Album artwork not syncing on iPhone iOS 5.1 update

Yep...this is the only and simplest answer I've found as well - don't convert and all is well. Takes more space, but I don't see any other permanent solution until Apple pull their feckin' fingers out and get it sorted! My iPhone 4S has just stopped vibrating as well so, even though I've been an Apple user since 1989, please don't tell me 'It just works!', because it dont always! BTW (and I feel somewhat a traitor!) I just bought my first ever Android ICS tablet and guess what? It ain't half bad!!! lol x

i have tried this and it worked. you can also give it a try.

1) Connect your phone to itunes;

2) Go to devices-->Summary->Options-> and the tick the check box Manually manage music & videos;

3) Untick the check box on sync music and sync the phone. this will delete all the songs, videos etc. from your iphone; Kindly make sure that all the contents which you want on your phone are present in the library or anywhere on the pc from where you can add the items which you want to be on your phone.

4) go to Library->Music and select all songs from your library.

5) keep the songs selected and right click then click on Convert ID3 Tag and then check ID3 Tag Version and select v2.4 and click OK.

6) after conversion drag all the songs to DEVICES->MUSIC to copy it on iphone.

i have tried this and it worked. It worked everytime i wanted to add any new songs.

7) once finished with songs, copy your videos, books also manually.

I have a lengthy step-by-step way to get back missing art (not sure if it will work for you...it might depend on what kind of mood your iTunes is in). It's a variation/combination of a few previous posts, so many thanks to you! Also, I'm MANUALLY transferring my music to my iPod (takes longer, but it's easier for me), so all this is written from that option. Even when iTunes can detect the proper album art, it's still not transferred.

---For info, i'm using iTunes 10.6.3.25, with an iPod Touch 4G (64gb)---

1) I deleted those offending, artless songs I wanted to replace.

2) Highlight the song(s) in iTunes that you want to add art to. Right-click on them, and select "Create AAC Version". These new files are then paired with the originals, all with the same titles. You can see which is which by right-clicking on the top display bar, under the apple, and select "Kind".

3) Right-click on the AAC song, and select "Get Info", then click the "Artwork" tab (note - the artwork tab is missing from all my mp3 info menus). Also, if you don't/can't use that previous "Kind" option, don't worry - all the info menus also have a "Summary" tab that shows the file sizes - AACs are larger.

3) Click "Add" to select the picture file you wish to use, then click "OK" (I keep all the .jpgs on my drive, in case iTunes can't automatically find them). Note - for me, some of the songs already have the art showing there...ignore that! - I still must manually add the .jpgs (there will then be 2 pictures showing, but that's fine).

4) Drag & drop the AACs to the device, double-check that the artwork appears there, then delete the original mp3s from the iTunes list.

Hope this helps some of you! If not, be sure to check the other posts here.

well.. i just updated my 3gs to ios 5.1.1.. and i was facing the same issue.. but then i synced the songs without converting them to lower bit rates... and now theyre doin fine.. 🙂.. i guess u should try the same..

Tried everything listed here and no luck getting my artwork back. Infact i've got less than I started with now. I never let iTunes manage my music in the first place and I never had it converting to lower bit rate (this is a dumb option why rip in 320 and then down convert?) and every song except about 6 had artwork showing. Updated to latest OS and iTunes and went to only a few showing artwork. At this point i've deleted all music from my phone converted to 2.4 id3v2 tags and now have no artwork on my phone but looks fine in iTunes. Also looks fine on my iPad3 although I copied it all over before I converted my 2.3 tags to 2.4 so who knows if they are going to work now. At this point I might as well try a restore. Very annoyed by this.

i had mine to where they would convert to 128kbps when they go on a device and i just too that off and now i have all my artwork

So things get weirder. I just added some TV eipisodes to my new ipad and none of them are displaying the correct artwork either. In fact if I delete and add them again without changing a thing the artwork changes to something else random from my music artwork. So as a test I put the same shows onto an ipad that has not been update to 5.1 yet and everything is perfect. So bottom line is it appears Apple broke something with 5.1 I wish I could rollback to a previous version. I waited so long to update my iphone I wish I had kept waiting.... No such luck with the ipad it came with the latest.

Interesting... I found this in the Shuffle FAQ. Seems reasonable for the shuffle, not so much for the other iPods or iPhones.

Q. When songs are transferred to iPod shuffle, is artwork stripped from the files?

A. No. The exception is if you select the "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC" option, the artwork will not be included in the converted 128 kbps AAC versions of the files.

I have the same issue on my 160gb iPod. When I convert to 128kbps "on the fly" I lose the artwork. Doesn't matter what format they were before the conversion. When I convert them manually then add them to my iPod they are fine. Pain in the rear. I guess iTunes thinks my 160gb is just a big Shuffle.

I noticed this annoying problem a few weeks ago but didn't really search for a solution.

Thanks to the help of everyone on here I found a solution that worked for me.

Once I un-clicked the "convert higher bit rate songs to..." box and added the songs that would not transfer the artwork to my iphone, it worked.

The weird part is that if there was art work on my itunes and I transfered it to my ipod shuffle and ipad, the art work would show up fine, it would only not show up on my iphone

I had the same issue, but the one thing that i discovered was that all tracks need to have the album artwork attached to it. If one track does not have the artwork attached it will not be displayed when you sync your library to your iPhone.

Nice solution! definitely worked for my iphone. Will test later to see if once you disable the re-enable if it malfunctions again or if it will operate as expected once re-enabled, do like having a bit more space for music from time to time on the phone. Will post results of that test when I can.

I finally found a solution that works without unchecking the "covert to 128 Kbps" button.

1. You have to make sure that the artwork is visible on the bottom left side of iTunes when you select a song, (it is at the bottom of the sidebar to the left, if you can't see it there is a small arrow in a square that will make it appear)

2. Copy the album artwork any way that you want

3. Connect your iPhone and go to "Music" under your iPhone's list on the left sidebar of iTunes. Select all of the songs that belong to a specific album without artwork (hold down the Ctrl key while selecting for multiple slection)

4. Paste the artwork at the Artwork area on the bottom left of the sidebar and voila (pasting the artwork at the "Get Info" artwork area didn't do the job for me). You can also drag and drop instead.

P.S. I discovered that this doesn't always work right away, you may need to paste artwork one more time before it actually gets also updated on the iPhone... I have no idea why that happens...

I've had this issue too. What I did was just delete the artwork and then Get Album Artwork through iTunes and problem was solved. I think it's not going to accept artwork from songs not downloaded from iTunes. Hope this helps. It's worked for me.

I went to uncheck the option "Convert higher bit rate songs to". Afterwards, I just copied the songs from my music library to my iPhone 4S and just let it automatically overwrite what was there. The album arts copied over as well. I also went with a song I didn't yet copy to my iPhone. The strangest part of all this after modifying this option... In iTunes, under music on my iPhone, the album artworks did not show, but when I went over to my iPhone, the album artworks all showed there.