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iTunes Match Lost Cover Art

After hours and hours of uploading iTunes crashing repeatedly, removing problematic songs, etc. and matching the rest of my iTunes library iTunes Match finally finished.


Now all of the cover art for rare albums, etc. that I had scoured the Internet for over the years has been lost. 😟


Needless to say I am very dissapointed. I have a normal Time Machine backup , but I don't know of any way to recover those particular files. Any help would be appreciated. TIA.

Posted on Nov 15, 2011 12:46 AM

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172 replies

Nov 15, 2011 3:47 AM in response to richsadams

Same problem here: A number of my CDs in iTunes have lost their cover art. Fortunately in my case, I have a secondary machine that has the exact same music in a separate iTunes library, so not all is lost. But this begs the question: Why is iTunes Match monkeying with music on your machine? I thought it specifically WASN'T supposed to do that.

Nov 15, 2011 6:02 AM in response to richsadams

I have the same problem here: after the matching/uploading, the album cover art is missing on my iCloud for many albums. The cover art is still in my itunes library in my pc though, simply missing in my icloud. It cannot be found when I dowload the album in my iPhone AND when I stream music off my iTunes Match under Music in my AppleTv. Any solutions to this? Thanks!

Nov 15, 2011 7:46 AM in response to Doneko

To Doneko (et al): How do you do that on a Windows 7 machine? (Cmd+I on Mac).


"About 5% of my iCloud albums displayed on my iOS devices are still missing the album at. They even download from the iCloud without it".


This is exactly my problem, but much more than 5% - I would estimate around 50% as my music is mostly ripped from my CDs. It is very important we get a solution for that, even if manual, as everything would start from the icloud - downloading then the artwork to ios devices and streaming through AppleTv2. Anybody please?

Nov 15, 2011 8:18 AM in response to Doneko

Thanks for the tip about checking the info on each album. That helped display some additional cover art, and just clicking on some others brought it up. There were probably 50 or so missing and that helped with about 25. I'd call that a bug especially as some of my "original" cover art is still missing.


I also found that by turning iTunes Match off then closing and reopening iTunes I could click on missing cover art and it would appea...sometimes.


Other cover art is just behaving strangely. When I click on the album it will show up as a "Selected Item" in the sidebar, but not on the album itself...


User uploaded file

Nov 15, 2011 8:18 AM in response to richsadams

richsadams wrote:


Thyname wrote:


To Doneko (et al): How do you do that on a Windows 7 machine? (Cmd+I on Mac).


Cmd+I is just a keyboard shortcut for "Get Info". In other words, when you open the info screen for the album, the cover art is appearing. See if that works for you.

Yes, cover art is appearing in my iTunes Library in my machine (Windows 7). However, it is missing from my iCloud through iTunes Match in my iPhone and my AppleTv.

Nov 15, 2011 8:45 AM in response to richsadams

Good news! All of my original cover art is back! It returned in "stages", not all at once and not by my doing the same thing to each missing item. Here's what I did:


1. Turned off iTunes Match

2. Closed and reopened iTunes (several times)

3. Clicked on cover art that was missing (and it would appear)

4. Cmd+I/Control-click (right-click) on missing cover art to open the "Get Info" screen (and it would appear).


However, when I turned iTunes Match on again, it asked me if I wanted to "Add This Computer" That made no sense as it had already gone through hours of setting up iTunes Match yesterday. ???


User uploaded file


I had to enter my iTunes ID again and it went through the entire three-step process once more. This time it was fairly fast and my original cover art is still in place.


I know this is a "beta" version, but it seems very buggy and rushed. I wish they would have continued to work on it and released a more polished version. I wasted almost an entire day trying to get it to work properly. Along with the kludgy Music App for my iPad (please bring back the "old" iPod App!) this whole experience has been very dissapointing.

Nov 15, 2011 9:18 AM in response to Thyname

Thyname wrote:


Good new indeed for you! Thanks for sharing.


How about the artwork in your icloud? Is it showing? You can check this in your iphone/ipad or Apple TV. Thanks!


Yes and no but 99.9% yes. It took a little while for iTunes Match to load on my Apple TV2.


User uploaded file


After that I scrolled through the various options, "Albums", "Artists", "Playlists", etc. Although I didn't look at every single one (about 7,500 songs) it appeared that all of the cover art was there...including the "original" art that I had added for the more obscure albums which were uploaded to iTunes Match. All-in-all it looks like it's 99.9% good.


There's 1% (actually far less) that's semi-missing. There in the "home view" two pieces of cover art were missing...


User uploaded file


I checked these same entries under "Albums" and "Artists" and the cover art is there...


User uploaded file


So I've no idea why those two particular bits are missing but if that's all that's wrong I can live with it.


The music played on my Apple TV2 perfectly, it was quick to respond with little or no latency. It switched from menu to menu just fine so it all appears to be good.


Hope others are able to get things ironed out...this has been a rocky experience to say the least, not at all like Apple.

Nov 15, 2011 9:29 AM in response to richsadams

Ok, Richsadams et al: I think I have all this artwork missing problem figured out, here is how.


We just need to chill out and simply wait. They will all eventually show up there on their own. It took me few hours to realize all that, but it is true, it will be there on their own, as long as you have them in your pc/mac library hard drive.


Thanks all for the replies. This is a brand new service, and of course it will have its problems at the beginning, especially when millions of people do it at the same day. At the end, we'll all be happy with iTunes match and iCloud, I know it! Especially streaming all your iclouds library via Apple TV is simply awesome!!

Nov 15, 2011 9:54 AM in response to Thyname

Thyname wrote:


Ok, Richsadams et al: I think I have all this artwork missing problem figured out, here is how.


We just need to chill out and simply wait. They will all eventually show up there on their own. It took me few hours to realize all that, but it is true, it will be there on their own, as long as you have them in your pc/mac library hard drive.


Thanks all for the replies. This is a brand new service, and of course it will have its problems at the beginning, especially when millions of people do it at the same day. At the end, we'll all be happy with iTunes match and iCloud, I know it! Especially streaming all your iclouds library via Apple TV is simply awesome!!


I’m not sure how "waiting" would have helped in this case. Had I not been proactive, the cover art would still be missing. Overall the service is still "buggy" IMO and users shouldn't have to wait or go through some pretzel logic to resolve problems. If it were one or even a couple of issues that’s one thing...but this did not go well on a number of levels.


I understand "early adoption" caveats, but based on numerous posts here and elsewhere, this was not a pleasant experience for a lot of folks...with many still struggling to get things back on track.


We have admittedly been spoiled by Apple's usual high standards. However with all of the issues with the rollout of iOS 5 and now iTunes Match, recent events have been very disappointing. Apple has previously set the customer experience bar very high and almost always met or surpassed it. These past couple of fairly major events felt rushed and unpolished.


I'm the first one to come to Apple's defense and will continue to do so, but this experience has soured my outlook on Apple's ability to continue to deliver at their previous levels. I hope they are able to regroup and learn from this because I truly want them to succeed and stay on top.

Nov 15, 2011 10:14 AM in response to richsadams

Agree that the service is awesome. However, I am not terribly happy with the artwork issue. I setup iTunes match with no hitch, then ripped a CD that I had at 128kb simply to test the service. Gracenote found the tags and when the album was imported, iTunes displays the artwork for the album (it grabbed the art itself from ITMS). The songs status changed to "matched." I proceded to delete the files and the download icon appeared. I downloaded the 256kb version of the tracks as advertised with no hiccups. The artwork still displays fine on iTunes. However, on iOS devices (Apple TV 2 and iPhone 4), while these songs appear in the cloud they do not have the artwork. I understand the idea of "waiting," but with my library which is rather small (abt. 1,500 songs) and there being no other issues that it seems that Match is trying to resolve (there were no hiccups for me when enabling Match - every song matched or purchased, I didn't have single upload), it would seem that by now the artwork would have appeared if it was going to (waiting now for 14+ hours).


I tested additional CDs that I had using the same method at the same time of the first, and the issue effects every one of those as well. It's not a hit or miss thing.

iTunes Match Lost Cover Art

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