Music : Album Artwork image files get incorporated into mp3, and deleted.

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Music : Album Artwork image files get incorporated into mp3, and deleted.

Like many, I spent many hours sanitising my album artwork, painstakingly downloading image files (mostly jpg) and associating them with albums, singles and folders in the Music app, and feeling pretty pleased with my accomplishment.

Then I recently had a blooper which required resyncing my entire music library onto my iPhone. On inspection I discovered many album artwork gaps in my library, which I am unable to fix because Music appears to have incorporated the jpgs I downloaded into their associated mp3 files, and then deleted the original image file. This seems to be the case for better known tracks and albums. In many cases (typically the better known tracks and albums) the image displays from the mp3 file, and for less well-known tracks, my uploaded image file is still there. However, where I have used an image file for album artwork, and it has been 'merged' I have nothing to select to fix my listings. Has anyone else seen this ? Is there a solution ?

Posted on Dec 10, 2025 7:34 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 10, 2025 7:43 AM in response to ChrisWillimer

Further explanation. I use the Apple Music default file structure for imports:

Artist / Album Name / Track01, Track02...etc

I typically download an image file to the tracks directory, then use Add Artwork to add it to the album and the tracks

When I upload singles, I create a Singles folder

Artist / Singles / Single01, Single02... and add one or more image files here, and use Add Artwork to sync image and single track.

Each directory has an image file for either an album or a single.

At some point, Music has 'processed' my directories and incorporated the image file into the track/single mp3 files, then deleted the image files. In many cases the artwork displays correctly, using the image from the mp3 file. But where it has done this imperfectly (this is Apple Music, after all) I no longer have the image files I studiously and manually downloaded to reattach through Add Artwork.

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