Artist Photos Missing in iTunes 12.5.1

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!

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.

Apple has done this on purpose, just like they broke the ability to view lyrics on the phone on purpose. Apple has intentionally broken things like this in iTunes to get you to buy their music subscription. If you purchase the music subscription through apple you will notice that artist thumbnails work, and you can magically view lyrics for music you subscribed to. The reason Apple isn’t fixing this is because they intentionally broke it so you’ll give up on your own music library and buy their subscription plan. Go ahead and call Apple like I did, and I promise you in the support call they will suggest you buy the music subscription plan.

Use Feedback - iTunes - Apple to let Apple know.

tt2

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.

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.

I must admit haven't looked at this topic for a couple of years.

its sad to see that Apple can be bothered to sort this issue.

I'm due to buy a new computer and phone but looks like they've lost me.

I couldn't really care what their reason is, whether its because we want to upload our own CDs to iTunes, or the file format, the reason is irrelevant. It's the fact that it shows they do not really care about their customers experience at all.

If it is because we have uploaded CDs etc what gives them the right to presume they are not legitimate, they are not the police.

I now run Spotify in my car for this precise reason, so in effect they are just losing revenue through their own, arrogant, stupidity.

People don't need this kind of interference and hassle in their lives, they move on to better things.

So its the end of apple road for me, it may seem trivial to some , but when you have spent years building a music collection, you don't deserve to have it trashed by some faceless company that really doesn't care.

My rant is over

Happy days folks, there is always sunshine somewhere else in the world of music.

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.

Although I would agree that their people are trained to support and sell their products, your suggestions (without proof) are inaccurate. I personally have the Family Apple Music subscription and all these things are broken for me as well. Your speculation is inaccurate. Before making such inflammatory posts you should first research the facts. The facts are is this error has always been inconsistent and no one pattern that people have speculated has been the culprit. I have Apple Music Subscription, over 11,000 i-Tunes purchased songs, and I have these issues on min Macbook Pro, Iphone X and iPad Pro. Furthermore which lyrics and artists photos that display are different on each platform

It's not a small thing. Some of us have invested a lot of time and money into our music collection, only to have Apple trash that collection, overwrite files, remove access to lyrics, screw up album art etc. It's not a small thing if you've put years into creating a great, customized music collection. And in my opinion it's intentional.

Everytime a new iTunes released I am looking all the known bugs to check what they fixed this time. Now the Artist icon is a huge bug with still no answer and except that there are more issues to talk about. If you import every day music and specifically discographies, you might have duplicate artists on artists view. Check screenshot below.

To fix that you need to rename all songs with Album Arist: Various Artists for example to Various Artists1. Then you'll have 1 only Artists name Various Artists. Now, some of my Various Artists had an Artist icon from one of the artists included in compilations, that is crazy. When I renamed it the icon was gone.

After reading this thread I checked again for icons on Artists view and I find out that I have some duplicate Artists, but the name is exactly, no mistyped spaces on - or anything else.

I triple checked and I dont have icons only from the Purchased music and from what I see that is a huge bug. Let's hope iTunes 13 is fixed from all these.

Im to having this issue for month now. At least i think i found the logic behind the pattern what artist shows up with a cover:

Some artists have a "custom" page in the itunes store:

in my collection these will show up with a cover:

those without an cover:

just got the default page within the itunes store:

So i am guessing Apple is just taking their own artist cover from the store if available, otherwise we will get this pretty pink monster 😟

Sometimes the cover in Itunes will match those in the store, in some case not.

Maybe someone can verify this. I aware that this is no soloution, but it explains the behavior of Itunes. btw: im running Win10 and Itunes 12.5.5.5

Greetings

Volker

Seems that this issue is not an issue after all. Apple is taking pictures from the Apple Music artist icon. Here is an example for the band Cilver

This is what it looks like on my Artist view

and this is where the icon is taken from

Here is another example with Creed

The strange thing is that I cannot find Daft Punk on Apple Music, but even the picture on artist view is there but it's not the same.

Any ideas?

I know people like to rant and rave but I honestly think this was an oversight. They are trying to merge commonality with the iPhone and I think they only tested downloaded music and not ripped music. The developers probably don't rip music on their development machines. They need to be more thorough in their testing but I am sure they will fix this if we just take the time to submit Feedback. Use the feedback assistant if you are Beta Tester if not:

The problem only seems to be related to Ripped Music and some rare older artists.

The only way this will get fixed is if enough people report it

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