Solutions for iPhone / iTunes artwork and coverflow issues
There appear to be four distinct issues:
1. Song/album info is wrong or inconsistant (bad data)
2. Apple software makes some incorrect assumptions about data and creates collisions (songs appear on wrong albums)
3. Apple software accesses and updates functionality like coverflow in multiple ways for the same function, depending on how the update/access is triggered. This is bad form always and leads to strange things happening such as wrong art for an album.
4. Apple bugs.
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Solutions:
1. Carefully note the problems you are having then go into iTunes and select the songs involved one at a time. Right click and select get info. Check the info and artwork tabs carefully. Especially note that there may be multiple artwork images on the artwork tab. Also, especially look for songs on same album that have different spelling or capitalization for the same album name. This can happen easily if you purchased some content in, say, the US store and some in the Canadian store. Go figure. Correct any bad information, especially in the artist and album fields. These issues are NOT fixed by reloads or resyncs. GIGO.
2. If you have two albums such as Artist: FolkyGuy Album: Anthology and Artist: PunkyGuy Album: Anthology, then the songs for both albums will appear with each album in the coverflow view. Change the album names so they are distinct. eg: Change the FolkyGuy album name to "Anthology - FolkyGuy". Apple has other issues with data as well... be suspicious if two albums appear to be interacting and have common data. Again: reload/resync offers no relief. GIGO.
3. You can't do much about Apple's cruddy programming (IMHO they have some major issues... heresy I know). Solutions are like 2 above: look for data that may be tripping the bad update and yielding bizarre effects. These issues are usually fixed by a reload, and sometimes by a resync. However, that can be pretty time consuming, especially if you have 4000 songs on your iPhone and have selected "reduce to 128" to save space. Come back tomorrow thank you. These problems can sometimes be fixed by triggering specific sync routines. eg: For whatever reason, Van Morrison's "Still On Top" artwork was showing up for "Ghostbusters Soundtrack". This even though iTunes showed the correct artwork and I could find no common data. I tried deleting the Ghostbuster art, sync, insert art but still Van Morrison showed up for Ghostbusters. Weird. I deleted the "Album Artist" data for Ghostbusters, leaving it blank, and then synced. Van Morrison still there. Put "Various Artists" back in and resynced: Voila! Van is banished and Ghostbusters is back. Sigh. Again, go figure.
If doing something like that doesn't work then try modifying other data. ITunes and the iPhone seem to use different update paths/routines depending on which data is modified. I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
4. Apple bugs. Sheesh... not much to do here but try 1,2,3 above and finally reload as a last resort.
Finally, if the above does not help then try waving a dead chicken in the air over your ipod/iphone while burning incense and chanting in a dead language. This usually drives out the demon that is causing the problem. Equally effective in either Full or New moon phases. Doesn't work during a Gibbous moon.
Hope this helps
