Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5

I received the email regarding your post. like all site notifications it contained a copy of your post (post now replaced with a smiley) it was addressed to me, I read it for myself.

That wasn't from me. In your haste you've misread I think. That smiley was from Andrew McV seemingly in response to your comment that you will do as you please (or some such).

The comment was from me. I deleted almost immediately because I regretted posting it. You got in your reply to me and all is good. I apologize for the troll comment. I have not since responded to anything other than this post here. I will not be, either. Good night, Gentlemen.

MichaelRT1972 wrote:

That wasn't from me. In your haste you've misread I think. That smiley was from Andrew McV seemingly in response to your comment that you will do as you please (or some such).

I apologize for misreading it, insults are tossed around here so often. And (as you pointed out, and I agree with) serve no purpose at all. So, sorry for assigning it you rather than Andrew.

Andrew Mcvinnie wrote:

The comment was from me. I deleted almost immediately because I regretted posting it. You got in your reply to me and all is good. I apologize for the troll comment. I have not since responded to anything other than this post here. I will not be, either. Good night, Gentlemen.

Thanks for clarifying, and no offense taken on my part.

This appears to be a conscious decision on behalf of Apple. I purchased the iphone 7 with apprehension when it was revealed the head phone jack would be removed. When the dongle was shown to be included, i begrudgingly accepted the change, figuring change is necessary (much like the upgrade of the lightning cord). This however is a step backward, simply to deny library completeness to those who did not purchase every track of theirs through itunes. It's a punishment for not giving them more than you already have. i'm not troll, and i don't sway easily, but I've grown tired of apple's business philosophy. My entire family have had iphones for several its incarnations, have two imacs, an ipad pro and mini, and a macbook air. We've been discussing our next move already (caused by Apple's actions so soon after the purchase of our new phones), and we find ourselves unable to come up with reasons to stay with the brand. There are so many great phones out now, great lap tops and PCs with better variety and price points, and they seem to want to cater to the customer. When i type it out i wonder why it's been such a difficult choice. I had championed apple. It just seems like now they care less about their customer's appeasement, just figuring the masses will buy no matter what. Not this one. This is my last iphone, and we're going to move on to other options as the need arises. Their sentiments are likely don't let the door hit you where the good lord hit you. lol. shame. I really did enjoy my ipod so long ago, my music library, updating all of the genres, artwork, complications and playlists. Guess I'll just have to start over on a new OS and music library.

I have noticed the same issue. My own suspicion is that Apple decided to let the publisher select the image to appear for the artist icon. I noted that the artists with a microphone image also have no image in the store page for the artist. It is just a guess, but my thinking is that the publisher is responsible for providing a licensed image and maybe the editorial description as well.

Totally agree that it is a pain. Artwork might be editable, but it would require a bit editor, because the artwork files are png images with a short header at the start. However, examining the xml database does not reveal any information for artists, just tracks--so the organization and location of artist artwork remains opaque. They might well only exist in a cache.

For those on the quest, I have found the following.

1. at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.itunes/ is a file named ArtistNames.plist. I contains a listing of artist names as keys and a string of numbers as the value. The list contains many names that do not appear in my library, but NOT THE NAMES OF ARTISTS WHO HAVE A GENERIC ICON.

I suspected that this list provides a lookup into another file in the same directory, Cache.db. But that file was empty. Possibly, it identifies an artwork file

Similarly, at /Library/Frameworks/iTunesLibrary.framework/Versions/A/Headers is ITLibArtist.h, a header file for the ITLIbArtist class. This has no reference to an image. It just associates an artist with a number.

If one REALLY HATES the microphone, the file being isued is at /Applications/itunes/contents/Resources.MissingArtworkArtist.png

I suppose you could name another png file to that and replace the original.

Of course the problem with replacing the microphone graphic file, is the package checksum changes and you will be asked to click one extra time every time you open iTunes. For me, because I use multiple libraries, is a total PITA.

At this point, I wish I just had the option to turn off that wretched rainbow ice cream microphone and just display the text. That microphone looks like a rainbow puked inside my computer.

That's the look John ivey and Tim have been going for since IOS 7. Great look if your a 12 year old girl.

worked on this for a couple hours. moving on, done with apple

yes same here

I am not sure what version of iTunes or IOS you have but none of this works on IOS 10 and Apple 7 devices.

... sorry missed the step after you right click - you must select “Show Artist in iTunes Store”.