Level 1

74 points

Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5

Hey everyone,

First off I am running iTunes 12.5.1 and iOS 10.0.1 on my Macbook Air and iPhone SE respectively.

In previous versions of both iTunes and iOS, iTunes has automatically added Artist artwork to my music collection. No, not Album artwork. Artist artwork.

Above you can see the artist Passenger has a blank artwork, whereas Pete Murray has the artist artwork

Both artists have all of their albums with the correct names and correct artwork, but the only difference between the two is that i have purchased one of Pete Murray's albums. So why has Passenger's disappeared? How can I add it again?

Thank you for all your help,

Grant

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), null

Posted on Sep 13, 2016 5:19 PM

Top-ranking reply

jonny_thunder

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Nov 8, 2017 8:59 AM

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!

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208 replies

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

Sep 14, 2016 6:29 AM in response to mariotheplumber

mariotheplumber wrote:

I note iOS 10 requires iTunes 12.5 - guess that means the days of sync'ing are over!

Why would that be?

Sep 14, 2016 7:55 AM in response to Granto102

I'm having this problem too, except ALL my artwork has suddenly disappeared from the artist list, including iTunes purchases. Is this Apple's way of forcing us to use Apple Music?

Sep 14, 2016 8:08 AM in response to shaynewhite

Nope, I just hadn't waited long enough. Now it's showing some artist portraits, and everything else is that stupid tacky pink microphone. How much did Apple pay someone to come up with that icon?

Sep 14, 2016 8:23 AM in response to shaynewhite

This new update is absolutely atrocious.

Rohirm

Level 1

4 points

Sep 14, 2016 8:57 AM in response to shaynewhite

I have Apple Music subscription and still got missing artist artwork.

Granto102 Author

Level 1

74 points

Sep 14, 2016 4:10 PM in response to Granto102

All of my library consists of music ive bought on CD. They're legal copies, ive paid the record companies their money and Apple can't 'trust' me on that? I'm sorry, i am a bit mad about it. I loved the old artwork

I'm more interested in how the Music app or iTunes sources these image files and how the issue can be fixed. Whether it's as easy as right clicking and pressing 'get info' to manually add the artwork? I've tried that and all it does is replace all of the ALBUM artworks for that artist. I'm lost as to what to try next

Sep 14, 2016 5:24 PM in response to Granto102

IM in the same boat. iTunes messed up the music...again. Why they can't get this right.

or at least give us an update on what to do!

serge_pt

Level 1

9 points

Sep 14, 2016 5:24 PM in response to Granto102

I have same issue too... It is so strange why they decided to change the way it used to be. But I've noticed a difference that on iOS10 devices it shows way more artists artworks than on Mac OS iTunes 12.5.1 and there is no relation to music purchased in Apple store or elsewhere. Somehow iTunes will not refresh artists artworks as iOS 10 does. May be Mac Os Sierra will help.

Granto102 Author

Level 1

74 points

Sep 14, 2016 5:29 PM in response to serge_pt

The artist artworks on my phone (iPhone SE iOS 10) are the exact same as my laptop (Macbook Air El Capitan 10.11.6, iTunes 12.5.1). But considering that accounts for one artist in roughly 100, I'm not a very reliable example.

I'm hoping that it's a bug with the new software that Apple are currently working on. I'm hoping it'll be patched pretty quickly!

Sep 15, 2016 8:40 AM in response to ARTyrrell

That I can disprove. I've never once bought music off of iTunes Music and I have two artists that popped up and the remaining 100 have no images, just the pink microphone. So this is definitely poor programing...

serge_pt

Level 1

9 points

Sep 15, 2016 10:12 AM in response to Jeffrey Haas

So I erased and restored all content from iPhone yesterday, and now iOS 10 shows more artists artworks on the phone but no changes within iTunes itself. Left image from iTunes. Right from the phone. Artists artworks are showing for artists bought on CDs, not from Apple store. Puzzled.

Sep 15, 2016 2:38 PM in response to Granto102

They also seem to have done away with the option of organizing music by date, etc.

It is the usual Mommy Complex, I'm afraid. This notion that they know what is best for everyone and that one size fits all.

serge_pt

Level 1

9 points

Sep 15, 2016 4:00 PM in response to kingharvest2

I've been to Apple store today, their macs have similar setup with iTunes music samples and none of them show artists artwork but exactly same artists do have artworks on their iPads. May be it has something to do with Sierra release next week.
You can organize music by date within Library>Artists then Top Menu>View>Sort Albums by>Album/Year
Same applies to Library>Albums, but if you select view albums as a list iTunes keeps changing sorting by albums name.

Sep 15, 2016 4:05 PM in response to serge_pt

Thanks very much for the sorting-by-year tip.

Sep 15, 2016 4:35 PM in response to ARTyrrell

Same problem here. Hundreds of artists with pink microphone, two artists with art.

However, in my case it clearly has nothing to do with purchased music (as others have also confirmed). I have not purchased music from iTunes by the two artists with art. Previously nearly everyone had artist art.

Album art seems to be in place, although over the years I've manually added most of that so that there's an actual jpg file for iTunes to pull from.

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Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5