Has anyone else had a problem with album artwork not showing up in the Music App since the recent iOS 5.1 update? i've tried restoring my iphone, changing the resolution of the artwork to 600x600, deleting all the music off and resyncing, and many other troubleshoots to NO avail. please advise if you have had a similar problem RECENTLY?
iPhone 4, iOS 5.1
Ugh. This happened to me tonight and it took quite awhile to figure out a fix.
BACKGROUND -- I have an iPod Touch 3G, 64gb. I am on iOS 5.1.1. I sync VBR MP3 files and I do no conversions upon syncing. Nor do I sync by wi-fi. With this setup I have been syncing without any major issues for years. I have about 6,000 songs on my Touch. Suddenly today right after a sync I noticed dozens of albums on my Touch had the wrong art. The covers were all correct in iTunes, but somehow on the Touch many were all mixed up. So I deleted all the music on my Touch and re-synced all music back to the device. This took hours.
PROBLEM -- While the covers were no longer mixed up, a new problem arose -- Now about 60% of the albums on my Touch had no art at all. Of course, as before, all the art was fine in iTunes. I tried syncing again a few times but it didn't fix things. Finally I figured out that anything which will cause an album to be imported again to the device will fix the missing art. So what's the most convenient way to do that? One way to do it is to remove the album from your library completely, then sync, put the album back into the library and then sync again. But this is a major pain. And simply adding back the cover art to the album won't make it re-import into the device.
SOLUTION -- So the simplest method I found was to write to an empty tag field, which will cause the song to be copied over again to your device. I chose the "Sort Artist" field. First select all the songs in an album, then select "Get Info" and go to the "Sorting" tab. In the "Sort Artist" field just type in the name of the artist ... or copy and paste in the name of the artist from the "Info" tab. If there was already an artist listed under "Sort Artist" what I did was delete it, then hit OK to save, then go back into the tracks and add the name of the artist back again. Now when you sync, all these tracks will be copied over to your device again, and the missing art should show up. Using this method, you can do all albums by a single artist at once. For example I have 13 Beatles albums in my library. So I sorted by artist, selected The Beatles, then selected all the tracks for the 13 albums at once and made the change.
This worked for me and hopefully it might help someone else. It's still a chore to fix it all, but at least doing it by artist makes it go a little faster.
This problem cropped up shortly after I installed the new iTunes 11 so I'm wondering if that caused the issue in my case.
My experience with this issue indicates that downsampling (not using it) and other "settings oriented" ideas purporting to fix the problem are all only temporary and do not really solve the problem. I have never used downsampling, yet experienced the lost artwork issue.
I think the reason people are posting here claiming they have found a fix is due to the fact that the "fixes" all include an unsync/resync process that rebuilds the library on the phone. Unfortunately, this procedure only results in a temporary fix. Subsequent syncs "break" the artwork on the phone.
I can get my artwork back on my phone anytime. All I need to do is uncheck music sync in itunes, disconnect my phone and restart it, reconnect the phone, and recheck music sync in itunes. Then wait a few hours for my tracks to copy back to my phone and, voila! Artwork restored!
Until the next sync, that is. The same is true when monkeying with the tags and other twiddling: It all concludes with a temporarily-fresh rebuild of the song library on the phone, which is what results in the artwork being magically restored. But then hopes are dashed when subsequent syncing takes place and suddenly random tracks are once again missing their artwork.
This should really be the responsibility of the mega corporation whom we have paid for this platform, but since they are unresponsive, I challenge anyone here to come up with a fix that lasts. I'd really like to see it. But all appearances point to an inherent problem in the syncing process which breaks the artwork on the phone. Has nothing to do with the tracks themselves or other settings. Prove me wrong?
Hi i also have a solution that worked for me 🙂 1. Go into itunes and with mine music their mostly albums so i search the album name so that only those songs appear.
2. Click edit then select all
3. Click get info, then drag the artwork u want
4. Then click the songs one by one and add the same artwork a 2nd time & your album artwork shoud be on your phone
With iOS6, I too stared noticing missing album artwork in cover flow mode on my iPhone 4S. Pretty annoying considering I keep my entire iTunes library and synced playlists' meticulous. In my case, about 10% of my synced songs stopped showing artwork after my iOS6 upgrade. (And this included some albums downloaded directly from iTunes, go figure). I'm on a Mac running 10.7 but would imagine that this workaround method should work on a PC as well.
• First, I located each offending song/album on my iPhone 4S that was missing album art from showing in coverflow mode
• In iTunes now, I located those particular songs/albums and dragged its album art (copied it) to my desktop. (More offen than not, the album art file will be in .jpg format)
• Back in iTunes, I deleted the album art from those offending songs/albums
• For this next step I used Photoshop CS5 (but any CS version should work): In Photoshop, I opened the album art that was saved to my desktop and simply re-saved the art file back over itself (as RGB, 72dpi, baseline standard option from the jpg "save as" dialogue box (performing a very basic "save as")
• Back in iTunes on my computer, I then highlighted the offending tracks and dragged/applied this newly re-saved song/album art back onto the offending album song files.
• After re-syncing my iPhone to iTunes, all offending song/album art was finally there again on my iPhone 4S iTunes in coverflow mode
Now while I realize that not everyone will have access to Photoshop, many imaging software applications that can be downloaded to Macs & PCs, come with free 30-day trials. All of these applications should be be able to perform the same, simple "save as .jpg" command that I used. Good luck.
krs10, first try sorting by artist in iTunes, then select all the tracks that come up for that artist, and then make a change to the "Sort Artist" tag field. If it's empty just add the name of the artist in there. If there is something already in the field, delete it, save the files, then go right back in and add the artist name back again. When you sync now, all those files you just changed will be copied over again to your device and the art should now show up correctly. It worked for me.
BTW, I too have Media Monkey on my laptop and use it from time to time for tagging. But I'm not sure that caused the problem in my case. However I will watch it carefully in the future just in case that's the cause of the problem.
krs10, thanks! That totally fixed the issue I was having. The key was deleting that DB file on the Touch, which must have been corrupted. Now all the cover art shows up fine.😀
Using the frree utility, iFunBox, I found the file on my Touch 3G at ...
"raw file system>user>media>iTunes_Control>iTunes"
My touch is "liberated" so I'm not sure if iFunBox will work on non-liberated devices. If you use this method, be sure to reboot your device after you delete the file, as mentioned in the second link to the instructions.
The only downside to this method is that it also re-loads your entire music library again. On my device it took well over 2 hours to complete. So if you have just a few albums not showing cover art or showing the wrong art, you might want to consider simply changing a tag field in the album. This works as well, and is what I had started to do before I tried deleting the Touch's media database file. But re-creating the database file, while it takes a long time, is actually a more complete and thorough fix, and is actually easy to do since it's mostly hands-off. When it's time to sync, just go to bed or have a nice lunch or dinner or something. When you come back, it will be all fixed!
Praise be to PatNY! Here is exactly what I did to solve my album art problem on an iPhone running 6.0.1. I did a sync with iTunes (11.0) and then exited out of iTunes. Then, I used iFunBox to rename MediaLibrary.sqlitedb. I exited out of iFunBox and turned my phone off. I turned my phone back on, attached it to iTunes and ran a sync. It took 10 minutes or so but I got all my artwork back. I've been able to delete playlists and add new playlists and every time, I've gotten the right album art work. THANKS!
This approach worked for me:
Note: I have Sync disabled in iTunes and manually drag music on to device
Steps in iTunes
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.
I had the problem of music album artwork being completely wrong - not matching the song being played. I had this with iOS 6 on my iPod Touch 5. I got no help from Apple Tech support and infact a great deal of being ignored. But I did find a post on this forum that solved the problem. Tech support should read the posts - they might understand the user complaints. This post was by 'Edl4304', to whom I am very grateful, and the link to it was https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3801919?answerId=21201891022#21201891022. Just in case you can't find it or its no longer there - this is the heart of the post...
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; (try www.i-funbox.com)
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.
I found the easiest fix... and just facepalmed myself for not having thought about it before.
In itunes under phone sync options:
- Un-select all your music files before sync
- sync your phone (bascially with no songs on the phone)
- reselect all the songs you want in itunes
-resync your phone (with the songs you want)
FIXED 😀 😀 😀
(make sure your album in itunes has an album art on it though. If you purchased your songs through itunes, it already has one. If not, you might have to manually add one yourself before syncing phone)
I Have now tried the fix with below and it worked for me.
I found the easiest fix... and just facepalmed myself for not having thought about it before.
In itunes under phone sync options:
- Un-select all your music files before sync
- sync your phone (bascially with no songs on the phone)
- reselect all the songs you want in itunes
-resync your phone (with the songs you want)
FIXED 😀 😀 😀
(make sure your album in itunes has an album art on it though. If you purchased your songs through itunes, it already has one. If not, you might have to manually add one yourself before syncing phone)
Hi,
I havn't read through all the replies so perhaps the solution that worked for me has already been suggested. But anyways (after trying some solutions suggested here and failing) I noticed when playing an album on my iPod touch that was missing the album artwork, one (or more) tracks showed the album artwork when the song was playing. However, when scrolling through albums the artwork was missing even though it was showing up on my iTunes.
I then went through 'get info' on each song on the albums on my iTunes and on the 'artwork' tab I noticed tracks were missing the artwork (even though the album cover had the artwork). So I manually copied and pasted the artwork into the box where the artwork was blank and hey presto all my album artwork was showing on my iPod when I synced.
This solved my problem, it seems simple and it takes a bit of time (there may be a quicker way than copying and pasting) but it worked and it didn't involve restoring or updating. So in summary, click the 'get info' option for any track in the album and bring up the artwork tab and scroll through each song in the album and copy and paste the artwork where it is blank. Hope this helps!
I found this to be helpful. I don't know if it helps others. In the Get info -> Sorting tab: If you are doing single tracks on the right side of sorting section all should be blank except Sort Album and checked. If you have the entire album selected. do the same and have only Sort Album entered and checked. This fixed my artwork syncing issues. So far all the album artwork have been displayed correctly.
1) Plug your device to your Mac or PC.
2) open iTunes, and open your device settings
3) under your device settings, click on the music tab.
4) uncheck all your music files, including albums and artists.
5) sync your device (with no music on it)
6) check your iTunes library and ensure each music piece has an album artwork. If that's not the case, you will have to add one yourself (google it to see how).
7) go back to your device's music settings, and check all the songs you want to have synced.
8) sync your device.
That should fix it.
My problem was not related to specific songs.
Instead, NO track in my iPhone was showing any album art, although almost every track in iTunes had a corresponding album art. Zero album art on my device. Nothing.
I fixed it by deleting some files in my iPhone using free software like iFunbox or iExplorer.
What you need to do is remove all music from your device, then use the above software to:
Navigate to “iTunes_Control/Artwork” and delete “ArtworkDB.”
Navigate back to “iTunes_Control” and access “Music” and delete everything in this folder.
Navigate to the “iTunes_Control/iTunes” folder–delete all the contents of “Artwork”.
Navigate to the “iTunes_Control/iTunes” folder and delete every file starting with Medialibrary.***
Then hard-reset your device (hold power and home button for a few seconds until the apple logo appears) and re-sync your music.
I found this in
http://www.doctorchewy.com/album-artwork-woes/
I hope it works for you too. Cheers!
Album artwork not syncing on iPhone iOS 5.1 update
