Album covers missing in Finder and 3rd party music apps for downloads after Catalina update

Hi,

i have updated my MacBook to the latest version of Catalina. When I download music in the new music app that replaced iTunes, the album covers that are contained in the m4a files themselves go missing.

Please note that this is not the same issue as the “Catalina cover issue” already posted here several other times. I see all album covers in the music app (which many wrote they don’t) as they are seemingly downloaded separately. But when I look at the m4a files in Finder — or another 3rd party music player app — there is no more album cover contained in the file itself. The thumbnails in Finder or the album view in other players only show empty covers.

This only happened for downloads since the day when I upgraded to Catalina. It happens both with music bought in iTunes and music that I uploaded myself to my Apple Music account (for these files I know for sure that there was an album cover in the file as I placed it there myself). It was also reproducible with another Apple ID on another MacBook where Catalina is installed. For songs downloaded before Catalina, both the thumbnails in Finder and covers in 3rd party music players are still there as they used to be.

Any Ideas? I think it might be a bug in the music app but am not 100% sure.

Thanks

Thomas