Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5

I'd actually like to explicitly set my artist icons. I don't find it terribly useful to see groups of people in miniature -- that doesn't help me quickly spot anything on a quick scroll-through at all. Everyone looks far too similar! Contrast with the previous behaviour of using one of the album artwork images, which was extremely useful in quickly identifying an artist when scrolling through quickly. I'd love to either manually set the artist image to my favorite album by them, or set a preference to use an album image for everyone.

While I know Apple is aware of this issue, I don't see any official Apple response.

Does Apple monitor these discussion forums?

The Apple Support Communities are designed primarily to be end user to end user support forums. While somewhere in the Terms Of Use there is something about Apple possibly checking the forums for feedback there is not outward indication they do so. Apple itself does not respond here other than posts (largely links to help documents) from "community experts" to questions to which nobody else has responded after several days.

Send feedback to http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html but do not expect to receive a response. Even if something does turn out to be a true bug and not a feature "improvement", do not expect Apple to make an abject apology, a big public announcement about it, or address the issue the next day. Even when a clear bug has occurred in the past it has been quietly addressed in a future release when it happened to come along a few weeks later. If it is something they consider related to an "improvement" they have made then I would say you stand a 2% chance in having it reversed.

Hi all,

The bug I reported to Apple on missing artist artwork was closed and marked as a duplicate. I just looked at the issue again and noticed the duplicate issue has also been closed, which indicates this issue *may* be addressed and fixed in an upcoming iTunes release.

Hopefully they didn't close because they think it's not an issue.

I have the same problem and the only solution that works is manually selecting an artist image by hand. I do not see the reason why Apple removed the possibility to automatically display one of album artworks as an artist image. This is ridiculous. The only reason I am keeping to use iTunes is that there are no good options to sync my music to my iPhone that I know of. As soon as there is one, I am switching away.

Hey Grant,

I have this same issue, but i am not signed into iCloud, nor would I like to be signed into iCloud.

As a result, my general section of iTunes preferences does not even have the option for me to enable the iCloud music library within iTunes.

Is there a way to resolve this issue without enabling the iCML?

I miss my Artist Artwork, the artist list looks so.... bland and monotonous now.

Thanks for your help,

Mugen

@Mugen:

Do like me. Go back to iTunes 12.4.3.

Artist art back and much nicer layout and fonts.

C

I find this issue particularly frustrating because I pay for Apple Music and iTunes Match. Prior to the update my Artist artwork was complete. Now, roughly one-third are gone in my library which has over 600 artists. It's just not acceptable.

I have no information to assist - just adding a complaint in hopes iTunes product team is dialed into this.

Please fix this - I have different behaviors across all seven of my Apple devices - jeez.

Pink mic looks like crap. Used to be fun scrolling through thousands of artists now ill to the eyes.

No news after latest update. Probably we are gonna have to accept things as they are.

Well, I don't know if anyone posted this before, but it looks to be very simple: the artist artwork-icon is the same image shown in the artist overview in the iTunes Store.

I have about 900 bands in my music library and only 10% have an image in the iTunes Sore / artist icon 😠

There should be a way to edit these pics on the iTunes Sore, but I guess only the labels / bands / Apple could manage this.

Hi, please tell, how do you go back, download and reinstall an older version? I too hate this new version more than I have any other piece of software! 😠 Apple have managed to destroy the other reason we all love and collect music, the artwork. Plus albums have "square" covers, not round ones. Whatever monkey designed that icon.... grrrr

Thanks in advance.

Hi all,

I opened iTunes (12.5.2.35 on macOS) tonight and noticed that quite a few more artists had artwork. The artist artwork on macOS now matches what I see on iOS.

For the most part, all of my mainstream artists (who I would consider popular enough to warrant artwork) have artwork. There are multiple artists missing artwork (House of Pain, Garth Brooks), but the artwork is missing consistently on iOS and macOS.

Are you seeing the same behavior?

Damon

damonallison wrote:

Hi all,

I opened iTunes (12.5.2.35 on macOS) tonight and noticed that quite a few more artists had artwork. The artist artwork on macOS now matches what I see on iOS.

For the most part, all of my mainstream artists (who I would consider popular enough to warrant artwork) have artwork. There are multiple artists missing artwork (House of Pain, Garth Brooks), but the artwork is missing consistently on iOS and macOS.

Are you seeing the same behavior?

Damon

Yes, on MacOS and iOS I see exactly the same artists icons. Like mentioned above the same who have artists pictures in the iTunes Store!

Thanks for confirming. Prior to yesterday (or recently, not sure if the exact date), there were many more artists missing artwork. For many people, including me, the vast majority of artists were missing artwork - even those with artwork in the iTunes store.

With this change in place, I think you are correct. Any artist missing artwork is because the artist does not have artwork in the iTunes store.

I personally feel they still have a bug. Showing a placeholder image should be the absolute last resort. They could allow you to set your own artist artwork (as you can with albums), use the iTunes store if no custom artwork is set, and fallback to the first album art if no artist artwork exists in the iTunes store. Only if there is no album art for an artist would they be forced to show a placeholder image.