Artist Photos Missing in iTunes 12.5.1

I have the same problem with iTunes 12.5.4.42 on a Windows 10 machine. Why no official word from Apple about this issue? It just makes the layout look really ugly. There should at least be some way to edit the artist picture if they are not going to provide official ones.

Most of the music in my collection is ripped CDs, but there are some that are iTunes store downloads. And art is missing from both types of albums/songs.

I also have this issue on Windows 10, iTunes 12.5.5.5 - I have found out of the 341 artists, 118 are left with the microphone placeholder and it seems random to me as to how they are assigned. For instance, I have cd's that I have ripped, artists i've purchased from iTunes Store, some purchased from other online stores. I've read its the metadata within the artists album however, this cannot be true. I believe it is an iTunes issue in regards to what metadata is held within different files types.

I downloaded MusicBee, a free music player with a lot of features that can be customised. MusicBee also has these artist placeholders but unlike iTunes, MusicBee finds the artists bio pic and assigns it. If you have an album like The Simpsons - Sing The Blues, it will use a round version o the album art. MusicBee assigned pics for all artists in my library.

My question now is, if MusicBee can get these placeholder pics of the artists, why can't iTunes?

Apple iTunes dev and UX team - you suck. You have screwed up everything that was good about iTunes. I understand the concept of unified experience on different devices but I don't understand the concept of making in miserable for everyone on all devices. Thank you for the paid of using iTunes on my Mac and iPhone, I almost stopped using it actually by now.

Seriously, this is ridiculous. I've been waiting for months for an update to reverse this nonsense. I don't even understand who thought this was a good idea. Even if every artist photo was in (and most aren't), they'd look like tiny little thumbnails of group photos. Really? How am I to distinguish between them? Album cover artwork EXISTS FOR A REASON.

you can add album covers of your choice. Open Apple music/album/two fingerclick (touch pad) on album/select 'get info'/select art work/ THEN open Safari/search ???? photos ie greig photos/select photo/File/save greig photo to documents THEN go back to open Art work selection in Apple music and Select Art work - this will allow you to go to documents file which will appear/select the photo you want to use/open and it will appear on your Album artwork accordingly. You will see you can add either the photo of the album cover which will appear on Search, or any other art work.

This was never an issue. The issue is that you CAN NOT change the Artist Thumbnail. And many of the artist (well known artists) just have a generic "microphone" icon. Very poor design. So much for Apple's "Think Different" campaign. Now reads as "Do As I Say"

I came back to this and tried downloading the artwork last week in version 12.6.0.100 and it has downloaded the majority of the artwork. Where it hasn't it will be an issue with either the way the artist and album is named, or obscurity. All albums now by clicking on it, which it previously wouldn't do unless it was an album purchased from apple. Albums imported from vinyl or a cd had to be accessed and clicked on song by song. They seem to be sorting the issues.

The easy fix for me was deleting the Artists view and select Albums...all the artists are there, alphabetically, and all their albums...more comprehensive than the microphone view and no extraneous artwork from the iTunes boxset covers they send over WiFi when you synch.

Further to my earlier post on this, one other twist is that the scenarios are not consistent between devices. I have just added Christine and the Queens to iTunes on my mac mini and I have no artist image.

However, after syncing with my iPad, the iTunes on my iPad does have an artist image, but the Mac mini still does not. explain that !

so the image does exist in the vastness of the apple archives, but the the iTunes apps are not able to access it on all devices.... clearly a code/functional defect.

Maybe, I should offer Apple some professional testing services, they obviously need help !

A fix for some (at least partial one for some content) For some bands they have associated and specific (case sensitive) spellings of bands. If the way your artist name is spelled in your library does not match exactly the way the tag in the associated picture has it spelled, the artist pic will not show up. For example. My AC/DC songs were listed with the artist name spelled (ACDC). Once I changed spelling the artist picture appeared.

I have many musicians and bands in iTunes that match exactly the spelling Apple uses and still there are no images.

iTunes and Apple only care about $$$. The user experience with iTunes is poor. iTunes is one of the few apps that doesn't allow screen rotation, for example. A very basic API for iOS that Apple can't seem to implement on its own platform.

The display of lyrics, even if you add them yourself, is pathetic. Duplicate entries for albums and artists, music purchased with a past email (registered with the same account) that no longer play, the inability to purchase foreign music.....it's pathetic. Apple has done a very poor job, except for the part where they make revenue.

That's not at all true. I have some artist's images displaying and I've never purchased their music through iTunes. I imported all the CDs I had of their's and their image shows up regardless. I'm not sure what Apple is doing here, but it's completely inconsistent and lacks any UX aesthetic.

It will always be missing, and the stupid grey mic icon will never go away because Apple is not going to fix it. Originally iTunes was promoted as a great way to organize your personal music. But now Apple wants to sell you a lifetime subscription to music, which means that it's not personal anymore - it belongs to Apple forever. And if you have personal music, then you are at odds with Apple's financial goal of getting you to pay a monthly subscription to their music forever, which means they have no interest in fixing this for you.

For sure they don't care, but it's probably an easy fix and it won't steer away from the trend to have subscription services, simply because harddisks have shrunk and no one can keep up with Spotify or Deezer. I like to have a fine selection of my favorite albums in iTunes, almost all of which I bought and then ripped. This doesn't harm their business. A blind eye to detail does.

What I noticed and fixed for me, in some cases, is to set the artist name / band name in the "Album artist" metadata tag, not only in the "Artist" tag.

Anyway, as I say, it fixes in some cases but in some other (less known bands) still appears the gray micro pic. Moreover, this fix obliges you to edit your entire collection, artist by artist, to check if the Album artists is set and, if not, set it in bulk for all songs from each artist and save.

Hope Apple fixes it and checks the Artist too. Should not be much work to check Artist field if Album artist is empty, though.