Artist Pictures On Music App - iOS 7 Update

Don't know if this will help, and you will have to remove your music first to make it work, but if you want the artist view to show an image of the artist's album art (and have your choice of which album art to show) try this.

In your devices settings go to "iTunes & App Store". Tap on your Apple ID (in blue text) and select "Sign Out".

Remove all of the artist's albums from your device. Now move an album from that artist from your iTunes library to your device, however the FIRST album you move over will be the album art associated with that artist.

For example, I have seven AC/DC albums but I want the cover of "Back in Black" to be associated with AC/DC on my devices artist listing. After I've signed out of my Apple ID, I transfer "Back in Black" to my device first and then the other six albums in any order. "Back in Black" will be the album picture associated with AC/DC on the artist page no matter how many AC/DC albums I add.

Signing out of your Apple ID also allows you to edit your album tags if you're wanting to do that too. When you're done you can sign back in to your Apple ID and your changes will hold.

Again, didn't know if this would help but I thought I'd pass it along.

I FOUND A SOLUTION! For clarification I will sum-up the orignal problem and then what I did to correct it.

The Problem:

1) I downloaded iOS7 over the air (OTA) via wifi.

2) When viewing my artist list in Music, some artist profile pictures that displayed a random album cover for that artist in iOS6 were now replaced with a picture of the artist; origin from Apple. Whether I had multiple albums for an affected artist or only one mattered not. For instance:

a) AC/DC, 13 albums with album art, 0 albums without album art. Result: picture of them onstage, not part of any album cover, pushed by Apple.

b) Adele, 1 album with album art, 0 albums without album art. Result: picture of her looking into a mirror, not part of any album cover, pushed by Apple.

The Solution:

1) Download the latest iTunes. Connect the affected iPhone to the PC/Mac using the cable. Back-up the iPhone.

2) Restore the iPhone back to factory specs. This will replace the OTA "version" of iOS7 with a non-wifi pull from Apple "version" of iOS7. This will totally wipe the iPhone clean and put in in a state as if you just bought it; hence the above needed back-up.

3) When step 2 is complete, you will be given a choice to set-up your iPhone (as if you just bought it) or restore a previous back-up. You want to choose restore back-up.

4) This should remedy the problem with one minor issue. I'll purchase songs from Am--on.com from a "Greatest Hits" album but use the original ablum art of the songs. Now the "greatest hits" cover shows and I am sure that it's because the art is embeded in the song's metadata and it is an easy-peasy fix and has nothing to do with any unauthorized pushing of album art. So....hope the above works for you because it sure worked for my 8,300 songs.

Good job Robert. Just so I'm clear though before I go through the hassle of restoring the phone: Does it now show the iTunes artists "profile" photos in Artist view? Or is it just showing album covers? I checked the display models in the local Apple store yesterday, and they all show the artist "profile" pic on the Artist tab, so clearly that's what Apple intended...which is what I want mine to show. After toggling Match and iTunes accounts on and off yesterday I am showing only artwork. For example, Adele should show the picture of her in the mirror, not the album cover. Mine is showing the cover of 21 instead.

Thanks.

Same thing happened to me. and the funny thing they show fine on my iPad mini.

My write-up was for those that want album covers only and not any image pushed by outside sources. If you do not want the cover of 21 to show and would rather have the mirror pic, then you should not follow my write-up. Since some like their bread butter side up and others butter side down, I hope that future versions of the OS will allow for our preference to be made via a simple toggle switch. I also hope that my PC iTunes library stays the way in which I intended. Also, I don't think the push was limited to artist images...before I "fixed" my iPhone I found an artist/song on my phone that I did not add to my library. It would have been somewhat ok if it was someone of a genre that I listen to, but truthfull, it couldn't have been further off base in my listening tastes. Check your phone's Music content to see if you have your own "*** is this?!" moment. I'm curious to know if I was the only one to recieve a free song.

Alight, thanks. After having blanks in Artisit view I was able to get album art to show by toggling Match off, logging out of my iTunes store account, rebooting phone and then turning Match back on. You may be able to just get album art to appear without the restore.

Now, if somebody can get those pfofile photos to re-appear...

Hmm my Artist Pictures came back by themselves. Guess Apple corrected the problem.

Looks like Apple fixed something on their end. All of the sudden last night when I opened the music app it just started downloading artist photos. I still have some missing where it is only showing album art even though I know they have a profile photo (like Adele), but they're mostly back.

Mine too! Looks like they kept their promise! :) I just went into the music app and they weren't there but I watched the busy timer spinning in the menu bar and slowly they all came back ... awesome!

Apologies - I am a novice at this. Since IO7 on the IPAD I now have band pictures instead of album art for some bands but not others. I don't mind the band pics but I hate that it is not consistent and some artists have random album art work. I think this is the problem addressed in this thread but people are saying Apple has fixed this - but not changed on mine.

So in summary - can you choose whether it shows band pictures (I think people call this a profile pic?) or album art. If so how - I cant see the band image on my PC Itunes so I have no way or changing it that I can see.

Thanks in advance - sorry I don't always know the correct terminology!

NG

My apologies to all on this thread. After re-reading the OP, I realized that this isn't the thread of Apple-pushed artist profile pic haters, rather it is the thread of those that love it and want consistantcy in it. I've been trying to find a solution that quashes what you guys like/love. I'd appreciate if anyone could redirect me to the line for the artist pic haters; I've been standing in the wrong line this entire time. Thanks in advance.

I am not an iTunes Match subscriber. All my music is either iTunes downloads or my own CDs I've imported. I have a weird combination of artist pictures and album art. There doesn't seem to be a pattern. Some iTunes downloads have artist pics in the main list by artist, some have album art. Some individual albums under a particular artist have either no album art or album art I scanned and imported to iTunes, and again, no discernible pattern as to whether its iTunes downloads or CDs I imported ??? Then there are the albums I downloaded from iTunes with one main artist, but the list is separated by collaborating artists on the album, which I find extremely annoying, since iTunes should have had these organized properly into the one album. I tried signing out of iTunes, resetting my phone, signing back in and restarting iTunes, but that probably didn't change anything because I'm not an iTunes Match user. So it's not just an iTunes Match issue, which I find strange as I never uploaded anything to iTunes Match to convert! I thought it might be an iPhone 4S issue, but it persisted when I upgraded to the 5c. Any insight? Why would my pics be effected when I'm not plugged into iTunes Match?

tasa:

After experimenting with this a lot over the last few days, this is what I've been able to discern: As far as I can tell it has to do with iTunes Radio, no Match. I set up a phone "as new" and enabled Match. Under the Artist view it showed album art for all artists. Only when I hit the "start listening" under the iTunes Radio tab, many artists then received a profile photo instead.

On a phone restored from backup I got some profile photos and some album covers. Some artists that show profile photos on the phone I set up as new show album art on the phone I restored from a backup.

Bottom Line, iOS 7 appears to be designed to show those profile photos for artists that have them, if you activate iTunes Radio. Some artists don't have one at all, and it will show album art instead. This is apparently by design. It's a bit buggy though, as sometime it won't show the profile photo even if there is one. It seems to work better on a phone set up as new, rather than from a backup.

Thanks for that info. I haven't yet used iTunes Radio on my iPhone 5c, never used it on my 4s, and only tried it out on my iPad 4. I have separate iTunes folders for each device I own as I keep different things on each one, so there shouldn't be any issue of cross-contamination. So maybe just the existence of iTunes Radio is the issue? I was unimpressed with iTunes Radio as it is simply an advertising medium to sell music through iTunes, IMHO. The next step is to research the artists I have on my iPad 4 since I've already used Radio on it and see if indeed that's the root of the problem.

I wanted to add.. All my artist pictures came back as well.. Except some, heres what i think..

The artists that don't have a photo in iTunes store, Music app will use an album cover from our collection. Other ones that do have a photo, it will overwrite that cover with Apple pushed band photo.

Some famous artists don't have a photo in iTunes though and that *****, like bands Keane, Travis or Morrissey.

Also i noticed 2Pac has a picture in iTunes store but doesnt have one on my Music app, its still album cover.

I hope someone can clear this up and is there a way to tell apple to add pictures for ones who are missing it in their iTunes database?