I suggest that everyone experiencing this issue submit diagnostics and follow-up directly with Support or here.

Pure speculation on my part is that there is a timing issue, probably related to communication delays between controller and player. Check the Associated Product for the controller that you are using as I suggested above. It is possible that one Association is struggling with communication. You do not have much control over which unit will become the the Associated Product.

For systems with only one wired network connection, the communication path can become quite contorted for floder.jpg. For example if ‘A’ is wired and the controller is Associated with ‘D’, it is possible that the communication path to folder.jpg could be: Controller - ‘D’ - ‘C’ - ‘B’ - ‘A’ - folder.jpg - ‘A’ - ‘B’ - ‘C’ - ‘D’ - Controller and I can’t speculate exactly how the controller might connect with ‘D’ or how ‘A’ might connect to folder.jpg.

A communication issue along the path to folder.jpg will introduce delays. Historically, the system has worked through all of this without bothering the user. It’s possible that previous releases had an artwork timeout of ‘x’ and this release has a timeout of ‘x/n’ and the system cannot respond fast enough.

Communication issues leave tracks in the diagnostics.

Another potential variable is how Groups are built. The first member of a Group becomes the Group’s “Coordinator” and all music for the Group passes through the Coordinator. If the Coordinator is struggling with communication, all players in the Group will suffer and overall system data flow will slow -- potentially introducing further delay in folder.jpg fetch. Building the Group in a different order might improve this sort of situation. Again, all of this leaves tracks in the diagnostics.

Same issue here! The artwork loads intermittently in the queue but never in the now playing screen.

Tried different wireless channels and a router reboot but no luck.

Is there any benefit in submitting a diagnostic?

Yes, a diagnostic and follow-up with support creates an ‘incident’. Corporations track incidents and respond by allocating resources to reduce support costs. Plus, the additional diagnostic contributes to a wider variety of cases to study.

But is there any point with sending diagnostics alone? The problem I have with calling support is the time it takes. Here in Sweden there is typical a waiting time of ten minutes or more, and it is only available 10-18, and that’s when I’m at work. Yes, I work from home, but still I’m at work, and I can’t bill my client for talking to Sonos.

Send the diagnostics and post the number here, Support will usually find the issue and respond. If we haven’t seen anything back by Monday we can request that Support staff look at the topic.

I just realized I have an un-updated controller on the Windows box I use for updating the Honda, firing it up now to see what it looks like there. And on Windows the 13.3 controller shows no artwork from the Music Library.

I doubt it is a delay issue here, I have my setup on SonosNet with 2 Wired Beams and a wired Arc. Channel utilization is 20-25% according to my RF monitor. This setup has not changed for many months now.

I have tried both a SonosNet connected Beam as well as an Ethernet wired Beam, both show the same symptoms. The Wired Beam and controllers are all on the same Gigabit switch.

Checking my Linux (non-Sonos) controller shows no artwork on the Music Library either, since it connects to the player directly it points to being a firmware issue on the speakers, not a controller bug.

Running this on a Raspberry Pi: https://github.com/pascalopitz/unoffical-sonos-controller-for-linux

Well, I've submitted diagnostics. Ref 1229186748, if anyone from Sonos is floating around 

Yeah, just like I did 20 hrs ago. Heard nothing back. Apparently no Sonos employee floating around. 

I’ve also submitted diagnostics, ref 1054140707.

Before I submitted diagnostics, the situation was that I had cover art in one of my Android controllers. That controller is connected to one of my Sonos Five. I did not have cover art on my other Android controller which is connected to one of my One SL. Nor did I have cover art in my Windows controller, despite that it is connected to the very Play3 which is connected by cable to my router.

Right after I had submitted diagnostics, cover art started to appear in the Windows controller, at least when I browse my imported playlists. I don’t seem to see it when I browse albums or artists. (And that is true also for the Android controller that I mentioned above.) Nothing changed on the Android controller without cover art.

It seems that my system is just around the threshold for cover art being served.

Could the fact that it’s Sunday have something to do with it?

I don’t know how vigorously Sonos staff monitors these forums, but when I brought up an issue a couple of months back, it took more than a week before a Sonos person appeared in the thread. (And confirmed that it was a known issue.)

There are still issues, if you look through my posts you will see that I have complained about artwork going awol a few times. Recently this has been much better but it can go slow. I have a mostly wired system and have submitted many diagnostics. Router reboots have sorted when no art appears at all, but slow artwork is an intermittent issue still.

Yeah, I have had occasional situations before where I have not have cover art, but they have been occasional, and they have resolved reasonably fast without any obvious intervention.

I too have been forced to “join the club” of missing album artwork, although not all of mine is missing.

I’ve submitted diagnostics as suggested - 1368183005

I’m having the missing artwork issue since updating this week too. I’ve submitted a diagnostic and will be grateful for any help in fixing: 1901349414.

(It really pushes one of my buttons when an update decreases functionality or breaks something...it makes me furious!)

I'm having the same issue, too along with other ones as detailed here.

I've submitted a diagnostic as well: 1015557073.

I am having a very similar experience since the last Android and Windows 10 update to 13.4, both of which show identical behaviour.

By way of background, all my music files are FLAC, saved in an Artist/Album folder structure on a Synolgy NAS. I have 5 zones, all but 1 wired with Ethernet. 

All folders have a folder.jpg cover art file, all of which are 600x600 pixels or less.

The first track of each album also has a copy of folder.jpg embedded in it as I found that this made the Album view load more quickly. For single-artist albums, all other tracks are without cover art.

Compilation albums are in a Compilations folder with Album subfolders and the Album Atrist set to Various Artists.  These folders have a folder.jpg file and the first tracks have a copy of it embedded unless all the tracks have embedded Album art, in which case the folder.jpg file is omitted.  Where tracks don't have cover art embedded in them they default back to the folder image - or did until last week. 

This setup has worked perfectly for many months, or even years, until the latest update. 

The situation now is that the tracks with embedded images all show up fine on all the relevant screens, but those without do not. 

The exception is that, on the Albums screen, no cover art appears for a random selection of albums despite the fact that ALL folders have a folder.jpg file in them and the first tracks in each album ALL have embedded artwork. 

This problem is clearly one which a number of us dinosaurs who have music libraries stored locally have already picked up on, and there are doubtless many more who will do so. It's clearly a problem which has crept into the programming of the latest update and needs to be rolled back sooner rather than later.

I have submitted diagnostics,  reference 1553940869. 

Hoping for a resolution…….

I’ve noticed this name come up a couple of times in this thread.

I’m in the same boat, no album art showing when the files do not have embedded art, only a folder.jpg.

I’m also using Synology.

Is this maybe some strange edge-case incompatibility with Synology kit, or is it just that us “dinosaurs”  as a group tend to use Synology?

Yeah, I also noticed that a few people mentioned Synology. And guess what: I also have my music library on a NAS from Synology.

Not the case here, my files are hosted on a hard drive served via SMB on a dedicated raspberry pi. So rest assured, I don't think it's your NAS's fault  It also wouldn't explain why embedded stuff loads and folder.jpg stuff doesn't....

In the case of Synology, make sure that it is set to use only SMB1.

I would agree with Stanley_4 that this is likely to be a firmware issue. I have the same issue on both of my Android devices.  My phone is running App v13.3.2 and my tablet is running App v13.4 which suggests it is not a software issue. Note that v13.3.2 ran okay on both devices until the v13.4 release dated 16th Nov '21 which updated both software and firmware.

I just talked to Dutch Support, they weren't aware of the problem and they had me run some tests (restarting the system, rebooting the Sonos boxes, copying a music folder with folder.jpg to a different location and re-indexing) but nothing helped. They escalated the problem. If I have any news I'll let you know.

I 'm not sure what has changed but my set-up has started showing the folder.jpg artwork again. Many thanks to whoever sorted this issue out.

No changes here, still not showing artwork.

I’m also not using a Synology NAS - I’m running an external hdd attached to a Raspberry Pi, this is definitely not just a Synology issue.

Are you running SMB1 exclusively on the Pi?

Er, I’m not sure. I’m running Open Media Vault, and once I set it up, I just left it: I’m not technically experienced enough to mess about with it or remember.