iTunes Match - album cover artwork issues on iPhone and second computer

[theSeb]

I am having some odd issues with the album artwork and I am hoping that someone can help, because what I am seeing does not make any logical sense.

My original library lives on a mac mini at home. Everything has been ripped from our own CDs in Apple lossless. Most of it is fairly mainstream stuff ranging from rock to rap to pop (the wife) to blues to jazz to classical. During the ripping all CDs were matched correctly as far as I remember and everything is properly named.

I then used iTunes to get album covers. It got most of the covers, but not all. So I got those covers manually and put them in via iTunes.

All of my albums now have album artwork on the Mac Mini.

The problem is that a large collection in lossless takes up quite a of hard drive space and I normally work away from home at least a couple of days a week. This meant that I could not carry my collection with me on my MBA and I hate using external hard drives for stuff like this on a laptop.

I figured that iTunes Match would be a perfect solution. iTunes Match matched most of my songs and uploaded the others. It works now on my secondary devices in the sense that I am able to play the music on both my iPhone and the MBA, but not all of the album artwork is there and I am particularly OCD about stuff like this.

iPhone

As you can see in the screenshots below, the majority of my album covers are in place, but not all of them. At first I thought that all of the album covers that I had added manually were missing. This is not the case though because I've added the artwork for "The Very Best of Smooth Jazz" manually and it shows up on the iPhone.

There is also no sense from a "mainstream music" point of view - I don't expect many people to know bands like Sponge, Our Lady Peace and Silverchair, yet those have artwork on the iPhone, yet Green Day, Pink and Smashing Pumpkins don't? Why do I have artwork for disc one of Death Row Greatest Hits, but not for disc 2?

MBA

The problem here is somewhat different. Basically all of my music shows up and is available to listen/download, but only about 20 of the hundred odd albums have album artwork.

Any ideas?

 

[Wordslinger29]

First off, I like your taste in music. It pretty much mirrors my own. Lot's of '90s rock and hip hop with jazz and mainstream music thrown in. I also have Sponge and Silverchair.

As far as your question goes, I don't have the problem as widespread as you, but some of my albums do have this issue. For example, Amy Winehouse "Back to Black" has the artwork in iTunes and has been matched, yet the artwork is missing on my iPhone.

I also have an issue with some of the albums not showing up on my iPhone when I search by artist, yet they are there if I search by album. In iTunes all the albums are where they should be when I sort by artist.

I think these are just bugs with both iTunes Match and iOS 5. I basically consider anyone using iTunes Match right now a beta tester anyway. Hopefully Apple will sort out the bugs sooner rather than later. I used to be anal with the album artwork, but now as long as I can listen to the song I'm good. I figure, my first iPod was black and white, so I can manage.

 

[theSeb]

First off, I like your taste in music. It pretty much mirrors my own. Lot's of '90s rock and hip hop with jazz and mainstream music thrown in. I also have Sponge and Silverchair.

Thanks. I am pretty much stuck with what I've grown up with in the 90s.

As far as your question goes, I don't have the problem as widespread as you, but some of my albums do have this issue. For example, Amy Winehouse "Back to Black" has the artwork in iTunes and has been matched, yet the artwork is missing on my iPhone.

I also have an issue with some of the albums not showing up on my iPhone when I search by artist, yet they are there if I search by album. In iTunes all the albums are where they should be when I sort by artist.

I think these are just bugs with both iTunes Match and iOS 5. I basically consider anyone using iTunes Match right now a beta tester anyway. Hopefully Apple will sort out the bugs sooner rather than later. I used to be anal with the album artwork, but now as long as I can listen to the song I'm good. I figure, my first iPod was black and white, so I can manage.

Quite odd, but I feel better knowing that I am not the only one having these issues or made some ID10T user error.

 

[jonnyb]

I managed to get all my artwork showing up in the list view by deleting tracks and re-uploading them. But now I have a different problem - when I play a track in that album, I get the album art on the play screen but only for the first and last track - everything in-between is missing It's driving me nuts!

 

[Wordslinger29]

For whatever reason, almost all of the album artwork disappeared on my iPhone. Only three albums out of hundreds have the artwork.

 

[Benbikeman]

I had loads of album art missing on both iPhone and iPad when I first switched on Match, but it's gradually appeared over time. I have no idea what triggers it (not playing it, that much I do know), but it does seem to get there in the end.

 

[liquidsuns]

Yeah I'm having a terrible time with album art on my iPhone and iPad. It's kind of a drag cause I like album art and it makes me not really want to use iTunes match, to be honest.

 

[CubusX]

Not the only ones

I am having the same issues as well...

Are you experiencing the "ghost tracks"? Download an album and listen to it, then delete it from the iPhone. Plug the iPhone into the computer, when it is registered go to devices on the left hand side and click on the music folder (under your iPhone). The tracks are greyed out.

 

[g4hlf]

theseb,

You described my problem perfectly thanks I could have written that myself

I guess we are still awaiting a fix for this? Driving me mad it was as your rightly say some art I added is on the iPhone and some is not, same with the "matched" iTunes artwork.

Regards,

Paul

I am having some odd issues with the album artwork and I am hoping that someone can help, because what I am seeing does not make any logical sense.

My original library lives on a mac mini at home. Everything has been ripped from our own CDs in Apple lossless. Most of it is fairly mainstream stuff ranging from rock to rap to pop (the wife) to blues to jazz to classical. During the ripping all CDs were matched correctly as far as I remember and everything is properly named.

I then used iTunes to get album covers. It got most of the covers, but not all. So I got those covers manually and put them in via iTunes.

All of my albums now have album artwork on the Mac Mini.

The problem is that a large collection in lossless takes up quite a of hard drive space and I normally work away from home at least a couple of days a week. This meant that I could not carry my collection with me on my MBA and I hate using external hard drives for stuff like this on a laptop.

I figured that iTunes Match would be a perfect solution. iTunes Match matched most of my songs and uploaded the others. It works now on my secondary devices in the sense that I am able to play the music on both my iPhone and the MBA, but not all of the album artwork is there and I am particularly OCD about stuff like this.

iPhone

As you can see in the screenshots below, the majority of my album covers are in place, but not all of them. At first I thought that all of the album covers that I had added manually were missing. This is not the case though because I've added the artwork for "The Very Best of Smooth Jazz" manually and it shows up on the iPhone.

There is also no sense from a "mainstream music" point of view - I don't expect many people to know bands like Sponge, Our Lady Peace and Silverchair, yet those have artwork on the iPhone, yet Green Day, Pink and Smashing Pumpkins don't? Why do I have artwork for disc one of Death Row Greatest Hits, but not for disc 2?

MBA

The problem here is somewhat different. Basically all of my music shows up and is available to listen/download, but only about 20 of the hundred odd albums have album artwork.

Any ideas?

 

[austy]

Notice the split albums too

I see you are also getting the issue were albums are being split up, this is driving me crazy! On iTunes they are fine but on my iPhone certain albums appear twice some with a selection of songs in each. I have checked the settings in iTunes and all the info is correct for the album.

 

[jpswansea]

I am having some odd issues with the album artwork and I am hoping that someone can help, because what I am seeing does not make any logical sense.

My original library lives on a mac mini at home. Everything has been ripped from our own CDs in Apple lossless. Most of it is fairly mainstream stuff ranging from rock to rap to pop (the wife) to blues to jazz to classical. During the ripping all CDs were matched correctly as far as I remember and everything is properly named.

I then used iTunes to get album covers. It got most of the covers, but not all. So I got those covers manually and put them in via iTunes.

All of my albums now have album artwork on the Mac Mini.

The problem is that a large collection in lossless takes up quite a of hard drive space and I normally work away from home at least a couple of days a week. This meant that I could not carry my collection with me on my MBA and I hate using external hard drives for stuff like this on a laptop.

I figured that iTunes Match would be a perfect solution. iTunes Match matched most of my songs and uploaded the others. It works now on my secondary devices in the sense that I am able to play the music on both my iPhone and the MBA, but not all of the album artwork is there and I am particularly OCD about stuff like this.

iPhone

As you can see in the screenshots below, the majority of my album covers are in place, but not all of them. At first I thought that all of the album covers that I had added manually were missing. This is not the case though because I've added the artwork for "The Very Best of Smooth Jazz" manually and it shows up on the iPhone.

There is also no sense from a "mainstream music" point of view - I don't expect many people to know bands like Sponge, Our Lady Peace and Silverchair, yet those have artwork on the iPhone, yet Green Day, Pink and Smashing Pumpkins don't? Why do I have artwork for disc one of Death Row Greatest Hits, but not for disc 2?

MBA

The problem here is somewhat different. Basically all of my music shows up and is available to listen/download, but only about 20 of the hundred odd albums have album artwork.

Any ideas?

Same here, having missing artwork on iPhone 4S and iPad2. This has been from upload tracks or tracks downloaded from an alternative source such as Amazon. And like someone mentioned on another post, a split album compounds the issue. Hopefully this will be solved in the next update.

 

[28Gauge]

I have also had the missing artwork issue as well. I have also had a few songs disappear altogether as well as one song being a completely different mix. I'm not too happy with iTunes match.

 

[michael31986]

if you have the physical files on your computer they still have the album art right. its just when you play them through icloud on wifi on celluar data right?

 

[Mhay23513]

How i fixed my album art problem

TRY THIS all i did was select a song thats in the music app that didn't have any artwork, then play it, then click next till i played like a second from all the songs on that album, turn the iPhone sideways till it goes in album view wait for the art to appear and boom it worked.

might want to do it on wifi tho those pics will soak up some bandwidth

----------

for some reason you have to play the stubborn songs first then it will pull the artwork

 

[theSeb]

I have given up on iTunes Match. Nice idea, but unfortunately not fully implemented, in my opinion. I now simply tell iTunes to convert my Apple Lossless files into 256 AAC during syncing.

 

[johnc22]

I signed up for Match yesterday as I have almost 600 albums/8000 songs. I always find that whatever I want is not on my iPhone/iPad since I can't sync it all, all the time and Match seemed like a good solution. $25/year works out to pennies over $2/month which I think is reasonable . . . if it worked.

It seems all of the albums and tracks are available but artwork is only about 90% (not bad, but what about that 10%?) I painstakingly added artwork to iTunes for all the oddball, out of print CD's that I have and so in iTunes everything except perhaps 1 album has artwork. I've found countless people claiming to have solved this, but I don't believe it as I think it's an inherent bug on the server side (unless they've found a way to trick the service itself).

I have albums where certain tracks the artwork shows up fine and other tracks, no artwork. I really hope Apple fixes this. It's a great service but having all the artwork would really make me love it.