Artist Artwork is missing in iTunes 12.5

This is not the only problem with iTunes 12.5.1. The new fots are large and ugly. The new album icons get horrendously large when activated. Everything on this new version is just so... unlikely Apple. Not the Apple I grew up with.

Apple recommends this answer, but it is useless right now to many of us and not a solution. I have 130 GB or pop/rock/alt/etc music and another 50-60 GB of classical music (after all, there are multiple versions of Beethoven's 7th or 9th symphonies that I like and listen to regularly). I am not storing that much music in the cloud. I am not paying for that. I own the music on little shiny discs.

I like iTunes integration with my Apple TV for playing on my stereo in another room, and the ability to track my library and cycle through things that I may not have listened to in awhile. But if the Artist thumbnails are gone, and the stupid interface continues to take up so much space on my screen, then it may be time to jump ship to another ecosystem. iTunes can back up my iPhone and sit dormant otherwise. I'll rent movies from Amazon instead.

I know CD's are dying. But the death will likely take many years, IMO. I'm 50, and a huge music FAN. I almost always have music playing, whether as background or actively listening. I know some people aren't (my wife, for one), but I don't expect that they are buying many little shiny discs, or black vinyl discs, or digital downloads. Streaming works for them, I expect. But have other FANS really moved to streaming in great numbers? I expect (hope?) there are still a lot like me that like more control over what they listen to. When I make a 500-1000 song playlist based on multiple genius lists, made from my library, I very seldom have to skip a song.

Off my soapbox now. I will send feedback to Apple. Maybe if enough people do, then there will be a fix. Shrugs.

-Adam

Ugh. I thought replies to specific posts would be put inline after that post. In my post on Oct 6, 2016 at 10:00 AM, I'm referring to the "Apple Recommended" (as of 10/6/16) answer by Granto102:

I don't know if this will work for everyone, but I've found it to work on my iPhone (haven't tried it on my Mac yet) but if you go into settings > mobile and turn on the Music app, all of the artworks reappear. The only reasoning I can put it down to is simply my music app was unable to connect to the internet to source the artist images. It's worked for roughly 90% of my library so I don't know what's happened to the other 10% but for now, it's a step in the right direction!!

Everyone else give it a shot, make sure your Music app is able to access the Internet and see if it makes a difference at all

I like how Apple never actually provided an answer.

As an FYI, here is the feedback I sent:

I'm unhappy to see the Artist thumbnail pictures gone and replaced by microphones in iTunes 12.5.1. I liked when there were albums covers or a photo. The microphones waste a lot of onscreen space - poor design.

The recommended solution of subscribing to Apple music and syncing my library with the cloud is not tenable for me. I have 130 GB or pop/rock/alt/etc music and another 50-60 GB of classical music, all purchased by me. I don't want to pay $10/month for a service that won't work for a large portion of my library.

Please make it possible to have Artist thumbnails use album art, or let us fill in that tag with pictures we have.

Also, please reduce the default size of albums in Artist view, or allow us to adjust it with a slider like in Photos on the Mac.

This is what I am seeing which is pretty annoying:

I cannot see some album covers when I play my music randomly on my iPhone.

I cannot see artist pictures either. The stupid microphone like you are all seeing.

I plugged my phone into iTunes, and browsed the music that was on my phone. I thought if I could change the tags maybe I could get the artwork to come down. Cant modify crap. I cannot even expand the album names to see if I am looking at disc 1, or disc 2.

Cannot sort by name, song, anything. Defaults to Artist and stays there.

Some songs kept saying they were Taylor Swift when they obviously weren't. I verified through iTunes the names were not labeled incorrectly.

How did you manage to delete microphones in Artists View? or you just switched to Album View List?

Hi all.

I Have tried the fixes here and none work.

I have had an Apple Music subscription for around a year.

On iOS 10.0.2 on my iPhone 7:

Music app is turned 'on' in mobile settings.

ICloud is on.

Nothing listed above works. I have written to Apple as I only recently purchased this phone. It is under warranty.

Part of the product I have purchased is the OS and core apps.

Here we have a broken core app; it is supposed to show Artist pictures, but instead shows around 20% (some incorrect) and then many pink microphones.

I would not like to be the Apple employee/s that have introduced this fault.

After reporting this fault I had an email from a person at a 'sales team' that said I needed to address my query elsewhere and gave me a link. Good customer service would simply have been to pass my query on the the correct area.

Shoddy software, archaic customer service.

An Apple customer for 30 years, once an education liaison contact, I'm getting weary. Lots of little niggles leading to overall lack of enthusiasm for their products any more,

Steve must be turning in his grave.

We all want Apple to be good. It seems they are happy to regress. What a shame.

Please get this and more fixed for us, your customers. We pay you. You are accountable.

Please go back to itunes 10.

all subsequent versions have been absolute garbage.

As I wrote above, I have gone back to 12.4.3.

But iTunes keeps updating autoatically to 12.5.1.

I have not been able to avoid it.

I tick off automatic update in the Preferences settings, to no avail.

When I come the next morning, iTunes is back again to (ugly) 12.5.1.

Why is this happening?????

AAaaaarrrghhhh!!!!!!!!

YYou need to disable all updates in the main preferences screen on your mac. Mine did the same until I turned off all updates.

IM just going to suggest our overlords won't agree it's a fault. Given ios10 is doing this also, and by this I mean round pictures of artists taken from somewhere besides album art, I don't doubt they will say we see these link images because there is something amiss with our metadata. The "fix" will be to fix our metadata. I bet a tenner it's why the overlords have remained quiet. 1.5 terabytes of music, I don't have a spare month to "fix" what worked ok before. A new music platform is required.

Wow - this thread is 8 pages. It seems our option to restore artist artwork is to rollback to a previous version of iTunes. While that is possible, it's not practical.

While I know Apple is aware of this issue, I don't see any official Apple response. I submitted a radar (bug report) to Apple, which they closed as a duplicate. So while I know they are aware of the issue, I'm not able to see the linked duplicate issue nor determine if they are acting on it.

Has there been any official acknowledgement from Apple that this is indeed a bug or any plans to fix this? Does Apple monitor these discussion forums? They do have engineers monitor the developer forums, but this isn't a developer issue. For us to post this issue on the developer forum would not be appropriate.

I have gone back to version 12.4.3 and deactivated all automatic updates.

An alternative to iTunes would be great. Not sure how if those out there can sync with the iPhone.

>>> Does Apple monitor these discussion forums?

Isn't that why god invented interns.

Seriously, I know the 'experts' insist that they do not follow these things, but I can't imagine they would not have someone doing so. After all, it is free feedback, they don't have to acknowledge anything, ever, and (if it were a normal company) it would help them fashion future updates.

In the end, we are left to kowtow to them, pleading and begging for updates to updates that give us -the consumer- whatever we want or need.

It is all screwed up. It is becoming more-and-more like the old days of Windows when you updated your work computer and nothing, nothing, nothing worked at all.

"It is becoming more-and-more like the old days of Windows when you updated your work computer and nothing, nothing, nothing worked at all."

I could not agree more!

This is no longer the Apple I grew up with.