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Missing Artist pictures in Apple Music
- Thread starter Jonas-S
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I've also noticed that where Music does show artist photos they are not related to the album artwork.
Weird! 🤔
I think that is perfectly normal. As I understand it, it only shows the album cover if the artist or company behind the artist has not added an "artist image"
The artists and record companies that offer their music can add Artist pictures. If they do not, then the artist image becomes just an image of a cover from that artist.
I mean they use this app: https://apps.apple.com/uk/app/apple-music-for-artists/id1366467972?l=en
I mean they use this app: https://apps.apple.com/uk/app/apple-music-for-artists/id1366467972?l=en
But isn't that exactly what is not happening? The artist images are mostly generic in my Music library even though the albums have their correct cover images.
I just got off a chat with Apple Support and after trying a couple things (logging in and out of my account, clicking "Get Album Artwork") to no avail, the chat abruptly ended (technical difficulties). I know this isn't a critical issue, but things like this drive me crazy. Can others on 12.0.1 confirm that they are seeing Artist photos in their library? If it is a widespread issue, I'll wait it out...
Yes, this issue continues. My experience with Apple support was they advised me the thumbnail images can only be updated by the artist or the publishing company on behave of the artist. Regardless of that this is an Apple platform integration referential data integrity issue. One may notice that the thumbnails for the artist are grayed out circles on the MacBook but, exist on the sync iPhone app. The images exist Apple just can't seem to get everything to work as designed. One would think Apple could allocate a small part of the $2.65 trillion to fix annoying bugs 
I have the same problem: can see a small proportion of Artist images on the Music app.
I suspect it may be that I don't subscribe to Apple Music.
I still buy mp3's, sometimes from Apple (mostly not), and use the Music app as a music library manager/player.
In the Music app, there are Artist images for the albums I purchased from Apple. (except one. Huh?).
On the iPhone, however, there are Artist images for roughly half of my collection. (another Huh?)
For album art, though, it's another story. Most of the time, the Music app is able to find the album cover; and when it doesn't, I can easily add it myself. But for Artists . . . I still haven't figured out a way to add them manually.
I suspect it may be that I don't subscribe to Apple Music.
I still buy mp3's, sometimes from Apple (mostly not), and use the Music app as a music library manager/player.
In the Music app, there are Artist images for the albums I purchased from Apple. (except one. Huh?).
On the iPhone, however, there are Artist images for roughly half of my collection. (another Huh?)
For album art, though, it's another story. Most of the time, the Music app is able to find the album cover; and when it doesn't, I can easily add it myself. But for Artists . . . I still haven't figured out a way to add them manually.
This has been an ongoing issue for years. Apple Music shows the following for me...
iPhone (about 90% of the artists have the artist photo instead of the grey microphone)
2020 Imac (about 60% of the artists have the artist photo instead of the grey microphone)
2023 Mac Studio (about 03% of the artists have the artist photo instead of the grey microphone)
I rebuilt my Music Library by hand this weekend because I had to manually migrate my data to a new internal drive that was much smaller. (Migration Assistant just grabs your entire computer and moves it to the new one) I used this opportunity to also clean up my Music Library as I was having many issues with old songs/albums ripped from CDs on my phone. They would sometimes display incorrect artwork, not play, or show duplicates in an album. All super annoying! My new library is pristine and working perfectly on my new Mac Studio — all except the Artist Images. I plan to transfer it to my phone shortly but was hoping to get that resolved before doing so. I may just do it since Apple has ignored the issue for soooo long.
I have spoken to apple support at least 1 or 2 times a year for the past 4 or 5 years. They NEVER do anything about it! I know I have not been alone on this issue. It is sad that it has been neglected for so long but... Today I escalated the issue with Apple support. They asked me to give them a screen recording and send some com files along with my description of the issue... They said they will send it all to their engineering team and let me know next wed 7/10/2024. We will see what happens! Fingers crossed but trying to remain skeptical. LOL
I can also tell you it is true that it is up to the artist themselves or their record company to provide an image in the first place. I saw there is now an artist page devoted to them through apple allowing them to do it. https://artists.apple.com/support/1114-add-your-artist-image That said, we are at their mercy so if they don't make an image available we will be stuck with the gray mic for those artists.
The solution would be so easy... Just add another button below the "Get Album Art" option that says "Get Artist Image".
Please apple fix this so insane, perfectionists like myself and some of you can finally enjoy our music in mental peace! LOL
iPhone (about 90% of the artists have the artist photo instead of the grey microphone)
2020 Imac (about 60% of the artists have the artist photo instead of the grey microphone)
2023 Mac Studio (about 03% of the artists have the artist photo instead of the grey microphone)
I rebuilt my Music Library by hand this weekend because I had to manually migrate my data to a new internal drive that was much smaller. (Migration Assistant just grabs your entire computer and moves it to the new one) I used this opportunity to also clean up my Music Library as I was having many issues with old songs/albums ripped from CDs on my phone. They would sometimes display incorrect artwork, not play, or show duplicates in an album. All super annoying! My new library is pristine and working perfectly on my new Mac Studio — all except the Artist Images. I plan to transfer it to my phone shortly but was hoping to get that resolved before doing so. I may just do it since Apple has ignored the issue for soooo long.
I have spoken to apple support at least 1 or 2 times a year for the past 4 or 5 years. They NEVER do anything about it! I know I have not been alone on this issue. It is sad that it has been neglected for so long but... Today I escalated the issue with Apple support. They asked me to give them a screen recording and send some com files along with my description of the issue... They said they will send it all to their engineering team and let me know next wed 7/10/2024. We will see what happens! Fingers crossed but trying to remain skeptical. LOL
I can also tell you it is true that it is up to the artist themselves or their record company to provide an image in the first place. I saw there is now an artist page devoted to them through apple allowing them to do it. https://artists.apple.com/support/1114-add-your-artist-image That said, we are at their mercy so if they don't make an image available we will be stuck with the gray mic for those artists.
The solution would be so easy... Just add another button below the "Get Album Art" option that says "Get Artist Image".
Please apple fix this so insane, perfectionists like myself and some of you can finally enjoy our music in mental peace! LOL
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I FINALLY found a way to force the Artist Images to update on the desktop version of Apple Music. It was sooo simple. I can't believe no one (including myself) tried this! So you open the desktop Music App and go to "Settings" from the "Music" Menu next to the "Apple" menu in the top left corner of your screen. Then within Settings go to "Advanced" and put a checkmark in the box for "Automatically update artwork for imported songs". This brought in at least half of them so that was better than nothing.
Hello, thank you for post this solution but one question about this… with this option checked, is any of your existing album artwork changed or respects album artwork and adds only artist artwork? I only want to set artist artwork, not to changed my existing album artworks. Thank you in advance.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Unless something has changed, this option will wreak havoc on custom album art users may have assigned to their music collection. In other words, it won't leave the art already assigned but attempt to replace it with whatever is in the iTunes library for some song or album. Sometimes this is good as one ends up with a better quality album cover. But often it can be towards disaster by replacing what the user has chosen and sometimes just deleting covers apparently NOT in the iTunes Store at all.
I did this one time and regretted it for a long time thereafter... as I had to basically go back through the whole library and put images back in place and/or switch images back to original covers vs. sometimes updated covers substituted by this process.
Proceed with caution if anyone tries this method. It may mostly solve the problem identified by the thread while creating a whole other problem.
Thank you for your response, I will give it unchecked, I don’t want to change my covers… Thanks again!!