Artist Photos Missing in iTunes 12.5.1

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.

I may have found a possible solution (well it worked for some of my missing artist photos in iTunes). I noticed that some of the artists with missing photos had an extra space after their name in iTunes.

So if you go into iTunes -

go to 'artists' under 'library' on the main page -

right click on an artist with a missing photo -

click 'artist info' -

look in the 'album artist' field -

see if there's an extra space at the end of their name -

if so, remove it and click 'ok'.

This has worked for me for most of the mainstream artists in my library, so has got rid of a fair number of those ugly microphone images.

Another point I've noticed is that changing the artist name slightly can determine whether iTunes will display a photo or not. For example 'The Bee Gees' in my library had a no photo even after removing the space. As this is a very mainstream artist, I thought to change the name album artist name to 'Bee Gees' and it worked bringing up an artist photo.

Good luck!

I have the same issue on my Apple TV. I use iTunes Match and most of the artists photos show up, however, some of the artists where I have bought songs from iTunes Store , the pics do not show up, very strange. The album art view is perfect , although you have to make sure the correct metadata is attached to the album first.

Can't get worse than this...

Still not fixed. Folks should post comments to http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html (use the "Broken feature" option.

This issue has gone on long enough. What is going on at Apple?

I suggest everyone send Apple feedback about this issue at https://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Good idea thepixelated i have just put in a request via

https://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Please could all users do the same !!!

Use Feedback - iTunes - Apple to let Apple know.

tt2

I also noticed this. They used to show a grid of album art, now they are rainbow microphones except for one.

Why that one has a photo is a mystery to me. See attached.