MPMediaItemArtwork is null while cover is available in iTunes

Question

The UIImage \"image\" is always empty (\"null\") though the cover is shown in the music app by apple. in iOS 7 it works fine, but with iOS 8 I get no cover.

Answer 1

As of iOS 8, MPMediaItem's selector imageWithSize:(CGSize)size appears to not guarantee that it will return an image. If no image is returned at the requested size, call it again with the size of the artwork bounds property:

MPMediaItemArtwork *artwork = [self valueForProperty:MPMediaItemPropertyArtwork];
UIImage *image = [artwork imageWithSize:size];
if (image == nil) {
    image = [artwork imageWithSize:artwork.bounds.size];
}