Artist Photos Missing in iTunes 12.5.1

dont fall for it. It's only coincidntal that those artists have artist icons. Not all artists do. . .

Which guy is trolling? There's an issue here, as trivial as it might be in the larger scheme of life. When someone has put hours and hours and hours into getting his artwork just the way he likes it, and then all his is lost in the blink of an eye, it tends to annoy. What's wrong with them making the software flexible enough that everyone can tweak it to their own personal aesthetic taste? Nothing. I have a vinyl collection that is 8000 strong. Many have been converted to mp3, and many more will be too. That iTunes will only place artwork alongside artists that you've purchased from them is ridiculous, and there's nothing wrong with saying that. If they didn't get feedback they wouldn't know what is and isn't liked.

As a test to my original theory, I thought I'd try purchasing some music from Apple that originally had no artist photo.

For this, I chose New Order. I had 11 albums that were either ripped from original CDs or purchased from Amazon as MP3s. Clearly there is no artist photo as seen below.

I knew that I didn't have New Order's latest album so I found it in the iTunes music store and purchased it. Can you guess what happened next?

And with no ability to change the image. If there's something better than iTunes out there, I'm changing to it.

I am in the same boat. Have hundreds of LPs converted to MP3 and all my artist jpegs that I worked for days, weeks, months, turned into microphones?

There is a solution if someone doesn't mind spending a few $$ or a few hundred $$$, if you have as many artists. Go to the iTunes store and purchase one song of each artist that is in your library and the microphone will be replaced by an artist. Even if you delete the song, the artist photo will still remain. Or... just wait until iTunes is fixed if ever.

So why should i buy songs i already have? 😟

So that you can populate your artist list with pictures that Apple have chosen for you, and that you probably don't care for anyway, silly.

At 21 pages (and counting) it appears that the 'community' isn't getting Apple's attention 😠

I've just logged the problem here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

just in case these stats carry more weight in Apple's software development backlog prioritisation.

No, it does not work. I have several albums that i bought from iTunes and the artist thumbnails are still showing a generic mic picture. And then i have an artist whose music i obtained elsewhere and the thumbnail does display a picture although the picture is completely irrelevant to any of the album artwork that i have for this artist.

That's definitely the only way to alert iTunes' developer about this misbehavior .

Apple do NOT read any comment or discussion here. We are only complaining here between us .

Everyone should send a feedback using this link and hope we are finally heard.

I won't buy songs from iTunes only to expect having these artists icons populated... (and I already know it won't work for some artists as I said earlier by example when the artist name is somewhat misspelled according to Apple's standards such as "Lillywood and the Pr***ks" instead of "Lillywood & the Pr**ks")

Problem officially logged my me too...

I would just like to point out one fact that I think hasn't been addressed here yet:

All Artists (music files) that DO show a photo in 'Artist View' are stored in the iTunes managed directories and are .m4a audio files. All Artists (and music files) that DON'T show a photo in 'Artist View' are stored on my external hard drive and are .mp3 audio files.

Having said that, I really still don't understand why just being an .mp3 file causes the Artist View photo to not show. I don't want to have to go through and convert all my music to .m4a audio files and have them stored and managed in an iTunes media directory.

I have also logged a complaint/bug report to Apple. I hope everyone else is as well.

Scuba_Steveo, An interesting observation for you, but in my case, all my files are .m4a (either original or converted. and the artist icons are still random. Still trying to determine why some icons show up on the iPhone/iPad (iOS10) and don't on iMac macOS Sierra.

i will also add, someone on page 16 or page gave excellent instructions on how to generate the Artist Icon without purchasing content (providing the artist has an artist icon loaded into the itunes store).

My collection is m4a (.aac) format for music also, and these consist of artists i did not purchase in the store.. however i was able to generate MOST artist icons by following the instructions that user posted (thank you). it took me over a week to do my collection and still - not every artist will have an icon.

basically, whatever the file is, it needs to have a tag field in the metadata called "ArtistID" You can get the artist ID by googling "itunes bruce springsteen" which is https://itunes.apple.com/au/artist/bruce-springsteen/id178834

the numbers 178834 is the artist id (without using the id part).

I used a small (20mb) .m4v file in conjunction with a tagging program to add the Artist ID field manually. Providing that you spell the Artist Name correctly, and you have the correct Artist ID, AND that artist actually has an icon in the the store, THEN it will work.

I called tech support, and they know the issue. They can not submit to the developing department, the user should.

It would be great if iTunes store would have one free download song of each album. They still would make a ton's of profit, and this would solve our display issues.