No Album Artwork in Catalina Album/Playlist View - But it's in There

[Nacho98]

Just got a new 16" MBP.

Old 15" MBP has been updated to Catalina and the Music app is working fine. All album art is in there and perfect.

Copied over the library and all the associated files in my users folder from my old computer to my new one.

Songs are all in there, they play fine, but NO album art is displayed when viewing albums or playlists. Nor do you see any artist thumbnails when you select artists either.

However, clicking Get Info on anything and everything shows that the artwork is indeed in there, as it should be - it just doesn't show in thumbnail view of albums/playlists.

Because of this, I am hesitant to hit Get Artwork or anything - my artwork has been curated for 15 years from multiple sources, and I just went through cleaning it up and making sure it was perfect on the old computer a week ago after updating to Catalina in anticipation of a smooth transition.

Also, it does NOT say it's loading Artwork or doing anything of the sort...it's just...not there in thumbnails and doesn't seem to be attempting to find it. Have opened and closed multiple times and deleted/recopied the library over from the old machine to no avail. This literally should be exactly the same as my old computer, so not sure why it's missing on one computer and not the other.

Thoughts?

 

[Nacho98]

I've only found one single workaround and it's a non-starter.

If I manually delete the artwork, and click Get Artwork, it will finally get it - sometimes, when it should be all the time.

I did maybe 25 albums as a test and it failed to get 20-25% of them, and these were for songs and albums purchased on iTunes so there should be NO reason for the artwork not to be found. And if Apple can't find its own artwork, I'm sure as hell not digging for it and adding it manually when I've been making a conscious effort to repurchase from iTunes old songs that weren't originally purchased there just so I could have the Apple artwork to avoid exactly this kind of problem.

If it could find them all, I'd suck it up and waste 12-24 hours redoing it, but since it can't, I'm not doing that. And I shouldn't have to.

I feel like this missing artwork is something as simple as a mispointed file directory, but again this library mirrors another MBP running Catalina that has zero problems at all.

I am so ****ing tired of fighting Apple on artwork, been a constant fight for over ten years and I have a perfect library on the old machine.

I am at my wit's end on this, and it's preventing me from finalizing setup on my new computer, which is stressing me out.

 

[Nacho98]

I'm actually thinking of returning the computer over this which is a shame considering I won the Apple quality control lottery with this machine and it has no cosmetic issues, nice screen, etc. Never thought there'd be a day where software caused a return, but I can't sit around for X months hanging on to my old machine watching the resale drop while waiting to see if Apple fixes it.

Both computers are running Music 1.0.1.37. One works, one doesn't. They both point to the same library, FFS.

If I can't figure out the software by the end of the weekend, I can't enjoy the computer, and I can't justify the $3,000 cost.

 

[Krafty]

I'm having this issue on 10.14.6: if the artwork isnt already there I cant add it, even dragging in artwork will just cause it to remain blank, and searching always brings up "no album artwork found."

 

[Nacho98]

I may have found a solution, finally. If I click Get Info and go to the artwork tab, I can then drag it to the desktop, delete it from the Artwork tab, and drag it back in from the desktop, then it works. I can also close and reopen Music and it's still there. For the ones that seem to have disappeared completely, I can drag it out of the old computer and move it over to the desktop of the new computer, and drag it in just the same.

The good thing is it still then points to the correct, new Music library as it should. Not pointing to any old iTunes library, which to me seems like a band-aid.

Unfortunately for 793 albums this is going to suck BIGTIME, and I've deleted/added my music folders so many times that I no longer feel my new 16" has a clean install, so I'm starting over right now doing another clean install :/

I will absolutely do the Music FIRST and make damn sure it's fixed before I set anything else up...going to be a long weekend of the old lady being mad at me.

 

[Nacho98]

Fixed it. 100% of album art is in there and holding, and it's pointing to the Music library and not an old iTunes library. Devices syncing perfectly too. Made damn sure to back the whole perfect library up as soon as I was done.