Where did my album covers go?

an anticipated outcome of installing osx15 on my machine was damage to my music library. sure enough, mission accomplished:

  • about 10% of my albums no longer have cover art. the art was there in osx14. where did it go?

  • apparently the library->get album artwork menu item is a mere placebo; it does nothing. so now i have to hunt down over 200 albums and their artwork.
    going to need a scanner …

  • the infamous automagically rate my albums bug struck immediately after installation and doug’s album rating reset script has yet to be ported to the music app. that bug has existed now for almost 10 years. why hasn’t it been fixed?

  • the shuffle/random icon gives no indication of its state. is it on or off? same for the repeat icon. no hover indicator, either.

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I observed the exact same thing when I migrated from my Mojave 2013 MBP to my new Catalina 2020 MBP. I’d be grateful for any tips how to fix this (apart from ditching macOS Vista Catalina).

Though my MacBook Pro is a senior citizen just like me and has lost the ability to update years ago, I found its Music memory can get wonky. Clearing out the cache in the Album Artwork folder should help. Empty the cache, and then empty the trash. Turn off your Mac for a few minutes and restart it. It should help.

I’d definitely take Marilyn’s advice here and give that a go. But no need for a scanner… I’d hit up Amazon and take from there or use https://musicbrainz.org

musicbrainz is a great resource. thanks for the reference.
another good one is https://rateyourmusic.com/ although it’s a bit trickier to extract images from (hint: click the history link beside “upload image”).
but what a p.i.t.a! finding, downloading, and selecting each missing image takes several minutes. and worse, i’ve got a few obscure items that even amazon doesn’t know.

 engineering is getting a lump of coal for xmas this year …

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Another reason I’m holding off on moving to Catalina!

Have you looked at Douglas Adam’s great AppleScript collection? Maybe something would save you a bit of time
https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=mxfindalbumartwork

that’s another great resource: doug’s scripts are the best.
bonus: i wasn’t paying attention. he has updated album rating reset for catalina. time for another download and paypal donation.

My first step in finding cover art is a plain old internet search using artist + album title, then selecting “images.” 90% of the time, this allows selection from a variety of cover art images of varying sizes/resolution, as well as cover art variants.

Amazon can be a good resource as noted earlier but my go-to place (especially for older or more obscure albums) is the discogs site. Some images may not be very good but sometimes are better than nothing.

Deleting cache didn’t change anything. Albums that had lost their art remain without it. :frowning:

Scripts or manual download are fine if results are then actually preserved. Do we have any evidence that’s the case? Or will all this manual restoring be lost a few days/weeks down the road when iTunes loses its mind again? Any ideas?

can’t vouchsafe for the scripts, but in theory if you manually add an image to an album, the image bits get added into each song file and thus when the apple twonks break itunes/music player it doesn’t break your collection.

problem with that theory is whilst trolling through my albums and hunting missing cover art, i’ve found a number where i’d already downloaded or scanned an image file. so why was it missing? perhaps i’d downloaded or scanned the cover before ripping completed and itunes had beaten me to adding the art?

another problem with that theory is there have been a number of times where an album had artwork on my computer but when the phone tried playing it, there was no artwork.

so who knows?

unfortunately itunes successfully killed off all competing music players on osx, plus apple never let anyone have a go on the phone. a fine example of a broken monopoly, albeit one the government will never investigate.

The most reliable method I’ve found for finding album artwork is simply typing the artist name, separated by a comma, then the album title, into a Google search field. I used to go everywhere and anywhere but this method has come out on top - and by far. It has been a rare occurrence that it doesn’t present something I can use.

After waiting several MONTHS for the smoke to clear from the initial release of Catalina, I finally took the plunge. I drowned. :scream:

I have been a Mac user since System 6.0.3 (late 1889). My first iPod was the infamous 3rd generation with the four, individual buttons under the (tiny, monochrome) display. Actually, it was a GREAT machine and tougher than nails. Working half the time outdoors in all weather and autonomously, I used the living daylights out of it EVERY day. I finally replaced it because it wouldn’t die and I wanted something newer.

My music library, “peanuts” to some, I’m sure, had more than 19k songs. I had spent easily several hundred hours curating the collection including album artwork appropriate to the original album from which the song came as well as a star rating for each.

My “house of cards” finally collapsed and, for the first time since OS X was released, I did a CLEAN install of the entire system. All my ratings disappeared. Fortunately, beyond that <koff, hack, ahem> “minor” issue, things have been going well. Now - several months later - I am back to ALMOST normal with the exception of laboriously re-rating every song. Also, and this is a REALLY bothersome bug, I must re-authorize my system in order to confidently sync my devices which include an iPad and iPhone, both of which locally host EVERY song. This was a “last resort” effort to squash the bug. I persists. If I do NOT do this, there is a good chance that all the content will be removed because [this device is not authorized to play this content]. ARGH!!

I still love and prefer Apple but this has been, BY FAR, the worst upgrade for macOS EVER and, quite frankly, the upgrade to iOS 13 wasn’t much better. If anyone can point me to a fix THAT WORKS for having to re-authorize my computer issue, I will be eternally grateful. Thanks for letting me “vent”. I’m sticking with it would sure be nice to have at least SOME belief that Apple is listening. So far, I don’t believe it. :cry:

One option to consider is either Jaikoz or one of the developer’s other taggers. I have used Jaikoz for years and have been very happy with it. Support has always been excellent. It also offers a free trial.

There are security changes with Catalina so if you decide to check out one of the taggers read this Apple’s Notarization

another interesting resource. thanks gordon!

While I am not using Catalina I have tried to keep as informed as possible regarding Jaikoz and Catalina illustrates another challenge but offers a workaround.

Second Discogs. I have found some very obscure LP covers there, obverse and reverse.

I dumped itunes for Swinsian, which is a better program and inexpensive. Swinsian even played mp3s that were in the trash and detected and changed albums covers that were in the trash. It’s a smarter program and I feel my data is safer than it would be with an Apple program.

Even though I’m still using High Sierra, I need to check Swinsian out. I’m also in possession of a decent-sized library and have concerns about changes that might break iTunes. I couldn’t recover all of the song ratings manually.

This is all very worrying. I am in the process of housing my iTunes library on a network disc. I just installed MacOS Server on my old Sierra Mac Mini as a first attempt but haven’t come around to transferring my iTunes library.
My MBP and iMac run Catalina. The MBP came preinstalled. I held back on Catalina for the iMac until two weeks ago. I never had any problems under Mojave. Now my iMac freezes at least twice a week mostly when using Photoshop and Teams.
I do have some concerns about letting my Catalina machines access my iTunes media.

I don’t have confidence in anything after Sierra, and I’m not very confident about Sierra.