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Forcing artwork to sync with OS Music
mdy8893PostJanuary 21, 2020, 16:30
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July 26, 2019, 11:26
Normal topicForcing artwork to sync with OS Music

Hi,

I'm having a few issues getting Apple Music to show the correct artwork. The artwork importer action in Yate has done a brilliant job of getting folder images onto all tracks, but this artwork isn't reflected in Music.

I've tried deleting and re-importing artwork to linked files in Yate. I tried deleting all artwork in Music, then re-linking and re-importing with Yate. Neither seems to have worked. I've switched off the grab artwork option in Music, but this doesn't seem to have changed anything.

Any other suggestions...?

Thanks in advance!
2MR2PostJanuary 21, 2020, 17:56
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Normal topicRe: Forcing artwork to sync with OS Music

Argh .. yet another Music issue. Evidently they are no longer re-reading artwork from a file already in the library. Music is told to refresh itself from the audio file but it's ignoring the artwork. Actually it's sporadic. However, even when they re-read the artwork they do not change their internal store for the Album artwork (which I can't set).

Further they are no longer writing artwork to audio files.

The only reliable way at this time to get it to work is to delete the tracks from Music and to add them back. This can be done easily in an action, however the downside is that deleting a track causes the track to be removed from any playlist it's currently in. The action would be:

Link to Apple App
Remove from Apple App
Add to Apple App

It might be possible to do it manually. That would entail writing the artwork to a folder and then having AppleScript read the file and manually stuffing it. I'll play with this and see if it works. For now, I'll file yet another bug report.
2MR2PostJanuary 21, 2020, 19:30
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Normal topicRe: Forcing artwork to sync with OS Music

Unfortunately, manually setting the artwork is not an option.
mdy8893PostJanuary 22, 2020, 03:46
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July 26, 2019, 11:26
Normal topicRe: Forcing artwork to sync with OS Music

No worries 2MR2, thanks as always for the quick response. I don't really want to re-add the files as I've had issues with play counts (plus the playlist issue you mentioned). Hopefully we'll see a solution at some point.

Out of interest, when you say Music is no longer writing artwork to files... does this mean iTunes used to overwrite artwork on the ID3 with their own...?

Thanks again.
2MR2PostJanuary 22, 2020, 08:36
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Normal topicRe: Forcing artwork to sync with OS Music

The play counts can be preserved as follows regardless as to your current settings in Preferences - Apple Apps

Copy the Play Count field to Variable 0
Link to Apple App
Remove from Apple App
Add to Apple App
Copy the Variable 0 field to the Play Count field
Export to Apple App using #

You can similarly preserve any other special metadata. I can't help with the playlist issue 🙁

When you manually changed an artwork item in iTunes, it would write the change to the audio files ... depending on the version of iTunes. This flipped so many times that people couldn't figure out why some of their tracks had correct embedded artwork and some did not.
2MR2PostJanuary 23, 2020, 17:59
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Normal topicRe: Forcing artwork to sync with OS Music

While there is no way to force Music to refresh properly, I've come up with a solution. I've written an action which deletes files from Music, adds them back, restores all the library only metadata (play counts, ratings, etc.) and places each added track into whatever user playlist it was originally in. I can't put the tracks back in the same position that they originally were ... but they will be there. Also, I can't do anything with Genius or Smart playlists. Smart playlists should adjust automatically.

This action will only work in the upcoming v5.1.1 as I had to add a statement to extract the 'containing' playlist information.
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