Is there a way to specify artist artwork for Music in iOS 7?

Question

I've been a big fan of the redesign of the music app in iOS 7. I noticed that on the Artist list, certain musical acts have a thumbnail of band/artist next to them. This image is independent of any album art that I might have, and definitely comes from iTunes.

I was wondering if there was a way to set this image manually. I have a lot of bands that aren't covered by this feature, and I think it's a cool way to visually identify the music I listen to.

In the screencap below, The Moody Blues, The Mountain Goats and Neil Young all feature this custom artwork.

Answer 1

I know this is extremely late but I was just wondering the same thing. In settings under music I unchecked "group by album artist" and well it worked, I'm assuming from that option.

Answer 2

I think you should spell the artist name the same as what Apple's servers are using. In my case, I have a lots of songs by "Linkin Park" and still the artist image is the from cover of their album "Hybrid Theory". When I browse Apple Music their artist name is "LINKIN PARK" (all caps) so I renamed all my LP's songs, restarted the music app and connected to internet to download the image.

Answer 3

after 45 minutes on the phone with Apple Advanced Technical Support, "This feature is not available for manually uploaded songs at this time". WTH!!

So this is not possible at present :(!

Answer 4

Go to 'Artists' tab on your left under 'Recently Added'. Right click on the artist name you want, and instead of going to the artwork TAB, Double click on the microphone square in the upper corner. It will then let you upload any picture you want for your artist.

Answer 5

You need a pc or mac running itunes.

• You can go to artists and select al the songs of the same artist (not the album title) and then right click, this will show another pop up with a lot of tabs, if you click the illustrations tab you are presented with the artwork of your songs or a white square. Click the add button beneath this box and again navigate to your artwork.

p.s. after doing this you still need to sync your ipod/iphone/ipad to make it show up on the devices :P

Answer 6

The special artist pictures are synced in through iTunes when you connect to the internet next (since you synced the songs onto your iPhone/iPod/iPad). But based on the popularity of each artist, each artist has the choice to upload their image (if they choose to). But for example Sia, who never shows her face, has not uploaded an artist picture, even though she is popular enough. But if you want a better chance at the artist tab showing up, you need to make sure that you spell the artist name EXACTLY RIGHT!!! For example, I had (and still have) the rapper B.o.B on my music, but the artist picture didn't show up at first because I spelled it B.o.B. (with the extra period at the end). After I removed the extra period, it then synced in the special artist image from iTunes when I next connected to the internet over WiFi for my iPod Touch 5th gen. Hope it helped :)