Wanted to follow up on the article by Kirk where he played with the MediaLibrary.sqlitedb file. 1. I was able to change artist thumb photos pushed by apple into those i prefer myself. To achieve that i opened iExplorer, went to Media>iTunes Artwork>112x112 I then went through all those folders and whenever i found the little black and white thumbnail apple pushes, I added my own instead. Those numbers are always the same, John Lennon in folder 03, JAY Z folder 05 etc. Even after resetting phone to factory reset and re syncing music from a clean wipe, all artists went in same older as i've originally discovered them in 5-6 months ago. So changing artist photos pushed my apple is no problem with iExplorer. The Apple photos never come back. 2. Now as far as some artists with missing photos, those artists don't have photos in iTunes Store and therefore they don't have a photo on the phone Music too. It just appends a random album cover for those. But i have a workaround for this.. Just change the cover for one of the songs of that artist to the photo you want and upload that song first. After that syncs upload all the rest of songs by that artist. Now it will show the photo you chose. 3. In the new iOS update Apple added a new view for artists, when you click on the artists they have a big banner now of their photo. You can change these same way you change little artist thumb i posted above in part 1., but instead go to Media>iTunes Artwork>Originals. You can actually have a different photo for thumbnail of artist and artists banner photo. I have many screenshots of my work if anyone wants them emailed. The only question I have is if anyone knows how to manipulate the MediaLibrary.sqlitedb file to give artists with missing photos in iTunes store a photo. You can maybe add store ID of another artist so that it generates a photo and a banner photo. I actually played with this and was able to change some, but then i had music crashing.
1. It's interesting that the artists stay in the same number folders. I doubt that this would be the case, however, if after the factor reset you synced only part of your library first. I think the artists in your library get added in a specific order, sort of alphabetically. I know I see that when I do a factor reset; first one song of each album is added, and they're in artist order, IIRC. 2. Yes, because it generally grabs the cover of the first song that copies. But that's a lot of work to get artist photos. 3. Yes. But, again, a lot of work. I think messing with the sqlite file is risky. I think that, when you add something like you're doing, you need to make sure that you've entered data in every field for that record, some of which you won't be able to figure out. I admire your inventiveness though.
Once you actually know which folders the cover is stored in, its very simple. I have a list of bookmarks in iExplorer. I guess ill have to wait for apple to add the missing artists's photos in iTunes and then find them in folders and replace. But since they started pushing this, none of my missing artists got a thumb. Heres some of my list of folders example. Again, this is for changing artists thumb or header image inner music app. 03 John Lennon 05 JAY Z 0a Enigma 0d Franz Ferdinand 10 Arctic Monkeys, Frank Sinatra 14 Billy Joel 1a Queen 24 Pink Floyd 25 Andrea Bocelli 29 Dean Martin 3a Kasabian 3f The Smiths 44 Drake, Franco Battiato
I tried to change Kanye West banner as in point 3 (i found him in folder 10), but if i add the picture i want and i delete the original from apple, when i go to my music app i don't see any banner, but a white screen. Can somebody help me?
Has any simple workaround been discovered yet when it comes to this barrier that doesn't require changing the album artwork altogether? I've tried one method to get this to work but it was a failure. (I'm gonna use "X" for the artist missing an image and "Y" for one that has one) I've tried changing the name of artist "X" in the file info to the name of artist "Y" and then using your method to change the artist "Y" auto-generated image to artist "X", but then there was no way to change the name displayed without reverting everything.
Ok, i managed to find the pictures, but when i try to replace them, i just get a white banner. Averts, i would appreciate if you could send me the screenshots of your work if you don't mind
