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Solutions to missing album art in Catalina Music app?

R

ramparts

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 11, 2008
173
1
I finally upgraded my MBP 2015 to Catalina recently after holding off for a while, largely due to the missing album art issue, and sure enough a lot of my album art is now missing.

- All of the albums I added since 2016 are fine. The first albums with missing artwork I added in 2015, and as I go back in time, the problem becomes more and more common.

- I left it open overnight, and as far as I can tell nothing updated over that time (the newest albums with blank album art when I went to bed still were blank in the morning). Moreover it no longer reads "loading artwork" in the bottom right. So I don't think it's a matter of leaving the app open longer.

- I tried starting Music while holding option and selecting my old pre-upgrade .itl file. It went through the same process of loading album art, with the same set of albums ending up with missing art.

- A lot of my albums are obscure and/or tagged differently than they are in the iTunes store so "Get Album Artwork" won't work for those, but some of the missing albums do work with "Get Album Artwork," so that's not the problem.

- I've tried closing and restarting the app a bunch of times, to no avail.

Are there any known solutions besides manually adding art to every album that's missing it?
 
sputnikBA

sputnikBA

macrumors 6502
Jan 2, 2018
289
387
There is a setting in Music’s preferences that says the app will search for / update album art. I had similar problems to you until I disabled it.

Music > Preferences > Advanced > Automatically Update Artwork

try turning that off.
 
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R

ramparts

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 11, 2008
173
1
sputnikBA said:
There is a setting in music’s preferences that says the app will search for / update album art. I had similar problems to you until I disabked it.

Music > Preferences > Advanced > Automatically Update Artwork

try turning that off.
Click to expand...

Thanks! That was already turned off, so that doesn't seem to be the problem in my case.

The "solution" I've ended up with for the time being is to use Retrospective to reinstall iTunes. It has all my album art, and still syncs with my iPhone. So I'll just illicitly use iTunes until Apple fixes Music (if it ever does).
 
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coolaaron88

coolaaron88

macrumors regular
May 28, 2010
149
150
Las Vegas, Nevada
ramparts said:
Thanks! That was already turned off, so that doesn't seem to be the problem in my case.

The "solution" I've ended up with for the time being is to use Retrospective to reinstall iTunes. It has all my album art, and still syncs with my iPhone. So I'll just illicitly use iTunes until Apple fixes Music (if it ever does).
Click to expand...

How do you use Retrospective?
 
spankmaster79

spankmaster79

macrumors newbie
Mar 26, 2020
2
2
For me actually a lot of album artwork did re-appear after time. But for those missing, for some it works to right click and use "Load album artwork", but for those not displaying I have to re-add the artwork from an image.

The funny thing is, that it is there. I can see it in the mini-player when playing a track from the album, but it won't show up in album view.

Had the same problem sometimes when editing my files in Windows iTunes and then switching back to my Mac which all uses the same external harddrive. But then the trick to edit all files, like setting an unused field like BPM to 1, or even just selecting all tracks in the album, click cmd+i to show info and just click ok made it reappear. This way you could even select all albums with missing artwork and the do this workaround. But in the Music app it doesn't
 
S

slagathor001

macrumors regular
Nov 2, 2011
195
74
I have this same problem ever since updating to Catalina. Over 90% of my album art is gone, and using the Music app to get the artwork worked on like 10 albums. No joke.

Anyone have any solution? I don't even understand how all of my album art disappeared. I believe at first it was just not showing up in the music app on Catalina, but now across devices most of my album art is gone. I Have almost 2,000 albums, so individually finding the art online and adding manually seems like a pain. And even then, sometimes the art just won't save. Even when done manually.
 
M

macnvrbck

macrumors regular
Sep 18, 2005
190
6
Same issue here. Lost so much album artwork. I'm sick and tired of having to fix things when upgrading to another version of OS X. I used to tell people Mac's were like toasters... they just worked. NOT ANYMORE!

BTW... I went into system preferences and clicks automatically update album artwork.

I've also right clicked and asked to update album artwork and it says it cannot be found.

How hard is it to find the album artwork for Ace of Base, The Sign!!!!!!
 
O

obbiie

macrumors newbie
May 30, 2007
1
0
The only solution I've found (and it's not a viable solution AT ALL) is to go to the artwork metadata editor tab in the Music app by clicking 'get info' on a track or album and then literally just move the album art a little and press OK. The art then appears in the Music App.

Sometimes you need to go back into the album one more time to trigger it to refresh.

It works, but I'm not doing it on 600+ albums.
 
R

ramparts

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 11, 2008
173
1
obbiie said:
The only solution I've found (and it's not a viable solution AT ALL) is to go to the artwork metadata editor tab in the Music app by clicking 'get info' on a track or album and then literally just move the album art a little and press OK. The art then appears in the Music App.

Sometimes you need to go back into the album one more time to trigger it to refresh.

It works, but I'm not doing it on 600+ albums.
Click to expand...

It's interesting that you even have the album art in the metadata editor at all. Mine don't show up even there.
 
M

macnvrbck

macrumors regular
Sep 18, 2005
190
6
ramparts said:
It's interesting that you even have the album art in the metadata editor at all. Mine don't show up even there.
Click to expand...
Can you please explain to me in detail how to do this? (Should I even try?) I'm not familiar with the metadata editor but am tech savvy!
 
icanhazmac

icanhazmac

Contributor
Apr 11, 2018
2,544
9,563
I was missing quite a few as well and tried a select all and get info, still missing quite a few but it did rediscover some. I am not being nit picky either, I know off recordings and bootlegs won't be found but it is missing some really obvious stuff.

Missing examples: (all of these are purchased physical media, not burned copies)
Led Zeppelin: I, IV, Houses of the Holy, Coda, Presence
Metallica: And Justice For All, Black Album, Kill 'Em All, Master of Puppets, Ride The Lightning
 
Ziggy Cannonball

Ziggy Cannonball

macrumors newbie
May 16, 2020
2
5
The upgrade to Catalina, which I'd held out for quite a while to do, totally screwed up my iTunes artwork. Instead of having album artwork that I can access through the "get info" feature for each song, I can only see the embedded metadata artwork as the song plays. Album artwork gone. Or so I thought. I have over 200,000 iTunes. There's not a chance I'm going to sit down and play with it to restore all my artwork one song at a time. That could take hours. I've found this:


Select a bunch of tunes whichever way; either from the home music screen, or from playlists, or however you do it within the Music program. This script applies the embedded metadata artwork, effectively restoring the album artwork. I tried it. It works. Now I'm going to throw Doug a few bucks for making life easier. Also, it's a good idea to go to the "Preferences" and under the "Advanced" section, deselect "Automatically update artwork."
 
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R

ramparts

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 11, 2008
173
1
Ziggy Cannonball said:
The upgrade to Catalina, which I'd held out for quite a while to do, totally screwed up my iTunes artwork. Instead of having album artwork that I can access through the "get info" feature for each song, I can only see the embedded metadata artwork as the song plays. Album artwork gone. Or so I thought. I have over 200,000 iTunes. There's not a chance I'm going to sit down and play with it to restore all my artwork one song at a time. That could take hours. I've found this:


Select a bunch of tunes whichever way; either from the home music screen, or from playlists, or however you do it within the Music program. This script applies the embedded metadata artwork, effectively restoring the album artwork. I tried it. It works. Now I'm going to throw Doug a few bucks for making life easier. Also, it's a good idea to go to the "Preferences" and under the "Advanced" section, deselect "Automatically update artwork."
Click to expand...

Strangely this isn't working for me. Music doesn't show there being any embedded art for these files, even though the same files do have their album art in iTunes (through Retroactive).
 
T

txtx

macrumors newbie
May 27, 2020
9
7
Haven't seen this addressed on any sites, so thought I'd post it...

I've always kept small (200K) "cover" and "back" jpg art files in each of my albums' folders (the folders within iTunes Media/Music) and added this art manually to iTunes using "Add Artwork." And some people like to include alternate album covers & liner notes, etc., and you could swipe back and forth between them in the iTunes Artwork viewer.

I just upgraded to Catalina 10.15.5 and have found that, in addition to the missing art issue, the Music app no longer seems to allow you to swipe back and forth like this, although it does seem to let you add more than one piece of art. Add 2 pieces of art, and only the last one added is viewable. Delete that one, and then the 1st one is viewable.

I have done thorough testing of trackpad gesture options and found no solution. It's just so laughably dopey to impair the one app everyone with any kind of Mac product uses on a regular basis!o_O
 
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Ziggy Cannonball

Ziggy Cannonball

macrumors newbie
May 16, 2020
2
5
ramparts said:
Strangely this isn't working for me. Music doesn't show there being any embedded art for these files, even though the same files do have their album art in iTunes (through Retroactive).
Click to expand...
If there's no embedded art, then this fix won't work. Gaaah.
 
M

MallardDuck

macrumors 68000
Jul 21, 2014
1,585
2,918
I deliberately waited to upgrade my iTunes machine until 10.15.4...I figured surely Apple would have fixed this glitch by now. Nope. Most of my music album art is gone, and nearly all of my TV/Movie art. Catalina has been the biggest fail in a MacOS in a long time. Oh for the stability of a Snow Leopard.....

Near as I can tell they don't bother to QA the local content part of the ecosystem anymore - they want you to buy devices with large amounts of storage, but then depreciate using that storage in favor of renting/streaming/not having music when the internet is unavailable.

*Extremely frustrating*

I'm hoping the dougscript will fix it.
 
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L

Lounge vibes 05

macrumors 68040
May 30, 2016
3,652
10,608
One solution that I’ve heard that can work, go into the Music Preferences, then go to Files, then where it says “Music Media folder location”, make sure it’s set to the new music folder, not the old iTunes folder. So the path should look like this: /Macintosh HD/Users/name/Music/Music/Media
If it doesn’t say this, press reset. And then hit OK, and it should re-organize your library
[automerge]1592666034[/automerge]
I read somewhere that it has something to do with the fact that old songs are put into the old iTunes folder, where as the new songs relocate to the music folder. So if you press reset, then make sure organize library is checked, then you hit OK, it will reindex your library. This might help with the album art issue
[automerge]1592666134[/automerge]
It will move your entire iTunes library over to the new /Macintosh HD/Users/name/Music/Music/Media folder.
Just back up, just to make sure nothing can be messed up too bad
 
Taz Mangus

Taz Mangus

macrumors 604
Mar 10, 2011
7,815
3,504
Lounge vibes 05 said:
One solution that I’ve heard that can work, go into the Music Preferences, then go to Files, then where it says “Music Media folder location”, make sure it’s set to the new music folder, not the old iTunes folder. So the path should look like this: /Macintosh HD/Users/name/Music/Music/Media
If it doesn’t say this, press reset. And then hit OK, and it should re-organize your library
[automerge]1592666034[/automerge]
I read somewhere that it has something to do with the fact that old songs are put into the old iTunes folder, where as the new songs relocate to the music folder. So if you press reset, then make sure organize library is checked, then you hit OK, it will reindex your library. This might help with the album art issue
[automerge]1592666134[/automerge]
It will move your entire iTunes library over to the new /Macintosh HD/Users/name/Music/Music/Media folder.
Just back up, just to make sure nothing can be messed up too bad
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. Still trying to figure out how retrieve the artist image icons. Only some of them seem to have been retrieved.
 
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