behavior of iTunes when ripping a CD seems to be this:

1. iTunes searches Gracenote for tag information. This information typically does not match the iTunes Music Store data. In my opinion, they would ideally attempt to match the album to their own database before reaching out to Gracenote.
2. After importing the CD into iTunes, if iTunes can find the artwork it does so automatically. If not, you have to tweak the tags to make the "Get Album Artwork" feature work.
3. The songs appear as "Waiting". Then, they get tested to see if they can find a match. My experience is that if it finds a match for the artwork, it typically will also find a match for the song.

Some part of this process is wrong, it's my opinion that the song is getting matched in iTunes match and is transferring the metadata, but failing to transfer the artwork. If I make a change to metadata such as Artist, that happens immediately to the cloud and shows up on iOS devices. The same should be true of artwork.

What is happening now is that the artwork is not with the song in the cloud, and since iOS devices do not allow you to "Get Album Artwork," it can't find it.

This problem appears to be resolved by turning off iTunes Match and turning it back on, which would indicate that the logic to transfer album artwork when modifying songs must be missing. That logic is definitely present in the initial setup of iTunes Match.

Update: I ripped about 20 CDs last night, and also matched/uploaded another 25 albums from my NAS last night. Just like before, about half of them had cover art in my iPhone. Again, I added the cover art manually in my itunes in my machine to the albums that did not have one after ripping (or transfer from NAS). Nothing has changed as of now compared to last night, however I just turned my itunes on a while back. I will wait and see.

I also wanted to inform you that I was contacted by an Apple rep regarding the issue presented here. I guess they DO read the discussions. He had a bunch of questions to email him back the answer, which I did promptly. I will let you know when I hear back from him.

I heard from him, too. Already e-mailed back my answers -- I got mine all straightened out with the Get Info trick.

Hopefully they're monitoring other threads -- "empty" songs won't match, albums are mixed Uploaded/Matched, etc. -- and are going to address those issues ASAP.

I'm having the same issue. I have cover art missing on my iTunes Match on my iPad 2 and my iPhone 4S. What's strange is that's it's only a select few... Now matter what I do I can't get it to update.

What's baffling is I have albums with custom cover art that is showing up but major studio release albums are blank. I'm hoping this gets resolved soon.

same issue. Some songs have an cover on itunes on my mac. Now those songs lost their covers. I tried deleting them again but that causes even more issues. Songs that had an cover have lost it after i got it back from the cloud.

Other artists show no cover but once i open it the covers of the albums r there. Sometimes playing a song of an album brings back the album cover but that cant be the solution

I have found no consistency in the pattern in which my album art appears on iTunes Match. Turning off iTunes Match and turning it back on has done nothing other than move me backward. 745/759 albums had album artwork initially (but my OCD wasn't satisfied), each time I turned off iTunes match and reloaded it onto my 4s album art I had before was then missing, only music that had been syned up or downloaded from the cloud had art. I waited over night to see a change, now I have less than half of my album art. I have no issue sitting on iTunes match, until the upload rush and bugs are over. I'm less excited about the idea that what I listen to has to be downloaded and I can't just stream my library like I would Pandora. I have 500 of the 759 album covers in a file on my MBpro.

I never use my 160gb Classic, the bumbling album art issue is giving me good reason to use it as my way of showcasing my library to friends on the go as opposed to handing my friends my phone with the cloud.

In addition to running into these issues I found another - after I turned on iTunes Match I noticed that on my iPhone the alternate album art I was using for a few albums was changed back to the standard album art for the album. For me this is an issue for a few reasons:

1. This is an album that was stored locally on my device and I had selected my alternate album art in iTunes for all of the tracks. Why is iTunes Match overriding what I have selected as the album art for something stored locally on my device?
2. I take great pains to make sure that the album art I have for my albums is at least 1000x1000 in size so that it doesn't look like crap on the ipad. I don't want iTunes Match substuting its 300x300 album art images for mine for any reason.

Running into the same issue for my Live Widespread Panic Downloads, one Album isn't keeping the album art that I loaded on iTunes but rather the tagged art that the site that offers with the downloads. I changed the ID3 tags with Media Monkey and the new art I tagged did NOT get onto iTunes match.

I don't want to sound dramatic, but I think I found the solution on the artwork missing on iOS device via iTunes Match. It worked for me in three different albums that was missing artwork, so it should work for all. It is a rather long process and manual, but better than nothing. Here are the steps:

1 - Go to your iTunes in your machine (I am using a 64-bit Windows 7). You should already have all your albums with the artwork on them.

2 - Check your iPhone, and pick an album that is missing the artwork from the iPhone.

3 - Go to your PC, select that album and Ctrl+i in your keboard. It will ask you "Are you sure you want to edit information for multiple items?". Hit "Yes".

4 - Multiple Item Information comes up. Stay on "info" tab. Copy/paste the artwork of that album (you can get it from any website, Amazon is a good one) into "Artwork" at bottom right. Click OK.

5 - Run Store/Update iTunes Match in your machine.

6 - Go back to your iPhone, turn off "itunes match" from Settings/Music.

7 - Power off iphone, power it back on.

8 - Turn iTunes Match back on on your iphone.

9 - The artwork for your album that was missing it, will show up in a few minutes, along with everything that was already there.

Good lukck! As I said, it worked for me on 3 separate albums. Have not tried it with multiple albums before the power off, itunes match off (on iphone). Let me know if it worked for you.