Hi Guys, I'm new to the forum, and I was so frustrated by this problem which only started affecting me after I upgraded to iOs 14.5. I add my own photos to the songs in my music collection, and after a recent refresh of some on iTunes on my Mac (Song >Get Info >Artwork / Add Artwork), I synced my iPhone only to find that they did not transfer. The music on my iPhone had all the old artwork. I read many articles on this, none of which solved the problem for me; but then, on a hunch, just tried deleting all my songs from my iPhone, restarting it, restarting my computer, then syncing. It worked. Good luck!
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Solutions to missing album art in Catalina Music app?
- Thread starter ramparts
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I'm on Big Sur 11.4, but I think it was the same on Catalina. In Album Artwork you can add additional artwork as before, but you need to use "drag-and-drop" to change the order of the images; the leftmost artwork image is always what's displayed in Music.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!
Try using DougScripts "ReEmbed Artwork" v 3.2. I used it for Apple Music on Catalina and it worked! I defintely donated some $ to Dougscripts. Saved me so much time and headache.
So, i have been trying to bring covers back and here is what i found.
Before trying anything please MAKE A BACKUP of all you music library to time machine, external drive or at least if you on a APFS volume - a duplicate copy of it.
I found what when i add new songs they get an album art, but my old song don't. If i delete all my music and add it all back i get all covers but loose all metadata like play counts and rating (also if you got info about you songs only in you library file but not inside you actual music files - you loose it too). I have only traditional files, so i don't know what will happen to music what you bought.
You can export you library into XML file what contain all metadata. After that just delete all you music from you library but KEEP FILES! Exit from music and delete files under ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.AMPArtworkAgent/Data After that is good to reboot. Then import previously exported xml file into music.app. It is good to compare you numbers of albums and songs to see if some missing. If so, exit from music, delete folder with library, bring you backup back and make a research what is missing.
With this i bring metadata like play counts and ratings back. Of course all album art got back. The only disadvantage of this method is YOU LOOSE DATE ADDED. Albums still be in a grid like before then you see them as last added, but time will be today. Only way to keep date added is create some script what will take date from xml file, change time on mac, add song then repeat.
It is good to keep you library file even if you got all good.
Hope this help someone. Sorry for bad english.
Before trying anything please MAKE A BACKUP of all you music library to time machine, external drive or at least if you on a APFS volume - a duplicate copy of it.
I found what when i add new songs they get an album art, but my old song don't. If i delete all my music and add it all back i get all covers but loose all metadata like play counts and rating (also if you got info about you songs only in you library file but not inside you actual music files - you loose it too). I have only traditional files, so i don't know what will happen to music what you bought.
You can export you library into XML file what contain all metadata. After that just delete all you music from you library but KEEP FILES! Exit from music and delete files under ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.AMPArtworkAgent/Data After that is good to reboot. Then import previously exported xml file into music.app. It is good to compare you numbers of albums and songs to see if some missing. If so, exit from music, delete folder with library, bring you backup back and make a research what is missing.
With this i bring metadata like play counts and ratings back. Of course all album art got back. The only disadvantage of this method is YOU LOOSE DATE ADDED. Albums still be in a grid like before then you see them as last added, but time will be today. Only way to keep date added is create some script what will take date from xml file, change time on mac, add song then repeat.
It is good to keep you library file even if you got all good.
Hope this help someone. Sorry for bad english.
The best solution I have found to any problems with the Catalina Music app is just to not use it. iTunes 12.9.5 works great on Catalina and solved every problem I ever had with the Music app.
Album artwork on my configuration has been tolerable in Music.app on Catalina for about 1.5 years, but has recently gone belly up in a way I haven't seen before. I'm sharing because it's unlike the myriad of other Music.app artwork issues that I've seen crop up over the years.
My entire library is local (no cloud) and I don't use embedded artwork. I instead allow Music.app to get album artwork from Apple's servers. This is by design because I really only use Music.app as a vehicle to sync music to my iPhone. It's never been perfect—Apple has always had a low hit rate finding the album and pulling the right cover—but it was good enough for my purposes.
But all has fallen apart. Music.app is now displayig artwork from other albums by the same artist in lieu of showing no album artwork at all. Here's a good example for Fleetwood Mac. There is no artwork for "Mirage" or "Tango In The Night" and until recently Music.app just showed the no artwork placeholder image. But Music.app is now showing the artwork for the "Greatest Hits" for all Fleetwood Mac albums that don't in fact any artwork:
![02 macOS.png]( "02 macOS.png")
This issue is a local Music.app display/database issue. It's not because the wrong artwork is being downloaded from Apple's servers. The same albums synced to my iPhone show the correct placeholders:
![01 iOS.jpeg]( "01 iOS.jpeg")
And this issue has carried through to my entire library. I have a ton of "Various Artists" albums. Hundreds of them are now showing the Guardians of the Galaxy (OST) artwork, presumably because that's the first one with artwork that Music.app has latched onto:
![03 macOS.png]( "03 macOS.png")
Again, this doesn't carry over to my iPhone. It's clearly isolated to the Music.app library and how it's linking the artwork stored locally to albums for display purposes. It's maddening that something that has worked for over a decade is now unusable. Aaaargh!
My entire library is local (no cloud) and I don't use embedded artwork. I instead allow Music.app to get album artwork from Apple's servers. This is by design because I really only use Music.app as a vehicle to sync music to my iPhone. It's never been perfect—Apple has always had a low hit rate finding the album and pulling the right cover—but it was good enough for my purposes.
But all has fallen apart. Music.app is now displayig artwork from other albums by the same artist in lieu of showing no album artwork at all. Here's a good example for Fleetwood Mac. There is no artwork for "Mirage" or "Tango In The Night" and until recently Music.app just showed the no artwork placeholder image. But Music.app is now showing the artwork for the "Greatest Hits" for all Fleetwood Mac albums that don't in fact any artwork:
This issue is a local Music.app display/database issue. It's not because the wrong artwork is being downloaded from Apple's servers. The same albums synced to my iPhone show the correct placeholders:
And this issue has carried through to my entire library. I have a ton of "Various Artists" albums. Hundreds of them are now showing the Guardians of the Galaxy (OST) artwork, presumably because that's the first one with artwork that Music.app has latched onto:
Again, this doesn't carry over to my iPhone. It's clearly isolated to the Music.app library and how it's linking the artwork stored locally to albums for display purposes. It's maddening that something that has worked for over a decade is now unusable. Aaaargh!
Hi All
I am an iTunes/Music fan no more. I have used iTunes since it came out (2000 for me) through many versions that seemed indifferent to the treatment of my carefully scanned extended album artwork and album liner notes. Currently I have more than 4000 ALAC albums including the originl cd's. After the last round of iTunes to Music I got the frozen swiping between album artwork items (previously mentioned by TonyG1). I had great support from Apple with various levels of escalation all to no avail. I am now running both Music 1.0.6.10 and Itunes 12.9.5.5. Each library is about 2Tb. I also have a full scanned jpeg library of album artwork by artist/album name/alpha-numeric. When I created the iTunes version I went through and re-attached all of the artwork. Right now when I rip a new cd I rip it in Music, scan and attach the album cover artwork and other artwork (even though I cannot scroll through it. I then do an import from the iTunes menu from the Music Library. This picks up the artwork and allows scrolling of the artwork in iTunes... exhausting! I am seriously looking at Bluesound iVault and Roon. iVault has a 2Tb drive that I would prefer to be 3-4Tb. It also stores as WAV files so my additional album artwork is not stored or displayed with plain Bluesound player. I may have to re-import the cd's into iVault in ordder to get a wav file. This is why I was also looking at Roon to get the additional artist information. I also have a 9.2 AV system and was considering a Dolby Atmos system if enough music comes out to make it worthwhile. With the iVault there are also streaming music options much as I prefer to have the real deal. The other option is to go subscription service to Apple Music but I have a trust issue with Apple. I am not unhappy with the quality of the sound I get using a DragonFly red DAC but still like the redbook cd or HDCD better. I have heard that the Bluesound iVault sounds as good as the DragonFly red but have not actually auditioned this. Roon runs around $100 per year as does other streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal or Apple. Is it time to dump Apple Music/iTunes? How happy are Roon subscribers?
PS I am not a subscriber to Apple Music. Does subscribing to Apple Music create the artwork problems described by Daniel? My current version of music does not display incorrect cover art, it just won't scroll through multiple artwork.
I am an iTunes/Music fan no more. I have used iTunes since it came out (2000 for me) through many versions that seemed indifferent to the treatment of my carefully scanned extended album artwork and album liner notes. Currently I have more than 4000 ALAC albums including the originl cd's. After the last round of iTunes to Music I got the frozen swiping between album artwork items (previously mentioned by TonyG1). I had great support from Apple with various levels of escalation all to no avail. I am now running both Music 1.0.6.10 and Itunes 12.9.5.5. Each library is about 2Tb. I also have a full scanned jpeg library of album artwork by artist/album name/alpha-numeric. When I created the iTunes version I went through and re-attached all of the artwork. Right now when I rip a new cd I rip it in Music, scan and attach the album cover artwork and other artwork (even though I cannot scroll through it. I then do an import from the iTunes menu from the Music Library. This picks up the artwork and allows scrolling of the artwork in iTunes... exhausting! I am seriously looking at Bluesound iVault and Roon. iVault has a 2Tb drive that I would prefer to be 3-4Tb. It also stores as WAV files so my additional album artwork is not stored or displayed with plain Bluesound player. I may have to re-import the cd's into iVault in ordder to get a wav file. This is why I was also looking at Roon to get the additional artist information. I also have a 9.2 AV system and was considering a Dolby Atmos system if enough music comes out to make it worthwhile. With the iVault there are also streaming music options much as I prefer to have the real deal. The other option is to go subscription service to Apple Music but I have a trust issue with Apple. I am not unhappy with the quality of the sound I get using a DragonFly red DAC but still like the redbook cd or HDCD better. I have heard that the Bluesound iVault sounds as good as the DragonFly red but have not actually auditioned this. Roon runs around $100 per year as does other streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal or Apple. Is it time to dump Apple Music/iTunes? How happy are Roon subscribers?
PS I am not a subscriber to Apple Music. Does subscribing to Apple Music create the artwork problems described by Daniel? My current version of music does not display incorrect cover art, it just won't scroll through multiple artwork.
> I had great support from Apple with various levels of escalation all to no avail.
If they did not resolve the problem how great is the support then really? Apple doesn't really care about user experience. Their argument is: buy a new mac and then update to latest macOS. This is neither sustainable nor in the user interest if they own an otherwise perfectly mac, which won't run the latest macOS due to Apple restrictions.
Issues like the cover bug in music on macOS Catalina should indeed be fixed and and update provided to users. But Apple doesn't care, they'd rather sell more devices.
If they did not resolve the problem how great is the support then really? Apple doesn't really care about user experience. Their argument is: buy a new mac and then update to latest macOS. This is neither sustainable nor in the user interest if they own an otherwise perfectly mac, which won't run the latest macOS due to Apple restrictions.
Issues like the cover bug in music on macOS Catalina should indeed be fixed and and update provided to users. But Apple doesn't care, they'd rather sell more devices.
I'm late to this thread but I want to share what I've discovered so far. I have my music on a separately mounted drive. Under Mojave, using Finder, I can see the artwork for every track I examine. When I move the drive to my Monterey machine [12.3], most of the artwork shows up in Finder but some doesn't and I have no idea why. It has nothing to do with the date. I can see art for before and after albums that don't show.
Getting back to the main point of this thread, any artwork I can see in Finder appears in Music. Any that doesn't doesn't. This causes me to believe Music is ok but there is something strange about Monterey.
Getting back to the main point of this thread, any artwork I can see in Finder appears in Music. Any that doesn't doesn't. This causes me to believe Music is ok but there is something strange about Monterey.
I have this problem too. I went through advanced trouble shooting with Apple support and then advanced support without resolving the issue. I used retrospective to install iTunes version 12.9.5 see my post Jan 20 2022Haven'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!
I have this problem too. I went through advanced trouble shooting with Apple support and then advanced support without resolving the issue. I used retrospective to install an earlier iTunes successfully.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!
Could you send me a copy of ReEmbed Artwork v 3.2? Because now it dowload from him website a new version that is incompatible for Catalina. Thanks in advance
Hi txtx, I have had the same problem with the swipe gesture in Music. I often have scanned in the complete cd artwork package and although it exists in Music I cannot swipe between images. I can see 2.5 images including the cover and 1.5 images of "other artwork". I can delete one of the other artwork which will move all of the other artwork over to the left so I know it is there just not accessable. Through a lot of Apple tech support I got no further. Finally I used the retrospective program to install and earlier version 12.9.5.5 of iTunes on an external drive and reloaded all 4000+ albums. I can now pan through my album artwork. Sigh! PS I keep all my scanned artwork jpegs in a separate folder assuming Apple may still screw this up.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!
I just wish Apple would revert back to iTunes type of solution for its music management tool… they can have a streaming component called “music” all they want… but they should revamp and redesign the iTunes we always had… fix the stuff thats broke, etc… let have a tool that incorporates the album art and meta data about the music, etc… and extensive organization options. Make the new iTunes the talk of the industry… something they used to be really good at - producing quality software and hardware.
Come on Apple - Give us back our iTunes!
![84799E31-C3CA-4925-9E2D-8DC88A41A9C6.jpeg]( "84799E31-C3CA-4925-9E2D-8DC88A41A9C6.jpeg")
Is ✅ and
![D45C0CE2-ADF4-4875-9CFD-73AC4EB1C59E.jpeg]( "D45C0CE2-ADF4-4875-9CFD-73AC4EB1C59E.jpeg")
is 🚫
Come on Apple - Give us back our iTunes!
Is ✅ and
is 🚫
Have moved to macOS Monterey on an old mac exposing this problem and Apple ignoring the bug. OpenCore Legacy Patcher has been a joy to usw and Marke it possible to setup Monterey on an old iMac. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/