Album artwork not syncing on iPhone iOS 5.1 update

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.

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!!

In case you missed it, here is their step by step advice, however I skipped step 3 and it still worked:

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. (probably not necessary)

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 it 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 another solution that worked for me. First I went to Albums view on my iPhone and deleted (swipe to right and confirm) all albums that did not have a cover. Then I connected to iTunes and synced iPhone. First time it synched them the same way (no covers), but after I tried 2nd time, all albums got covers. I have iPhone 3GS (v. 5.1), iTunes 10.6.0.40 on Win 7.

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".

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'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.

Ok you can solve this by yourself I figured out how. It may be stupid to do it and frustrating but until apple resolves this in an update you have to add the album artwork manually. First go and get the album artwork off of google images or wherever you like as long as you have that picture or a picture that you want saved in your files. Next go to itunes and right click the song you want to add albulm artwork to. Then click 'get info' and a window will pop up. At the far right of the window that popped up it will have an option that says 'artwork.' Select that option,add the picture image, and you now have artwork for that song. I know this is tedious especially if you have to do this for a lot of tracks. But its the only option I found to complete the artwork as of right now.

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 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.

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.

OK, for some reason this response finally clicked for me - I don't ordinarily manually manage the music on my iPhone, so the previous mentions of this method didn't sink in.

In order to get the artwork on to the missing tracks on my iPhone, here's what I did, in order:

1. Make sure the Music app on the iPhone is closed completely.
2. Plug in the iPhone via USB with iTunes open and wait for iTunes to recognize the device.
3. Make sure "Manually manage music & videos" is checked on the iPhone summary screen (if it was not checked already, iTunes will take a few seconds to update the settings on the phone).

The tracks on the iPhone can now be accessed from the left pane just like your regular music library, and you can select and update them just like your iTunes library. Copy the artwork for any items not showing on your iPhone from your iTunes library and select and paste the artwork to the items in your iPhone's track listing.

This can take some time, as iTunes will apply the updates to the iPhone every time you click OK when adding artwork. I tried this with a couple of the albums not showing, and even when I subsequently unchecked "Manually manage" and did a normal automatic sync, those tracks carried the correct artwork on my iPhone.

Same here, updated my iPhone 4 to iOS 6, and now any music that I purchased recently is not showing the artwork when in Album or Cover Flow views.

The artwork IS there when I play the track, just not in Cover Flow or Album view.

This is what worked for me (although it's a pain to have to go through all the tracks affected by this):

1) Locate the offending track(s) in iTunes

2) Right click on the lower left album art window, and copy

3) Get Info on the track(s) and remove the artwork

4) Paste the copied artwork back onto the tracks

5) Remove the songs from your iPhone

6) Copy them back over manually

As I say, worked here. But, sort it our Apple.

Hey everyone, thank god i found a solution and it worked for me! and currently am running IOS 5.1.1

This is what i did..

1) Go to your device and under summary, tick 'Sync only ticked music and video'
2) Head over to your Library and untick all the songs.
3) Sync your iphone so that the there will be NO MUSIC left in your iphe library.
4) Go back to your Library Select all the songs and 'Right Click' --> Select 'Convert ID3 Tags' --> In the window that pops up, Tick 'ID3 Tag version' and Select ' v2.4' from the drop down box and Press 'ok'. This takes awhile depending on your library size.
(When you convert ID3 tags, the album art for some songs will disapper, mainly the songs with lyrics in my case.. So you need to add them manually.
5) Now grab your iphone and do a 'complete factory reset.'
6) Plug it to itunes (make sure you have ticked 'sync only ticked music and....' before doing anything') and go to your library and tick only 10 - 20 songs.
7) Sync the selected onces to your iphone.
8) Disconnect the wire and open the music library in your phone and the album art will still NOT appear.

9) Reconnect the phone back to itunes and this time select another 10 - 20 songs and sync the phone.

10) This time the album art will appear to the songs that you added in the above step (for tyhe second time) but not for the songs that you added first time. Therefore go back to library and untick the songs that the album art is NOT present in you iphone and sync again so that the only songs with the album arts will present in the iphone.

11) Reconnect the iphone and add another few songs (not all) and the album art for the those songs will appear in your iphone! WIN!

12) If step 11 is successful for you its all good now. Go to your library and select all the music and sync the iphone and BOOM all the album arts will be there!!

This all sounds bonkers but did worked for me! and for my mates ipod touch, so i hope it will work for you guys as well.

Peaceee

Okay - this worked for me!!! But, I did not do all of it. All I had to do was: 4) Go back to your Library Select all the songs and 'Right Click' --> Select 'Convert ID3 Tags' --> In the window that pops up, Tick 'ID3 Tag version' and Select ' v2.4' from the drop down box and Press 'ok'. This takes awhile depending on your library size.

Then I just checked the "manually manage music" box - and I deleted all music on the iPhone.

Then I I un-checked that box, and re-checked the "sync all music" box... a few hours later (after re-synching all music) all my album art was back on the phone!

So, basically, it is just the 2.4 ID tags that need to be converted and forced to sync to the phone. Thanks for the tip!