Inconsistent album artwork display in iTunes on Windows

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Level 1

5 points

Inconsistent album artwork display in iTunes on Windows

The two images I attached here show the problem, but to spell it out: the album artwork is there when I go to Album Info as you can see in the first image, but it doesn't consistently appear in the list view or whatever it's called... I can run iTunes and see an album cover in the list, then close iTunes, and it may or may not appear the next time I run iTunes. I only have about 120 albums in the library, and all of them have album artwork attached, but it's absolutely random which choose to display their artwork and which don't every time I run iTunes.

I share the same iTunes Library between two Windows machines (one being a media player, where the Library loads locally, and one a workstation where I have a mapped drive pointing to the shared drive on the media player machine where the .itl library file and all the .mp3s are stored. The same thing happens on both.. and even THAT's inconsistent! I can run iTunes on the workstation and on the media player, and if I remote desktop to from the former to the latter, the same album will display artwork on one but not the other, some albums will not display artwork at all, while others will display it on both machines. If I exit iTunes on both machines then run it again, I get the same, but with different albums; repeat, and it's a mixture of the first two runs.

This has been plaguing me for years, and even had me doubting my own sanity.. "maybe I just didn't add the artwork, so let me add it.. umm.. add what, it's THERE already!!" How can this be??

Please don't bother with hedgedoctor solutions like "restart iTunes", "delete and add the album again" or any of that. If this is simply broken and can't be fixed, just tell me so I can move on from iTunes.

Thanks.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Windows

Posted on Dec 30, 2024 3:23 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

275,754 points

Dec 31, 2024 5:55 AM in response to danytancou

It isn't exactly clear if you have multiple libraries using a common media folder, or the same library accessed locally and remotely, but I'll assume there is more than one.

You can try holding down ctrl+shift as you launch each library. This opens the library in iTunes' safe mode and may perform some internal consistency checking that might help.

You can try deleting the Album Artwork folder inside the iTunes folder where your library lives. This will force iTunes to recreate this cache on the next launch. Once this has repopulated it may work more consistently.

Or you could try reembedding all artwork in the library in the hopes that doing so sorts out the cache too. I have two scripts that can help with embedding artwork; CreateFolderArt and EmbedFolderArt. The scripts have slightly different functions:

CreateFolderArt ensures that every album folder ends up with a Folder.jpg image which is the art that iTunes already knows about. Side effects are that if artwork has been updated in iTunes the folder art should be updated also, and if any track from the album doesn't have embedded artwork it gets embedded.

EmbedFolderArt was actually written for someone who already had various artwork images stored in the album folders and wanted them added to their tracks, but not if iTunes had already downloaded a better quality image. It creates new files of any store art with the name iTunesArt.jpg, then embeds the largest image by area in the album's folder, based on the premise that this is likely to be the best image.

In either case you could search and destroy the images in the folders after they are embedded if you don't want them.

tt2

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Answer 2

danytancou Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 1, 2025 2:53 PM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:

Try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows - Apple Community.

tt2

Thanks, but this does not apply.

First, I only have admin accounts on all my computers (why would I have anything else on my property); I never create any other accounts; I do not use Microsoft accounts to sign in; thus, I have full permission for every file on every computer.

Second, your other post starts with "If you are unable to edit tag information in iTunes".. this is not the case. I can add, edit and remove any info I want to and from every album/song, whether I use iTunes, Mp3tag or TagScanner. (When I use Mp3tag and TagScanner to do this and then I drag the files I just tagged added album artwork to, over to iTunes, the artwork always appears... after I close and then re-open iTunes, the random behaviour I decsribed in my first message starts.)

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Answer 3

danytancou Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 3, 2025 12:28 PM in response to turingtest2

You mentioned "Try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows - Apple Community" before and it does not apply to me, as I wrote above. Plus, I am done with iTunes.

Btw, clearing the cache didn't work anymore. Albums display covers on one machine and not the other, even though I'm loading the same library on both machines (from a mapped network drive on the second machine). Exiting iTunes on either or both machines, waiting a bit and then running again will cause some of the same but also different covers to be displayed or not displayed between the two machines.

I loaded all the albums I have in iTunes into Mp3tag, and the covers appear there for every single song, so they are all embedded into the MP3 files' Tags. How can this NOT be an iTunes problem through and trough??

Anyway, I am done with iTunes as I said. What a waste of my life.

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Answer 4

danytancou Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 31, 2024 12:19 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for the reply.

I wrote I share the same iTunes Library between two Windows machines, so it's the same library.

Killing the Cache folder did nothing, just the same random behaviour repeats, exactly as described.

How do I re-embed something that's already there? Are you saying I have to go to every album's Album Info > Artwork tab, remove it, and then add it again? If that's what's required, I would rather move on from iTunes, tbh.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

275,754 points

Dec 31, 2024 1:01 PM in response to danytancou

The blue underscored text sections in my post are links to tools that will automatically reapply every artwork image, which as a side effect should also completely update/populate the Album Artwork cache. I'm not proposing you do it manually.

tt2

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Answer 6

turingtest2

Level 10

275,754 points

Jan 1, 2025 11:26 AM in response to cfogarty1964

From the scripts page:

The general method of use is to download a script (double-click or right-click and use Download or Save link as...) to a folder of your choice, e.g. your Desktop, Downloads folder or create a folder at ...\iTunes\Scripts. Select a playlist or highlight some tracks in iTunes and then double-click on the script to execute it. If no specific tracks are selected the script will try to work with all tracks in the current playlist or sometimes the entire library. Some scripts offer a choice of track by track confirmation of changes or fully automatic processing of the selection.

tt2

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Answer 7

danytancou Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 1, 2025 2:43 PM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:

The blue underscored text sections in my post are links to tools that will automatically reapply every artwork image, which as a side effect should also completely update/populate the Album Artwork cache. I'm not proposing you do it manually.

tt2

Thanks. However, and this has nothing to do with you, running some script I download without fully understanding what it does is not something I will do. I'll get a friend who knows about these things to look at it and if he says it's OK, I'll try your scripts, but this will take some time.

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Answer 8

danytancou Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 1, 2025 3:24 PM in response to danytancou

After playing around a bit more, it looks like killing the Cache folder before running iTunes gets most (but certainly not all) albums to display the cover image... I did this manually about 20 times today, and only about 15% of my albums didn't display artwork -- but, of course, randomly different ones every time, and with the same exact same inconsistent behaviour between the two machines. This is way more than I ever saw in the last few years, when that percentage was always above 50% (and sometimes well above that), so this is probably the best I am going to get here.

The logical solution, therefore, is to make the iTunes shortcut on my desktop kill the Cache directory (by doing rmdir <path_to_Cache_directory> every time it's double clicked) and only once that's done actually run iTunes. Any thoughts on this?

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Answer 9

turingtest2

Level 10

275,754 points

Jan 1, 2025 4:52 PM in response to danytancou

iTunes uses the cache. Killing the cache once clears out potential legacy issues with it. You shouldn't need to do it repeatedly. The error you got earlier may indicate some form of permissions issue within the iTunes folders. Fixing that may help the cache populate properly. Scrolling through the albums in Album view should force iTunes to display every artwork image, rebuilding the cache. Do you have any third party anti-virus software? If so exclude the iTunes folder in case it is somehow blocking the creation of the .itc2 files used in the cache.

tt2

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Answer 10

danytancou Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 2, 2025 10:05 AM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:

iTunes uses the cache. Killing the cache once clears out potential legacy issues with it. You shouldn't need to do it repeatedly. The error you got earlier may indicate some form of permissions issue within the iTunes folders. Fixing that may help the cache populate properly. Scrolling through the albums in Album view should force iTunes to display every artwork image, rebuilding the cache. Do you have any third party anti-virus software? If so exclude the iTunes folder in case it is somehow blocking the creation of the .itc2 files used in the cache.

tt2

Thanks for continuing to try to help turingtest! I really appreciate it.

There are definitely no permission issues in the iTunes folders. (I double checked that my admin account, the only account I ever used on these machines, has full control over the main folders and everything "under" them.)

No, I do not use any anti-virus software.

I manually cleared the cache a few more times (didn't count how many times, but several) and eventually and for the first time EVER, I finally got all my albums to display their cover!! I am THRILLED!! I closed and ran iTunes multiple more times on both machines and the covers are still there, so let's see how long this lasts. Even if it happens again though, maybe a single cache clearing will do the trick. If not, I'll just get my friend to make me the script to clear cache before iTunes runs.

... I know you said that iTunes uses the cache, but in my case it's clearly using it to my detriment. I honestly do not care if iTunes needs to rebuild its cache every time it runs. I tend not to ever exit iTunes and I rarely ever reboot the system, so once it runs and shows all the covers, it should continue to do so at least until the next reboot.

Thank you again!

Dany

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Answer 11

danytancou Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 3, 2025 10:17 AM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:

Does the System account also have full permissions?

tt2

Yes, the System account on both machines has Full Control over the entire Music folder on the machine where the library lives, and over its subfolders and its files.

To my great disappointment, my joy from yesterday was short-lived. I just ran iTunes again after rebooting the machine with the files and I'm back to square one. Moreover, for some albums which do display the cover, iTunes has decided to replace them with its own covers, some of which are now incorrect! I know this because I have the CDs that I ripped and whose covers I personally scanned (using a flatbed scanner) and added to iTunes, and they are not the same.

This is is beyond ridiculous and I am no longer willing to put up with it, so I'm going to switch to something else. Roon comes to mind, but given what I've paid in my life for music (I literally purchased every single song I ever listened to, except when listening to the radio) I feel that my music organizer should be free. Thus, I'm hoping that one of these will come through for me.

Until I settle on the alternative though, I'm going to manually delete the cache folder every time before I run iTunes. It is pretty clear that there's no other way to make this work.

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