Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Jonas-S

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 1, 2021
21
12
I'm missing artist photos for all my music in Apple Music, is it possible to do something to trigger it updating them?

I'm fully updated and artist photos load nicely on both my iPhone and iPad.

Artist.png
 

Jonas-S

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 1, 2021
21
12
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"
 

Unsupported

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2020
705
751
a land far, far away...
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.

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.
 

jblucher

macrumors newbie
Nov 25, 2021
28
7
I have the same issue as the OP. I do not have any artist photos in Apple Music on my new MacBook. I have photos in iTunes in Windows and Apple Music on my iPhone. Has anyone figured this out? Is there a setting, a tool, or a do I just wait?
 

jblucher

macrumors newbie
Nov 25, 2021
28
7
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...
 

DinoInSoCal

macrumors newbie
Apr 25, 2024
1
0
San Diego
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 ;)
 

Wild Bill Tucker

macrumors newbie
Jun 25, 2024
1
0
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.
 

mr.mark.s

macrumors newbie
Jul 7, 2024
2
0
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
 
Last edited:

mr.mark.s

macrumors newbie
Jul 7, 2024
2
0
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.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.