Apple Music Album covers in album display are no longer square

This appears to be a deliberate and inexplicable change made by someone at Apple. Portions of the left and right edges of all artwork are being shaved off, leaving a rectangle that's taller than it is wide.

In the attached example, there should be a white border around the entire image. But this change removes part of the left and right sides.

I was a part of the beta-testing process from day 1, earlier this year, and the moment I saw this, I reported it as a bug and provided Apple with screenshots. I subsequently re-reported it a few times and pleaded with Apple to reverse this change, but it was never fixed. (To provide context, dozens and dozens of other bugs I reported were fixed over the course of the 3-month testing period. But this artwork issue was never addressed.)

With Apple's decades-long reputation for attention to detail and reverence for art in all its forms, I'm forced to believe that someone at Apple did this intentionally—and it was ostensibly approved. But it makes no sense. Album covers have been square ever since they were invented, which was what? 60+ years ago? And I've curated my album covers in Apple Music (formerly iTunes) for more than 20 years. But now, every album cover is rectangular.

It's utterly, utterly heartbreaking.

I have this issue too! I also have a MacBook Pro 13", so I wonder if this issue has something to do with this specific model. However, the aspect ratio for album art still doesn't "fix" itself when I connect an external monitor. Maybe it has something to do with the 13" version of Sequoia...

Thanks for your post!

At least I know I'm not alone with this issue.

I feel the same way as you, also having curated my album artwork almost since inception. This is almost as bad (for me) as Apple removing 'Cover Flow' from iTunes awhile back. Seeing almost square artwork, is better than changing the ratio completely like they did with Apple TV movie artwork (from vertical to horizontal). That also still doesn't make sense to me either.

Same problem here, experimenting with wider or taller album art does not help, both versions are cropped left and right as well.

Each single cover artwork in the music ap… - Apple Community

I also have this problem and asked the same questions without reply. Wonder what would happen if we made our album art a little taller?

All the album art in the Apple Music Store App and Website are perfectly square... so what's the deal with the our music library artwork?

I did not delete it, Apple did because it was about the latest beta release for users of Sequoia - this is obviously not allowed here which I did not know.

In the above mentioned release all music artwork is displayed perfectly square on my Mac - which is great!

@Bierfassl, prior to this reply, you posted another reply that was very helpful (which I received via email, per my thread preferences).

But it now seems you deleted that reply. Why did you delete it?

It's also happening on movie file cover art (think for Plex, etc). There's black bars on both sides of the artwork for files where the artwork is burned in on the .m4v file. Like you said, it's hard to imagine someone doing this intentionally and it being signed off on. It makes me wonder what kind of people and processes are indeed at Apple these days, and it's worrying that at least someone that can push a change like this has no clue what they are doing.

BTW, why did you post this here (iOS) instead of MAC?

Confirmed!