iPod No album artwork on iPod nano (1st generation)

[Bustycat]

I just took out my iPod nano (1st generation) and charged to 100% yesterday. I have reset it via Music on macOS Catalina and synced some purchased albums from iTunes Store and imported CDs, and I have made sure that all of them include their correct album artwork. However, none of them could show an album artwork on that iPod right now.

As I bought it as early as September 2005, I am very certain that it did show album artworks before. Has anyone also encountered the same problem?

 

[retta283]

There is? (definitely used to be) a setting to copy album artwork, which could be turned on or off. It's possible this setting was flipped to off at some point. Look in the iPod settings from your Mac and see if there's an option.

 

[Bustycat]

There is? (definitely used to be) a setting to copy album artwork, which could be turned on or off. It's possible this setting was flipped to off at some point. Look in the iPod settings from your Mac and see if there's an option.

Unfortunately I cannot find options related to album artworks for iPod on Music and Finder. Apple may have eliminated the function.

 

[Slix]

I'm glad you mentioned having this issue as well. Years ago, iTunes had a toggle for iPods to sync album art or not. I often left it off for my 1st gen nano since it saved space so I could sync more music. Now, however, the toggle is gone, and my iPod classic 4th generation syncs only some of the album art. Some albums have it, some don't. It's random which ones have it show up. I have plenty of space on this iPod's drive available, so it's not a storage issue. There doesn't seem to be any difference whether it's a purchased from iTunes song or not either.

As far as I know, there is no fix for this. Album art syncs just fine to my iPod touches, iPhones, and newer nanos, but not my 4th gen classic, and my 1st gen nano I believe as well.

 

[philden]

Can you inspect the files on the iPod in the Catalina equivalent of iTunes? That way you'd be able to tell for sure if the images aren't being transferred or if the iPod is unable to display them.

 

[Bustycat]

So after almost three years, I tested mine again with a different user account, and concluded the two causes of losing album artworks.

• iTunes Store songs – album artworks have to be applied manually
• "Convert higher bit rate songs to *** kbps AAC" — I tested with ALAC songs

 

[arw]

Seems very plausible and matches my observations/problems.
Just in case someone stumbles upon the issue again, a while ago I posted a script to manually force the artwork on the iPod to be refreshed/written:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/album-art-is-still-all-over-the-place.2329897/post-31509471