Album artwork not syncing on iPhone iOS 5.1 update

Wow! I solved my problem in a VERY simple but slowly way!

I used the tip from someone back there from page 2. I just unsynced the music library from the iphone, and then resynced it all back and it worked perfectly!

samsworld, that's an old solution that works sometimes, but not always. In fact, the problem with my missing album covers occurred right after doing exactly that -- unsyncing the music and syncing it all back. Prior to that I had mismatched album covers and when I re-synced all my music, it immediately resulted in missing cover art (about 60% of the songs were missing it).

Recreating the MediaLibrary.sqlitedb database file on my Touch was the only thing that fixed it. It's really the best way to fix a variety of problems that occur syncing music from iTunes to an iphone or Touch. It will fix mismatched cover art, missing cover art, missing lyrics, and ghost tracks.

Perfect. Thank you. I went into the iPhone settings and took off where I had it checked to automatically change the bitrate.

Does this work with manual sync?

This approach worked for me:

Note: I have Sync disabled in iTunes and manually drag music on to device

Steps in iTunes

1. Connect device
2. Locate album with missing artwork in Cover Flow on iTouch (my iTouch is the 5th generation)
3. Remove from iTouch/iPhone
4. Find albums in iTunes Library
5. Highlight all songs on album, right click, select 'Get Info'
6. Locate 'Artwork' section, click checkbox, double click in empty 'Artwork' section
7. Locate folder where album artwork is stored, select artwork
8. Click 'OK'
9. Drag album on to iTouch/iPhone

I had the same problem of some of the artwork not showing up on my iphone when syncing. This was mainly on any new albums i'd added to my itunes library. The artwork was there in itunes but not when I synced to my phone.

This solution worked for me. I unchecked the convert from a higher bitrate box (i'd used it to gain more capacity on my phone). Deleted the albums from my iphone with missing artwork, synced and then added them back to my phone. A bit annoying but has at least now got all the artwork.

I think in the next apple update they should address this issue.

Try the"Restore iPhone"first!!

I just spent a few hours looking at these 13 pages here and other sites for this issue. I tried every recommendation except clicking the "Restore iPhone" button on the iTunes 11 summary page for my iPhone 4g version 6.1 .I had missing artwork, then artwork for wrong album, etc. on my phone only. Even though iTunes was perfect on my PC. I have 390gb (46,761 songs) in my library. Anyhow, just finished the "Restore iPhone" and everything is back to normal! Just back up your phone first (via iTunes) then restore it with that same file.

No more album artwork problem started for me after the new redesigned iTunes (v11 I think).

Albums that were on my iPhone are OK, but new album have no artwork.

Remove and add albums again results in the artwork being gone.

Restore backup doesn't help.

Nothing seems to help.

Why does Apple always want to fix things that are not broken, resulting in them being broken.

Always something every update.

I did that. It fixed everything but a couple of days later it was back to missing most of the album art again.

Ok i bought Songs off of my Iphone and they showed up until i upgraded to the iOs6 and now the album artwork for those particular songs won't show up. I tryed syncing it to my itunes from the computer and adding new songs. Everything is fine and shows up on my computer but on my phone when your looking at it in the albums section in your music it doesn't unless i click on it. I have no idea what to do.

A fix for missing artwork and phantom songs on iPhone!

I have been having problems for a while now with album artwork on my iPhone. I have music from a variety of sources: purchased from iTunes, purchased from Amazon, purchased from Google, whole albums ripped from CDs, miscellaneous MP3s downloaded from the web or from my son's music library. The music was collected over a period of years and was ripped at different rates and it is apparent from looking at the info ("get info" in iTunes) that at least two different types or versions of tags for the songs / albums are being used. I have never had iTunes convert bitrates for my music.

The history of my problem is, roughly:

1. Some artwork was missing from my iPhone after having previously been OK. Tried to resync and got:

2. "Grayed out" or "phantom" songs. All the songs were listed on my phone in light gray font and could not be played. Recovered with delete and sync, after which:

3. I could play music again but even more artwork went missing, and incorrect artwork was displayed for most albums, so I deleted all music from my iPhone and resynced at which time:

4. All the artwork on my phone disappeared. Throughout all of this the artwork was visible and correctly associated for my music library on iTunes.

After reading through 13 pages of a discussion thread viewed over 100,000 times by others likely as frustrated as I have been, I think I understand the problem. Credit and thanks go to krs10 who pointed to a published resolution of a different problem with similar weird symptoms on 12/4/2012 and to PatNY who posted details about how to fix the problem on 12/5/2012, 12/10/2012 and 12/13/2010. In the interest of helping anyone suffering from these frustrating and seemingly disparate symptoms, this is an attempt to consolidate and repeat the good information I found.

Symptoms: Album artwork is fine in iTunes, but some or all album artwork is missing from iPhone; incorrect artwork isdisplayed for some albums; music is listed on iPhone but is "grayed out" and cannot be played.

Root cause: Corruption of database file, "MediaLibrary.sqlitedb" on the iPhone.

Solution: Rename or delete, "MediaLibrary.sqlitedb" to force iTunes to rebuild the database on the iPhone. (Note that merely deleting the music left the database file intact on my iPhone.) Some people have reported success deleting and resyncing their music but, having done it once with no luck, I made a point of examining the database file after I deleted all music and saw that it remained intact with information about all the music that had just been deleted; consequently I think that it must be removed to ensure the problem is fixed.

Step-by-Step Procedure:

1. Back up your iPhone to your PC using iTunes.

2. On your PC, download and install iFunBox, a free utility that will allow you to access the system files on your iDevice;

3. On your iPhone, go to Settings\General\Usage\Storage\Music and swipe and delete All Music. (I'm not sure this is necessary, but it worked for me.)

4. Turn off your iPhone, then restart it.

5. Put your iPhone in Airplane mode so it will not be disturbed while syncing.

6. Make sure iTunes is not set to start automatically when a device is connected and close it on your PC if open.

7. Run iFunBox and connect your iPhone via cable to your PC. Look for the "iFunBox Classic" tab and click on it.

8. Connect your iPhone via cable to your PC.

9. Your device will appear under "Connected Devices" in iFunBox.

10. Navigate to the file, "MediaLibrary.sqlitedb" in folder "Raw File System>iTunes_Control>iTunes."

11. Rename, "MediaLibrary.sqlitedb" to, "MediaLibrary.sqlitedb.backup." (Note: Do not rename or delete, "MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-shm" or, "MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-wal." Neither of these are the file you're after!)

12. When done, eject / dismount your iDevice from iFunBox, then disconnect the cable.

13. Close iFunBox. Reboot your device again by turning power off and back on. (Again, may not be necessary, but after spending weeks trying to get this problem fixed, I figured another two minutes wouldn't hurt.)

14. Start iTunes on your PC and reconnect your device to the sync cable.

15. Sync your device. When done, be sure to eject / dismount your iPhone from iTunes before disconnecting the cable.

16. Take your phone out of Airplane mode.

17. Check to see that your album artwork has returned.

Discussion: The basic problem appears to manifest itself in many different ways and appears to be aggravated by certain conditions, like, perhaps, having iTunes down-convert high bit-rate songs. I suspect that the database file is getting corrupted on a very wide scale and regenerating it as described here would fix a lot of problems I've read of. I don't know for sure how the file gets corrupted, but I plan on being diligent in ejecting / dismounting my device after connecting it to iTunes. In previous clumsy treatment, I very likely interrupted a sync and I think this is as likely a cause as any for database file corruption. FWIW, I don't think the problem is neccessarily associated with any particular device, version of device firmware nor version of iTunes. But if you had a bad DB, a change in device code or iTunes code seems likely to aggravate it. It looks to me like this has been happening to people for years now. What I don't understand is why Apple has not adequately responded to the issue and published steps to correct it.

I'm very pleased to have my long-standing artwork problem fixed: all the artwork on my device has never looked better! Thanks again to krs10 and to PatNY!!

Thx Ed14304

Sounds like a fix for the missing artowork.
But too much work for me for just missing artwork.
Lets hope Apple will come with a fix one day, but like you said they don't often respond adequately to problems.
Look at the initial responce to the map issues.

No media coverage means no response from Apple it looks like.

This has been happening to me for about a year on and off. Very annoying. Trying the steps outlined above now.

Hi All with this Artwork issue... I had a iPhone3G (originally that I'd installed all my music on via iTunes, from CD), I upgraded (via a pressie) to a iPhone 4 and lost all my album artwork (small) when listed downwards in 'Music' on my iPhone, I had to upgrade softwate (iTunes and iPhone) on PC over a Broadband connection to upgrade to iTunes 11 and iPhone ios 6.01 on iphone.. I found deleting all music (via right swipe) and then a Sync with iTunes worked to restore the Artwork but I still have another problem that doesn't seem to be listed, which is some albums aren't listed Alphanumerically but who cares after all this hassle.... Thanks to all that have posted, I've read alot and seem to have a 'mainly' patial resolution. BUT I think Apple really need to get their act together when upgrading yuor device, this kind of issue just simply isn't good enough, the prices charged and the 'ethos' is supposed to denote a 'NO issue' policy! Bring back Steve? or the bloke who can solve issues without an additional charge!

Just wanted to add I've found a fix for the "some albums aren't listed Alphanumerically" issue I mentioned above, my description wasn't very accurate as it was actually a case of the Artist name was missing in the horizontal Album view on my iPhone. Thanks to a chap called planb77 who had listed a fix for this problem...

The fix is actually really simple as follows -

Select all the tracks of the album in itunes in the 'Songs' View, you can do this by clicking the first track and then using the Shift key select the last track, all songs should now be highlighted.

Now Right click and then click the 'Get Info' option, make sure you're now on the 'Multiple Item Information' screen.

Now click on the 'Options' tab and in the drop down box for 'Part of a compilation' change the selection from Yes to No and click on the OK button.

Connect your iPhone and perform a Sync, then eject it.

You should now find when looking at the horizontal view of albums they now have the Artist names listed and are now correctly listed alphanumerically.

Obviously don't do this for actual compilation albums, these will be listed first in this view.