Artist Photos Missing in iTunes 12.5.1

Additional info:

The iTunes/Artist View issue isn't a bug.

If you use buy a track or album from Apple digitally, the circular "badge" will usually appear in Artist View - something like this:

.

If you don't don't purchase tracks digitally from iTunes, a generic "microphone" image will appear in Artist View, and it always looks like this:

There's no way to edit this circular Artist "badge" in Artist View. The image, when it does appear, is Apple's way of verifying it's an Apple-purchased track. The circular "badge" is integrated into the Apple purchase system - so it's unlikely they're going to scrap something that big.

I urge you to contact Product Feedback if you're bothered by the Artist View issue:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Please can people stop posting that this is related to whether you purchased the item through Apple or not. Enough of us have posted to say that this does not apply to our libraries for this to be untrue. What evidence does anyone have that this is a system feature and not just another snafu from Apple?

This is a user forum. It is not a place where Apple responds to posts though one would hope that they at least monitor it!

poikkeus1 wrote:

The iTunes/Artist View issue isn't a bug.

If you use buy a track or album from Apple digitally, the circular "badge" will usually appear in Artist View - something like this:

.

If you don't don't purchase tracks digitally from iTunes, a generic "microphone" image will appear in Artist View, and it always looks like this:

That's not necessarily true. Below is my artist view in iTunes:

I have the Pink Floyd artist icon because I bought some of their music from the Apple Store. Notice that RAC and Radiohead have no artist images because I haven't purchased their music from the Apple Store. Now here is my artist list on my iPhone:

Now notice that the same artists RAC and Radiohead do have artist images here. Even more bizarre is that I never purchased RAC, Radiohead or The Ramones music from the Apple Store, but yet some artists get images, and others do not (The Ramones).

I think the way it works, is that it will populate an artist photo with any purchases from the iTunes store AFTER the most recent update.

At least thats the behavior I've noticed. I think this is the way it's gonna be, and it's not gonna change unfortunately. I've got no faith in Apple anymore lately... from the latest choices in the iOS10 update, to iTunes.

Very annoying isn't it. iTunes won't even let me drag images into Artwork.

ios10 has many backwards steps, such as in the Videos app you can't access any Music Videos, instead they are only accessible via Music

aabsolute nonsense I've some thumbnails with art and I've bought nothing

Very annoying isn't it. iTunes won't even let me drag images into Artwork.

iOS 10 has many backwards steps, in the Video app you can no longer access your Music Videos, instead they are only accessible via Music app.

I was able to roll back to an older version of itunes.

I am able to see artists art again on itunes, does this do anything at all for the iphone view in Music?

I did the same on my primary machine but left my test 10.12 machine with the new version to track any changes they might make. I hope enough people make Apple aware of this issue since I have called them twice and spoke to a senior advisor and they seem pretty clueless to the issue and asked we report it so it gets traction.

Stop saying it's a purchase issue. I'm using Apple Music. The majority of my albums are from the Apple Music library, and half of them have no artist picture since the update. Just the pink microphone.

WWell done my friend. Purc music has nothing to do with it.

It's definitely not a purchase issue (otherwise it's a bugged one). I have an icon for artist I didn't buy and I DON'T have for the one I bought

I always kept everything organised and have ALL the album covers in my itunes, I spent hours doing this and now I have to see some awful rainbow microphone instead of one of the covers as the artists image ?

I always stuck with itunes but this, this might be the reason why I just start using something else. It is UGLY and is a major step back in terms of design and user experience.

I have hundreds of artists in my library, i NEVER purchased anything via itunes and still I have 2 images so it has nothing to do with purchasek, I dug around in the options and found nothing and I would not spend hours adding an image for each artist anyway, the old way worked perfectly.

Adios itunes, I'll look into something else.

Does anyone know if the previous version of iTunes can be re-downloaded on a Windows 10 PC? iTunes and its ipod companion are the reasons I refuse to buy an iPhone or iPad. If this was intentional then the changes should have been disclosed. People spend considerable time and dollars to groom their music library. Apple has no right making changes that negatively impact its customers. Worse than Comcast!