Album Artwork Problems

[someone28624]

I have a Mac running OS 10.8.2 with iTunes 11, an iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.2, an iPad running iOS 6.0.1 and an iPod Classic. I am having album artwork problems. I really, really obsess about album artwork because I love seeing it in Coverflow and the new album panel in iTunes 11. Almost all of my music is legally downloaded, thus had artwork included, but what stragglers I do have from my Kazaa days back in high school and mix CDs friends have given me and such I have religiously gone online and found artwork for and properly tagged the music. This is therefore, very bothersome to me what it happening. It's also worth noting that I subscribe to iTunes Match, but do not have in enabled on either the iPad or the iPhone. I sync all of my music to my devices via my Mac.

On my iPad, almost none of my album artwork is showing. It just shows the blank question mark screen. On my iPhone, most of my artwork is also missing, but many albums and songs are showing totally wrong artwork- artwork from other albums. The artwork is correct in iTunes. I tried quitting the music app on the devices and re-syncing. This didn't help on the iPad at all. On the iPhone, on one of my albums (The Fray's Scars and Stories- bought as an album from iTunes) which was previously showing artwork for a different album (A Lady Antebellum album I ripped from a CD) starting showing artwork on different songs from four different albums, some showing the correct artwork, others showing Lady Antebellum, and still others showing different still artwork. This is one example of a problem affecting many songs and albums.

My iPod Classic is continuing to show all of the correct artwork. And some people question why I still insist the iPod Classic is the best pure music player.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I hope I didn't sound too much like a snob in this post. I just love the feeling of looking down at my iPhone's lock screen and seeing artwork for a favorite album.

 

[someone28624]

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Do you think a reset would fix it?

 

[Zmanbaseball2]

Tune up media

 

[someone28624]

Tune up media

Can you please expand on how this would help me? All of my artwork I'd correct in iTunes, it's just wrong on my phone and missing on my iPad.

 

[Risco]

Sign out of iTunes store on all devices and back in again. Also sign out of iTunes match as well. This should fix your issues.

 

[VolceOntra]

I have this problem too....though only when the "Convert higher bit rate songs" is checked in the summery tap of the iPhone. Do you have that checked as well? It's quite annoying, I tested without it checked and everything is ok. I submitted a bug report.

 

[someone28624]

I do not have the convert higher bit rate songs box checked. I tried signing out of iTunes on all devices, quitting the music app on the phone, re-opening music (not go), syncing, (still no go), resigning onto iTunes on all devices, quitting the music app again, trying again (no go), resyncing, restarting the music app again (and it still didn't work). I'm so frustrated! Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Defender2010]

It's a bug that still exists in 6.1 betas.

 

[someone28624]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but deleting all of the music off the phone and syncing it back on worked. Now onto the iPad.

 

[VolceOntra]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but deleting all of the music off the phone and syncing it back on worked. Now onto the iPad.

Sadly this doesn't work in my scenario

 

[someone28624]

Weirdly, I was unable to delete the music by syncing it off. It was all still there, even though iTunes said I had 0 songs. I had to delete it from usage in settings.

 

[jrozcan]

I get the same thing. I'm just as neurotic with my album artwork, spending hours getting it right on my mac, only to constantly see the wrong artwork on songs!!! driving me nuts.

re-synced my entire music collection, no luck.

 

[From A Buick 8]

Having a simalar issue will try some of these suggestions. Im also having an issue with an iTunes purchased song, i keep trying to change the artwork but it keeps reverting back. It will hold for a while but always reverts back.

 

[jeyaramd]

Works Like Magic

Go to Music App on your iPad. Find an album that has missing pictures. Press on that album. An "X" will appear on the top left corner for that album. Click that "X". Its deleted. But, don't worry its still available for download from the iTunes Store.
Go to iTunes store. Click o Purchased tab at the bottom. Click on the "Not on this iPad" tab at the top. Your album that was deleted previously on Music app should appear.
Click download when you find that song. Wait for it to download.
Your album should reappear with the cover on your music app. This works only for the ones that you purchased through iTunes.

For original source "google --> hubpages ipad artwork". Thanks.

 

[fullsmoke]

This has been driving me crazy! I've tried every possibly suggestion and was about to do a factory reset until I stumbled upon this site:
http://www.doctorchewy.com/album-artwork-woes/
I had to put all my music back in but everything works 100% now!

FS

 

[Partron22]

was about to do a factory reset until I stumbled upon this site:
http://www.doctorchewy.com/album-artwork-woes/

Good lord, that procedure involves reloading all your artwork. That's a lot of work.

After updating wife's iPod to 6.1.2, she noticed some of the album art was gone. I tried resyncing, embedding art in music tracks and then resyncing etc. Sometimes the album art would make it over, but sometimes not. In fact repeating the same procedure twice sometimes produced different results.
I've seen iPods behave like this before, with earlier iOS updates. The solution then was to force iTunes on the device to completely rebuild its database. A factory reset seems an effective way of doing that with iOS 6.1.2. Having done a factory reset, restore and resynch, all the album art is back; and I didn't have track down lots of cover art, or mess with adding hundreds of ID3 tags.

 

[fullsmoke]

Good lord, that procedure involves reloading all your artwork. That's a lot of work.

After updating wife's iPod to 6.1.2, she noticed some of the album art was gone. I tried resyncing, embedding art in music tracks and then resyncing etc. Sometimes the album art would make it over, but sometimes not. In fact repeating the same procedure twice sometimes produced different results.
I've seen iPods behave like this before, with earlier iOS updates. The solution then was to force iTunes on the device to completely rebuild its database. A factory reset seems an effective way of doing that with iOS 6.1.2. Having done a factory reset, restore and resynch, all the album art is back; and I didn't have track down lots of cover art, or mess with adding hundreds of ID3 tags.

That may allow the issue to occur again. iTunes does not 'physically' place the album artwork on the mp3 file itself, rather, it seems to store the information somewhere in a database it maintains. Sure, all your album artwork may be correct in iTunes but when that database information is transferred over to your iPhone there is still a small chance the information may again become corrupted. If your mp3 has the actual image embedded into the tag information then there's no room for that mix up.

This is a solution for those that DO NOT want to do a factory reset. I know because I have a lot of unrecoverable data that would be lost in a factory reset.

FS

 

[Partron22]

iTunes does not 'physically' place the album artwork on the mp3 file itself, rather, it seems to store the information somewhere in a database it maintains...

That certainly used to be the case. However, after some trouble w artwork on an iPod (6.1.2) I took a look at where my Mac's iTunes lib (11.0.2) actually was storing the artwork:
I opened "iTunes Folder", backed up its "Album Artwork" folder to another drive, and unmounted, then deleted the artwork folder and started up iTunes.
Initially, no album art was visible in iTunes, but as I scrolled thru an album list my hard drive started churning, the artwork appeared, and the newly created "Album Artwork" folder started taking up more disk space. IOW, iTunes 11.02, was copying album art from the only place it could get it, the tracks, and putting it into its album artwork database.
After scrolling around for a while, all my albums once again showed artwork, so all my albums have artwork stored in the tracks themselves*.
That being the case, artwork should have shown up on the iPod after syncing. The fact that it didn't, and that resyncing produced inconsistent artwork display from sync to sync, pointed to a corrupt db on the iPod.
Fixing that via a factory reset fixed the problem. Since all my artwork was already stored in the tracks themselves, messing with that some more was not effective. Obviously, depending on the location of your artwork, your mileage will vary, but there are at least two possible problems here, and the solutions differ.

OT:
I do wonder what people running into artwork problems without access to a computer running Mountain Lion do these days. Is "live with it" the only option?

*As expected since I fixed them that way a couple iTunes versions ago. iTunes might still prefer to store artwork just in the artwork folder, but I saw no sign of that.

 

[fullsmoke]

That certainly used to be the case. However, after some trouble w artwork on an iPod (6.1.2) I took a look at where my Mac's iTunes lib (11.0.2) actually was storing the artwork:
I opened "iTunes Folder", backed up its "Album Artwork" folder to another drive, and unmounted, then deleted the artwork folder and started up iTunes.
Initially, no album art was visible in iTunes, but as I scrolled thru an album list my hard drive started churning, the artwork appeared, and the newly created "Album Artwork" folder started taking up more disk space. IOW, iTunes 11.02, was copying album art from the only place it could get it, the tracks, and putting it into its album artwork database.
After scrolling around for a while, all my albums once again showed artwork, so all my albums have artwork stored in the tracks themselves*.
That being the case, artwork should have shown up on the iPod after syncing. The fact that it didn't, and that resyncing produced inconsistent artwork display from sync to sync, pointed to a corrupt db on the iPod.
Fixing that via a factory reset fixed the problem. Since all my artwork was already stored in the tracks themselves, messing with that some more was not effective. Obviously, depending on the location of your artwork, your mileage will vary, but there are at least two possible problems here, and the solutions differ.

OT:
I do wonder what people running into artwork problems without access to a computer running Mountain Lion do these days. Is "live with it" the only option?

*As expected since I fixed them that way a couple iTunes versions ago. iTunes might still prefer to store artwork just in the artwork folder, but I saw no sign of that.

I do not disagree that a factory reset will fix the issue. Of course it will because it IS a corrupted database on the iDevice itself. If you do not want to clear your album artwork--don't.

Simply skip to #5 on http://www.doctorchewy.com/album-artwork-woes/ and forgo deleting artwork from your iTunes collection. From step #5 onward you are forcing your iDevice to rebuild its database. AGAIN--you DO NOT NEED TO FACTORY RESTORE using this method (however, a factory restore will fix this issue as well).

Also, iTunes still does not embed the artwork into your mp3 file itself. It is stored in a different location like you have demonstrated (in a database that will repopulate itself). Try using WinAmp or other mp3 player to open those mp3 files that iTunes assigned artwork to (ones not purchased from iTunes store). Or look in Finder and you'll see your mp3 files are the generic mp3 icon.

FS

 

[archewing]

I found this to be a solution for me.

In the sorting tab of Get Info -> Make sure all fields on the right side are blank except Sort Album. If you are doing the entire album (right clicking the Album), check all boxes and all are blank except Sort Album. This should sync correctly. If this does not happen right away after resyncing, uncheck the album, artist or playlist Then recheck them and sync. That should fix this issue.

Let me know.

 

[Rory Manton]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but it might be worth it. After suffering ( and I mean suffering ) the same problems as the original poster and trying all the suggested remedies I could find with no luck I thought I would post how I solved it.

I deleted one of the albums with the missing artwork and re installed it on my iPad and all my missing covers came back.

It may be totaly circumstantial but it may be worth a punt to try if all else fails.

Cheers