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Apple Music/iTunes Replacing My Album Artwork

Hi. This might have been the case for a while, or maybe I'm just noticing it now that I'm trying Apple Music. In any event, I've noticed that my album artwork on my iPhone has been changing to images that I have never picked. I'm pretty meticulous about my album artwork, and I know what's correct for my albums. Is there a way to prevent this from happening and for my own album artwork to remain the way it is? Thanks.

iPhone 6, iOS 8, 8.0.2

Posted on Jun 30, 2015 11:26 AM

Reply
56 replies

Jul 1, 2015 4:26 AM in response to tikilab

Direct quotes from support:


"When the iCloud Music Library is enabled this will sync the album artwork from iTunes."

"The iCloud Music library places your music into iCloud which does update the album artwork to what appears in the iTunes store."


Like you all I'm very annoyed and disappointed, as I am also very protective of my album art.


She did say to submit feedback online, so I will- not sure if anyone will read it, but who knows.

www.apple.com/feedback


This is really annoying.

Jul 1, 2015 6:22 AM in response to Kabuscus

i deleted all my music and then went to settings music and made sure iCloud music library is turned off, re synced with iTunes 12.1 and all my own album art is back. yiu can still use all Apple music other than the offline mode.


if I update to iTunes 12.2 which introduces Apple music to the Mac is it going to automatically change all my album artwork before I can go into iTunes and turn I cloud music library off?

Jul 1, 2015 7:24 AM in response to JMG114

Dear Apple,


This is why people who don't buy your products don't buy your products but complain about them anyway.. Why a collection of songs with associated artwork should be mutilated by your ******** software is a mystery to, well, everyone not you.


I signed up for the free Apple Music trial on my iPhone because I was honestly curious. I was pretty happy with it when I used it yesterday, but today, when I went to play music I have on the phone, you had utterly ruined what I had spent hours curating over the years. Now, no matter how much I may enjoy Apple Music, I will be quitting it at the end of August, if not sooner.


Knock.

It.

Off.

Jul 1, 2015 8:43 AM in response to oconda01

Same here, turned 'iCloud Music Library off', restored my iTunes library from my Time Machine backup, and on my Mac everything is in good order again.


After fixing the iTunes part on my Mac, I synched my music to my iPad and iPhone 6 (both with the latest iOS 8.4 version). There I still have issues where mainly the pictures of the artists or completely mixed up.


I don't dare to turn 'ICloud Music Library' on, when I did that initially i completely screwed both Album Art, titles of the tracks, broke albums up in multiple albums. It was really a mess.

Jul 1, 2015 8:58 AM in response to JMG114

When I noticed the Artwork thing (Compilations Particularly a Mess, different art for most songs on every album) I immediately turned of "Show Apple Music", I never had "iCloud Music Library" turned on.


I went to iTunes, made a copy of the iTunes Library file in the iTunes music folder. Synced device, where I noticed that smart playlists had shrunk, 168 down to 140 etc. This was because all of my rated (Starred) music I'd purchased on the iTunes Store had somehow been put down to 1 star. 4 stars to 1, 3 to 1 etc. Anyone else have this?


Play counts were fine. Artwork was fine, and synced back to phone.


I disconnected iPhone, deleted iTunes Library File. Dragged back up in from earlier. Re-Synced. Seems Okay now.


Only thing is, some Smart Playlists are Duplicated on iPhone now. Some with artwork in Box beside playlist name in list view, some without.


Maybe updating to iTunes 12.2 will fix, maybe it won't...


Think I'll wait...


I love the up next feature on in the Music App though.


Hope this helps.

Jul 1, 2015 9:31 PM in response to JMG114

Found a solution, guys! After fighting with Apple Music matching the wrong song and album art so that I wasn't even streaming the correct file, it's apparently as simple as just changing the song title to something not by the artist. After it force uploads, you can go back and correct the song title and you'll be good to go.

Jul 2, 2015 9:01 AM in response to Kabuscus

Sure thing.


  1. First make sure your ICloud library is empty. I did this by copying my music folder to another location and then deleting everything in iTunes. Make sure you copy the folder so it doesn't try to actually delete all of your music.
  2. With nothing in the library, disconnect from the Internet and copy your music back to the original iTunes location. I suggest copying instead of moving the original files because it will prevent you from having to manually enter the metadata yourself.
  3. This step is optional, but I downloaded the program MP3Tag to work with metadata on a large scale instead of having to edit everything in iTunes.
  4. I recommend doing this next step in small chunka instead of your entire library all at once. Readd the music to your iTunes library, make sure you're disconnected from the Internet still, and begin changing the song titles. If you're using MP3Tag, you can more easily change the song titles before readding them to iTunes. I made every song title "!" You don't have to change artist, album, genre, track number or anything else, everything should look like normal except the songs will all be "!"
  5. Connect to the Internet and tell iTunes to Update the ICloud Music Library. After a brief scan, it will start to manually upload all of the music.
  6. Once the music is uploaded, go back and change the song titles back to the correct title, and then tell iTunes to Update the iCloud Music Library again. If you're using MP3Tag, you can mass copy song tags to the new files so you don't have to manually change every song title. The songs you've uploaded are permanently recognized as the same song unless you delete them from iCloud, so you'll be able to watch on your device as everything changes. You can then edit anything about the album, and the files will be correct and the album art will be whatever you set it as on your computer.


I've done this for my entire library and I have no incorrect album art or mismatched songs because eveeything is uploaded directly from my computer. All of your music will be in the cloud and allow you to use all the functions of Apple Music without the service messing up any of your metadata. The only issue I can see is if the album you're working with has a song normally titled "!" In which case, name the tracks something else. Keep in mind, uploads were originally limited to 25,000 songs, though I believe with Apple Music the limit has increased to 100,000, so if you have more than that, you will run into problems. Matched songs don't count towards that limit. This guide specifically works for Apple Music, if you're just using iTunes Match, there's a pretty popular guide on the forums for force uploading there too, though it's much more difficult.

Apple Music/iTunes Replacing My Album Artwork

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