How do you change the default Artist image in iTunes 11?

This has been annoying me too... The only suggestion I can give you is to temporarily change the "Artist" and "Album Artist" fields for all of the Beatles songs you have to "The Beatles 2". Then close your iTunes, then launch it again and then rename all songs under "The Beatles 2" back to "The Beatles", this will give you an image for your artist but it's likely to keep changing based on your ratings and what your currently listening to... It's a little fiddly, but it works for me when it has happened... I miss the old set as Default Artist Artwork option as well!

I've been playing with this and discovered it has to do with your personal ratings (ie stars) for albums and songs - seems iTunes now selects the highest rated album to use for the Artist icon. If you have no ratings it seems (but not always) to select the most recent album/song to use fo rthe display.

I've been able to get iTunes to use specific album artowk by rating both the album and all individual tracks as 5 star. You may need to restart iTunes for the changes to take effect.

But I'd be much happier just telling iTunes which image to use - like we used to be able to do. Yet another step backwards for iTunes 11 (one of many).

onabavi15 I have this same problem too. I would like to be able to choose my default artist artwork as we were able to do in v.10. Why has this been removed? It has kept my choices from previous versions so it doesn't chnage the default image based on ratings (or at least override previous chosen images). I tried the ratings idea (all tracks and album having been given 5 stars) for v.11 and restarted iTunes, but I am still left with an empty artist image as you have shown and I can't seem to do a thing about it! I hope Apple are listening and resolve this!

Deleted.

I've found that a combination of the advice above works...

1) alter the artist and album artist field of every track to an alternate

2) give the highest rating to every track of the album with your preferred cover artwork

3) return the artist and album artist fields to the actual artist

...cumbersome but it worked.

Yipee!

This worked for me. In iTunes 11.1.3. select the artist artwork and get info. Edit the artist field, change star rating, save changes. I restarted iTunes and changed everythting back.

Might work with fewer steps, but was so easy to test so I probably overdid it. Anyway, my artist artwork is finally back.

Thanks Esarel.