Artist Pictures On Music App - iOS 7 Update

I just noticed this problem too. It only started after I restored my iPhone 5 from an iCloud backup yesterday - before that, the Artists list was showing pictures from the album art. But yesterday I noticed the artists list was now showing profile pics I had never seen before and many of them were missing a picture. After finding this thread, I went through the missing ones and confirmed they all seemed to be ones that did not have a profile picture in the iTunes Store (strangely enough, some of the missing ones are very well known popular artists - you think Apple would be on the ball with this?)

Anyhow, in my case at least, I believe the trigger causing the change to showing artists' profile pictures (if there's a pic available) is related to turning on iTunes Radio. Here's why:

I'm in Canada, and we don't yet have iTunes Radio - after iOS 7 update I could not even see an icon or menu item to turn it on in my iPhone, since the feature isn't yet made available here. So until yesterday I had never tried iTunes Radio...

Yesterday I got an AppleCare replacement/refurbished iPhone 5 (broken power switch, but that's another story), and after I received the replacement phone I did a restore from an iCloud backup made the day before. During the restore I had to enter various password for iCloud, iTunes Store etc. I have two different iTunes accounts - my main account in the Canadian store and another in the US store (for a few specific US apps I bought), and I had to enter each accounts' password at some point during the restore.

Once the restore was finished I checked to see everything was back to where I started before exchanging my iPhone, and then noticed after launching the Music app it was showing iTunes Radio as an option(!). I proceeded to try using iTunes Radio, since I was curious how it worked - it looked like it was available and running, but it could find no content or had some trouble connecting (I forget the error message). At that point I figured that iTunes Radio must have been enabled because I entered my US iTunes password, even though I'm here in Canada and the service isn't yet available and this just simply confused the Music app. Anyhow after that point I noticed the Artist list in my music app now had these different pictures than I was used to, plus many missing ones

I tried various suggestions in this thread to try to load the missing artists' pictures (logging out/into different iTunes accounts, etc), but only some of the missing artists' pictures would load.

Finally, I decided to wipe my iPhone clean and do another restore, this time from a separate backup I had made directly to iTunes on my iMac the previous day. This time after the restore, I could not see iTunes Radio anywhere in my Music app and my Artists list now has reverted to the old style pictures derived from the album art.

So my guess that enabling iTunes Radio somehow triggers the Music app to change where it gets the Artists' pictures

Yea me 2. I downloaded some songs onto my iphone from my laptop, but for the artists's pictures it shows thier album's pictures. But the artist Bad Meets Evil has his own artist picture and I downloaded his song from my laptop, but for like Jay Z, it shows his almbum artwork. PLZ HELP ITS ANNOYING ME

I have a solution for you

Rename all your artists in your itune with this -

exemple -Iron Maiden

-Bon Jovi

-Slayer

and synch again your music

you will no longer have the wrong artist picture in you device

if you want a spécific one for each artists ,synch the one you want first and after that synch all the others

I'm not sure if you've found a solution to this yet but I was recently facing a similar issue and found that going to Settings > Music > and turning off the 'Group By Album Artist' solved the problem. Hope this helps, good luck!

Thank you!! This has been driving me round the bend for ages. This pretty much fixed it for me. There's still the odd missing art, but by-and-large I know see album artwork instead of random silly pictures of artists.

OK. I've done some detective work and heres what I figured out.

First, if you want the artist pictures, the metadata artist info has to be EXACTLY identical to that of the Itunes Store/Radio, particularly the artist name and capitalization of letters:

For example: "Jay-Z" or "Jay Z" wont work but "JAY Z" in caps will work.

The same is true that Linkin Park won't work but LINKIN PARK as in all caps will work.

Also "System of a Down" will work but "System Of A Down" will not. Why something can be spelled correctly but not be the proper capitalization and therefore not have the artist picture is beyond me. Apple should fix this.

Once the artist name is spelled EXACTLY as it is in Itunes Radio (and it has an artist photo in Itunes Radio) then log out of the apple store on the iphone and log back in under itunes radio and the artist pictures will automatically download.

Here's the one part I cannot for the life of me figure out and its driving me bonkers! I challenge anyone to solve this.

It seems that once youve spelled a name correctly but didnt capitalize properly originally for

example you had the band named "Rage Against The Machine" instead of "Rage Against the Machine", even if you rename

the metadata in the artist tags in itunes, delete music from iphone, and resync, the name does not change on the iphone (it still recognizes the old improprr capitalization). Its like some weird metadata still exists on the iphone even after the songs were deleted.

I know that the problem is not in Itunes as the artist is capitalized correctly and the name appears correct on my ipad music app (with the artist picture) but not the iphone music app. My OCD is getting the best of me. I even tried deleting the files from itunes and re-adding the files spelled properly but it still capitalizes the names the old way once the artist is in itunes. Its driving me crazy!!

I Just got a iPhone 6 yesterday and I added my music from iTunes on my computer to my phone and for my artists it shows an album cover

except if there is a song I have purchased from iTunes it will show an artist photo. For example I added the Morning Glory album by Oasis to my phone and it shows that as the artist photo and not a band photo. But I purchased a Bon Jovi single ages ago from iTunes and under the artists it shows a band photo of Bon Jovi. Why is this?? Can someone please help me???

I still can't explain why or when iOS goes its own way with music artist art. It is horrible and frequently incorrect.

I can tell you how I have forced all mine to be album art.

First all my actual iTunes cover art is manually pasted, I don't use the automatic thing because it doesn't work.

Then I used Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes to save the cover to every album folder. (This means you can easily rebuild iTunes any time too.)

I then cleared out the iTunes database and rebuilt the whole thing. (Note: if you have complex genres or any other bespoke metadata you may need to look into saving those settings too before you rebuild iTunes. My iTunes genres had got completely corrupted somehow so I had to manually re-enter them.)

I then deleted all the music off my iOS devices and re-synced them to iTunes.

For now, at least, all the artwork on all my stuff is the same and it's the album art I have chosen. That doesn't mean Apple won't over-write it with an iOS update. They have done that before. At least now I have clean iTunes folders that I can use anywhere in any player and I can rebuild it from scratch.

It's hard to avoid ever opening iTunes Radio and who wants to nuke their phone and start from scratch? After hours on this, here's my recommendation:

0. Open iTunes Radio and play a station. This loads Artist profile images from iTunes, and forever afterward music app will use iTunes artist pictures for exact name matches.

1. Create a playlist with 1 song from each album you want to use as the artist image.

2. Erase all music from iPhone. This clears non-Radio artist image cache.

3. Sync only this playlist.

4. Open music app, see which images you like and which you don't.

5. Change "albumartist" tag for this artist. I add a "." to the end instead of a space so I know which artists I've done this for.

6. Make iTunes reload the files if you used another program to change tags (I use mp3tag). Add Folder might work, idk.

7. Erase all music from phone.

8. Sync artwork playlist.

9. Open music app and scroll through all artists. This is very important because music app creates the image for all time the first time it is displayed (not when first synced!). If any album comes up with blank tile, quit music app using double tap on home button and restart it. Music app wants to keep scrolling smooth so doesn't always generate a tile and it won't until restarted.

10. Sync the rest of your music.

This works great if you have Group By Album Artist turned on. I'm not sure why you would ever turn this off since then your Various Artists and collections are all over and there's a bunch of artist entries with 1 song, but whatever if you don't enable this maybe you have to add a "." to artist tag then?

Most of the iTunes pictures are terrible compared to your choice of the best album art, but some are good and this way lets you choose without having to fear accidentally touching Radio or some update from Apple. If you want to change art later on you can unsync/sync one artist at a time like above. It's just not worth it to try to keep the phone in some kind of pristine state.

It blows that you can't just select Artist artwork in iTunes and leave all the tags correct, but at least this works.

After temporary relief mine has now reverted to the duff Apple art... wrong Duffy, wrong Cream, etc., etc.

Why can't we just have a setting to switch the Apple artist artwork off? Artist names are ambiguous... the whole idea was never going to work but it has been a pain to all of us here for years.

Well.. I manage to set all my Artist Covers, custom, not from store... at my Mac iTunes..This would this cover what you guys are trying?

I know how to do it on device

but there are need right fingers - need to go to filesystem.

Is there a way to DISABLE this function ?

I really don't need the photos of the band next to the music of them. In particular not when the images are not flattering.

Renaming the artist (like adding a . at the end) is like cutting of the leg to solve an itch. Thats a nuke-a-around.

nor is removing a hidden folder viable. It will just come back after next iOS update!

Just correct it in Database

How did you manage to do exactly that? Like a step by step tutorial, I want to have images for all my artists on my iPod.