Album artwork not syncing on iPhone iOS 5.1 update

I was really a dumb dumb with the post. It only showed up that way because of the home share, as soon as I turned it off the album art went away.

Something I have found that definitely works, but is a pain is the following process:

1. right click and copy the album art from the computer itunes library (in the bottom left corner where the art shows up/where in the past one would drag and drop).

2. go to the device (ipod or iphone) either synching by wifi or by corded, either works, and select all of the tracks for the album to add art to

3. Right click on all of the highlighted tracks and select get info

4. you will see an empty album art square in the lower right hand corner, click on it and keystroke clover/command + V to paste the album art in

5. Hit ok to update

6 Repeat until album art shows up. I would have to do it twice before the album art wold show.

You will notice that the album art is not the same art.. somehow it is deciding to get the artwork from apple instead of the artwork you selected. Some albums dont work, about 2 in 20 dont for me like the worst of jefferson airplane album and the solitude album by billie holiday. Apple must have some new direction as to how album art will show up and will be used... maybe a part of the cloud matching?

clarity for direction #2: the device must be connected to itunes and you must go to the list of songs under the music category for the device

I guess I have successfully solved that. Somehow  predicted this problem's appearance and added a function of ID3 tags version conversion. Just convert all of your mp3 files' tags to version 2.4. worked for me, now bitrate gets downgraded and artwork is safe.

p.s.: some of the artwork (especially files that originally were higher bitrate AAC converted to 128 kbit/s) won't show the artwork in the artist or album list at first. just play any of such songs and artwork will show up.

@ Alexandrre - brilliant, that did the trick!

cheers,

I had this problem as well, and what fixed it for me was replacing my album art with a differently-sized version of the cover; if I had a 1500 x 1500 version of the cover, I would simply replace it with a smaller 1000 x 1000 version. It might be tedious to hunt down new album art depending on how many albums aren't syncing with album art, but nothing else worked for me.

I have this problem, too, and I'm glad someone has figured out how to deal with it.

Alexanderre wrote:

I guess I have successfully solved that. Somehow  predicted this problem's appearance and added a function of ID3 tags version conversion. Just convert all of your mp3 files' tags to version 2.4. worked for me, now bitrate gets downgraded and artwork is safe.

p.s.: some of the artwork (especially files that originally were higher bitrate AAC converted to 128 kbit/s) won't show the artwork in the artist or album list at first. just play any of such songs and artwork will show up.

Can you please explain how to do this, i.e., to convert the tags to version 2.4?

sure.

go to music tab in iTunes (I mean music on your Mac, not iPhone/iPad/iPod), then add field "Type" (right click the line with the song name, artist, album, year and so on). then sort all your music by type. it'll allow you to select all of your mp3s at once. right click them all and select "Convert ID3 tags". in the popup window select ID3 tag version 2.4 instead of "None".

cheers - I appreciate the reply very much, but I'm still not quite getting it. (Please forgive my ignorance when it comes to this stuff.)

1. Does this apply only to mp3s, as opposed to AAC, and is that why you advise sorting by type and performing the conversion on the mp3s only?

2. My iTunes doesn't seem to offer an option to add a "type" field. It is version 10.6.1, and I'm running 10.6.8 (not Lion) - is that why?

3. However, as an experiment I did try the conversion on an album of mp3s, one where the artwork had not transferred before because of (apparently) the downgrade-to-128 option, and re-imported it. Same result: no artwork on iPhone.

Sorry if this is confusing. It's confusing to me too. Very possible I'm doing something, or everything, wrong.

I'd like to rule this ID thing out before giving up or trying other things, because it seems to have worked for some people. Any idea what's going on?

Same problem here. With iPhone being the offspring of iPod you'd think that one thing that would work perfectly would be the Music app but in fact it's been pretty buggy. Messy controls, faulty volume control bug, this one...

This one is the most annoying, my preferred way of browsing trhough my music is cover flow, which is not so pleasant when half of the covers are blank due to this stupid bug and if I know anything about Appple it's gonna take forever until they fix it - if they ever do. So much for building spaceship-like headquarters and owining billions and billions of dollars.

Same problem here

iTunes 10.6.1, iPhone 4S 16 GB.

only happens when converting from 320 kbps mp3.

other mp3's like 256 VBR and apple lossless work fine

Alexanderre's trick worked for my mp3 files, but not the AAC files.

In iTunes, use the list view, then right-click on the top bar beneath the controls with Artist/Album/Name etc. You can select what fields to show. Add Type, then sort them by type. Select all mp3 files, then right-click Convert ID3 tags. Convert them to ID3 tag version 2.4. Then transfer your songs, converted or not, to your iOS 5.1 device.

Worked using iTunes 10.6.1 and OS X Lion 10.7.4

Now if I could find a way to transfer my converted AAC files with the artwork... It still doesn't show up after clicking on any song of the album...

I must say that this one worked for me! 🙂

Thanks for sharing, Jeremy 🙂

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I was really a dumb dumb with the post. It only showed up that way because of the home share, as soon as I turned it off the album art went away.

Something I have found that definitely works, but is a pain is the following process:

1. right click and copy the album art from the computer itunes library (in the bottom left corner where the art shows up/where in the past one would drag and drop).

2. go to the device (ipod or iphone) either synching by wifi or by corded, either works, and select all of the tracks for the album to add art to

3. Right click on all of the highlighted tracks and select get info

4. you will see an empty album art square in the lower right hand corner, click on it and keystroke clover/command + V to paste the album art in

5. Hit ok to update

6 Repeat until album art shows up. I would have to do it twice before the album art wold show.

You will notice that the album art is not the same art.. somehow it is deciding to get the artwork from apple instead of the artwork you selected. Some albums dont work, about 2 in 20 dont for me like the worst of jefferson airplane album and the solitude album by billie holiday. Apple must have some new direction as to how album art will show up and will be used... maybe a part of the cloud matching?

Message was edited by: HealingHands

i have tried so many times but no luck couldnot get the artwork. somebody please help.

I've tried all the stuff listed here and the only thing that has worked across all song types is to TURN OFF the "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128 AAC" on your device. Once I unchecked that, all the songs seem to be copying with artwork, whether they're MP3 or AAC, purchased or imported from CD. That convert feature was a nice way to save space, but it must have some bug to it. It stinks when things that worked great previously now have problems when there's an update. Hopefully Apple will get it straightened out.

Thanks... instead of whinning about Apple, you provided a solution!