Artist Photos Missing in iTunes 12.5.1

Command_F wrote:

The common problem is that the Artist pictures, not the album covers, have disappeared. You should not have a problem with your album covers.

You are correct, the problem is in showing the artist picture for multiple album covers, not album covers themselves. It only shows the ones that were purchased from the store. Maybe Apple developers did it on purpose for people who shared the songs but affected guys like me, who have hundreds of purchased CDs

As I said earlier, the criteria to show an artist picture or not showing it, is NOT having bought the songs from the iTunes Store.

i have hundreds of titles bought on iTunes Store with no pictures for the artists,

and I have a few tracks from audio CDs I digitilized myself with a picture displayed for the artist...

I can't figure out how it works, where the pictures come from, why many artists have no picture , and how we could manually add the missing ones.

Ok, I have been looking around for solutions to this problem for over a week. I have phoned Apple and all they could do is submit feedback on my behalf.

Thank you to Syo125 (page16) of this thread. I just thought I would add some of my findings from all this artist icon saga.

My Music Collection contains around 700 Artists of music I have collected since the mp3 was created. My collection is made up of my own "ripped" from CD music and many thousands of dollars worth of Purchased Tracks/Music Videos.

To confirm what others have said: The music purchased from the iTunes Store, will MOST of the time show an Artist Icon however many artists do not have an icon photo yet. - That is pretty much the answer right there. For example the big name artists will have an icon (Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Britney Spears...and yes.. some small modern new groups too...), but .... there are well known artists who just don't have one (yet?), regardless of music "purchased" from the store.

Using the method described by Syo125, confirms that this is the case. Every artist in iTunes has an "ArtistID" tag in the file's metadata. I have only minimal understanding of Metadata as i am aware that some files do not have the same metadata structure as others. My collection is in .AAC format for my music, as i do not use .MP3 anymore.

I have download many applications to try and edit the metadata for MP3/AAC but these "ArtistID" fields do not appear to be editable/viewable in some cases using software (visable using mediainfo in Terminal). I did try and add the ArtistID field manually and it did not work. However, i have a "test file" in m4v/mp4 format (10sec video/2-3mb) and i have been using this file to add the Artist ID, and Artist Name. When this testfile is TAGGED, and copied to iTunes, IF the artists have an Artist Icon then the Icon will populate when the test file is added.

Providing i have music already in iTunes Library under that artist name, then i can delete the video and the Icon stays! (yay). One interesting thing i have noticed, once the the icon populates on iTunes on the computer, when i look at my iPhone or iPad, the icon automatically appears under that artists even though i have not yet sync'd. So the artist icon must have some link with iCloud too. Oh and another important point, I am assuming Artist Icons will be created by Apple as time goes on. The problem with this whole purchase is if you delete the test music video file created, although the icon stays there, if the artist later on has an icon i dont think this will automatically show up at the time of this happening - SO you will need to keep checking after some time to see if the artist now has an icon? if that makes sense. If you leave the video there, i am assuming then.. it will auto update.

...UNLESS..... Apple just sorts this mess out and allows a better option/gives us the icons with out all this work. I started working on it anyway, the more i complain the more it irritates me..

Anyway so after 3 days i am up to the letter "C" in my collection and this will likely take me too long to do, but - its driving me up the wall not having it neat. 😟 - HIGHLY Recommend reading the instructions from Syo125 - THANK YOU!, and no - i am not talking about album art. If you cant figure out how to add album art, then i would shut down the computer and leave it off. 🙂!!

q

Anyway so after 3 days i am up to the letter "C" in my collection....

I hope apple would fix the issue before you reach letter Z, LOL. But in my opinion, Apple should have a few users in their QA department. Programmers are not users.

It's such a simple fix for Apple to make but they seem to not want to do so.

I, like many others....if they don't come up with a fix....SEE YA, Apple and on to a music platform that actually works!!!!!!!

Ok, so could someone shed the light on why I get less artists icons on iTunes 12.5.1 than on iOS 10? Aside from the lack of artist icons in general (reference this entire thread), but has anyone else noticed a disconnect between the two platforms? As an example on iOS10 (phone/pad) I do get an artist icon for artist like ABBA, Animal, Billy Idol, Doors, and many many more, but none of these appear on macOS/iTunes 12.5.1.

It's bad enough I need to deal with Artist icongate, but I don't even have symmetry between the two operating systems. Is there a way to "refresh' iTunes on the Mac to try and repopulate the available icon?

Apple will do the modifications as soon as the iTunes store sales will drop. I heard that quite a few people are very frustrated about the bugs and switch to another device, I will not mention the name here, but its a fact. But, thanks to the smart people in the management department who normally adjust very quickly.

So i've twice reverted back to earlier version of iTunes via backups as described in other posts. I've turned off all auto update features (as far as I can tell at least) so I don't have to do a third backward update.

I agree with others who recently suggest our friends at Apple seem more interested in watches and iphones than in resolving this #icongate problem.

I have to say, Plex offers a good alternative for those, like me, who are at the end of our proverbial tether with iTunes.

Many thanks for this deep analysis.

To add my ten cents, I've noticed that the way you fill in the artist name is very important.

By example Lillywood and the Pr*cks won't have any artist picture. Change for Lillywood & the Pr*cks and instantly a photo will replace the pink mike (even though in that very example, the titles come from a ripped CD from my personal CD library)

Does this clear things up at all:

I visited my local Apple store and checked out two random iMacs on display and two random notebooks on display. The iTunes libraries on the four devices were not identical. 100% of artists were represented in 'Artist View' by the pink microphones; none had artist photos or album cover art (in Artist View). What does this information tell us about #icongate??

The artist doesn't show on the iPhone either, after updating to OS10. But there is a solution for that, all you have to do is download any EQ from the app store, and it will show all the artist photos. It displays one of the album cover's.

Please elaborate. Download any EQ from the App Store?

Go to the app store for iPhone, search Equalizer, it will give you a bunch of 3rd party EQ. My favorites are EQ-10 and Denon. Compare to iPhone EQ is very similar, but... you can make your custom settings and save it. Apple should have the custom EQ as well.

When you start the application it will ask you to access your library, say yes and then it will display all your artists.

So If one downloads EQ from the App store what does that do to correct the "Artist View".

I think he is suggesting that by using a third-party EQ, you would also need to use that third-party's app to view and listen to your library. And he's correct, third-party apps (whether EQ or just music management) often use a different method of displaying artists, and it usually works much better than iTunes.

However, this solution offers nothing to those who want their desktop version of iTunes to work and display artists correctly. Sometimes people only offer suggestions that would solve the problem for them, not understanding what other's needs are necessarily.