Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5

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!

UPDATE:

The Artist artwork which shows on the IOS Music app comes from Apple,

NOT from the user database (surprise). Was unable to get artwork until

I included one of the albums shown in iTunes album selection for each Artist;

NOT necessarily purchased from iTunes.

It appears unless iTunes carries an album in their inventory, artist artwork

will NOT show in IOS. Different rules appear to apply to iTunes artwork.

The artwork issue has NO bearing upon whether the music was purchased

or downloaded from another source.

I have 98% artwork of Artists showing on my IOS 11, once realizing

Apple controls the content (a surprise). Perhaps those artwork issues and now

Apple dropping apps from iTunes, is intended to compel users to adopt iCloud.

Albums may be in your archive correctly, but Apple archives an incorrect

version of the name, e.g. "Byrds" is correct but Apple uses "The Byrds".

Stevie Ray Vaughan performed some albums with Double Trouble,

yet Apple regards the artist as simply Stevie Ray Vaughan.

It is THAT type of anomaly which you need to iron out; be warned there

are still oddball exceptions that would not transfer artist artwork, e.g.

Mike + The Mechanics or Ottmar Liebert or Jon Secada or Chris Rea.

In the end it IS what Apple regards as the "correct" name.

Purchased or not purchased is NOT an issue.

Unfortunately it looks as though the artist art is based on what has been assigned by iTunes Store. If iTunes Store has a photo of the artist on the artist’s profile, that photo appears in your library. If iTunes Store has not designated a photo on the artist’s profile, it will be blank in your library.

Seems the best bet is to revert to 12.4.3 I dragged the itunes out of applications and renamed itunes in the music folder. that let me set up a fresh database all my itunes stuff is on a nas so i just had to go into my itunes media folder to add them back in to the library. It seems happy to share with my ipad so i'm happy now. will take ages for itunes to add everything back but it should work.

Well after over a year of annoyance they finally made some improvements in iTunes 2.7

You still cannot control the artwork in the artist view of iTunes. They did change the ArtistNotFound icon though. It is now a minimalist grey microphone instead of that horrifying hideous "hurts-my-eyes" pink icon that previous versions had.

As one poster said, it must be that Apple will only show the artwork for the artist if the albums within were purchased. That would lend some credence to the theory turning on Apple Music makes some artwork appear.

It really is a stupid little annoying thing that is wasting my time this morning.

ALAC files uploaded to iPhone WILL carry the artist artwork if:

the CORRECT name of the artist is inserted in the "album artist" box,

YES really.

I have encountered 2 exceptions out of a hundred uploaded,

probably attributable to Apple archiving.

In iTunes, the missing artist artwork continues...

I tried this against a couple of albums that I have imported and will not display the Artist Artwork in iTunes 12.5 (no way I'm ever updating iTunes again) & in iOS 11.

First - checked that library entry matched exactly what's display in iTunes store - still no change.

Second - purchased the album from the store and imported into library after removing previous content - still no change.

I hate the Artist view anyway as I don't recognise 99% of faces - but to have some there & some not, just irkes my OCD tendencies.

What is the CORRECT album artist? Matching the the artist field or some predetermined name by Apple Music?

I have this missing artwork issue on my Mac iTunes and the album artist matches the artist field and that does not solve the problem.

The only thing I can think of is that the album was imported as opposed to purchased.

I gave up on this issue. Spent an hour and 40 minutes on the phone with Apple "expert" iTunes people who were totally clueless about the issue. Surprisingly, I got a call back from a tech support guy who said there was nothing they could do. Basically, you just have to live with it. I have switched to Spotify...way better than iTunes!

... and when iTunes eventually DOES include an artist picture it gets it wrong. Case in point: TANK. Instead of featuring a photo of the British heavy metal band I get some unknown (at least to me) rap or hip hop artist. Why?!?!?

I have the same question but would also like to be able to change the default if I don't like what has been added??

Or Apple could actually fix this major bug that has plagued Itunes for the past 2-3 years!

Hi, same problem here on 12.5.4.42 ! I suppose that it's a very hard and complex problem to solve Apple for developers

'cause how can we explain the looooong & loooooong time that it takes to bring a solution to its clients (remember the fools who makes you rich 😉 ...). So please be reactive, be present on this kind of thing and you'll keep being a little bit different then your competing companies.

Akes from France. (sorry if mistakes...)