Fixing Missing Cover Art On Nexus 4 & 7

Plagued by missing cover art in Play Music? Rejoice, there is a fix! You will first need to install the following (free) apps:

• Cover Art Downloader
• OI File Manager 
• Rescan SD Card!

Now here's what you need to do. All set?

1. Transfer your music to your device. Open Cover Art Downloader to make sure that you have all the cover art.
2. Open Play Music. Note which album covers aren't displayed.
3. Using OI File Manager (or your favourite equivalent) navigate to the folder in which the music with the missing album covers is stored. (If you have several album sub-folders within an artist folder, you can just work with the artist folder that contains them.)
4. Note the name of the folder you located in step (3) and change it to anything else. I usually just add a period at the end of the folder's name.
5. Open Rescan SD Card!
6. Open Play Music and wait while the device rescans your media files. When the albums show up (cover art will still be missing), close Play Music and then REMOVE IT FROM THE RECENT APPS LIST.
7. Using OI File manager, rename the directory from step (4) back TO THE ORIGINAL NAME it had before you changed it.
8. Open Rescan SD Card!
9. Open Play Music and wait while the device rescans your media files. Then experience bliss.

Very rarely, cover art will still be missing and you'll have to run through the whole process again, but in the vast majority of cases this will solve the problem.

Still happy you switched from an iPhone? ;)

UPDATE 2013-05-23. I've noticed that you really have to wait a long time on the Nexus 7 32 GB model, about 1--2 minutes, for the device to finish rescanning your media files. Best to keep this in mind as you're going through the fixes. Also, in some cases, in step (3) I have had to rename individual sub-folders rather than just the parent folder. Not sure why.

UPDATE 2013-12-02. If you have Android 4.4 Kitkat installed on your device, you can't use Rescan SD Card! You should use SD Scanner instead.