How do I get album art for my music?
Album art, also known as cover art, is the visual imagery that accompanies a music album, depicting the artist, band name, album title, tracklist, and other related details.
Album art serves several important purposes:
- It represents the musical artist and their work visually.
- It conveys the style, mood and theme of the music.
- It helps identify and distinguish the album from others.
- It provides memorable branding for the release.
- It gives fans something visual to connect with and enjoy.
In the age of digital music and online streaming, album art remains a vital part of the listening experience. Even without physical media, art embedded in audio files enables music apps and devices to display visuals. Album artwork helps organize libraries and enhances music discovery. For fans, it also makes playlists and collections more visually engaging.
Finding Album Art Online
One of the easiest ways to find album art for your music is to search for it online. Many popular sites host album artwork that you can download and add to your files. For example, you can search on sites like Amazon or Wikipedia by entering the name of the album or artist. These sites often have high quality cover art that you can save to your computer.
To find artwork on Amazon, go to the product page for the album and check the album cover image. Right click on the cover art and choose “Save image as” to download it. On Wikipedia, you can often find album covers on the pages for specific albums or musicians. Again, right click on the image and save it.
Other sites like Discogs and AllMusic also host album artwork that you can quickly download. Simply search for your album and look for the cover art section on the page. This provides an easy way to find album art when you already know the release details.
Extract Album Art from Audio Files
Many music files such as MP3, FLAC, M4A, etc. have album art embedded in the metadata of the file itself. This makes extracting the album art quick and easy without needing to source it from somewhere else. There are a few different ways to extract album art directly from music files:
Use a program like mp3Tag (https://www.mp3tag.de/en/) which allows you to view and export album art from files. Simply drag and drop files into mp3Tag to extract any embedded album art.
On Windows 10, right click on a file, go to Properties > Details and look for the Artwork tab. The album art will be displayed here and can be saved.
On Mac, select a file then File > Get Info and go to the Artwork tab. Again the embedded art can be previewed and saved from here.
There are also online audio metadata viewers like https://metadata2go.com/ which will extract and display any album art found in uploaded files.
So before searching elsewhere, it’s worth checking if your music files already contain album art that can be easily extracted.
Identify Album Art File Location
Album art is often stored as a separate image file in the same folder as the audio files. This is especially common when dealing with downloaded or ripped music collections. The album art image may be named “folder.jpg”, “cover.jpg”, or something similar. It’s a good idea to browse the music folders and look for image files that could potentially be the album art.
On Windows computers, album art may be stored as hidden system files. To view hidden files, open File Explorer, click the View tab, and check the “Hidden items” box. Now you can look for typical album art filenames like “folder.jpg” that were previously hidden.
According to this source, “The album art is stored in the same directory as the songs. In the view tab set Hidden files and folders to show and Hide protected operating system files off.” So browsing the music folders in File Explorer with hidden files shown can help uncover album art images.
Scan Your Music Library
One easy way to find album artwork for your music is to use media organization software to scan your library and look for cover art files. Programs like Foobar2000, MediaMonkey, and Audiobook Binder can dig through your music folders and pull out any existing album art.
The software will identify the tracks in your collection and match them to databases of album information. If cover art is available in the databases that matches your tracks, the program can automatically download and embed the artwork into your files. This makes it easy to get high quality album covers without having to manually search for each one.
Scanning works best if you’ve organized your files into a structured music library, named tracks consistently, and included metadata like artist name, album title, genre, etc. The more details the software has to work with, the better chance it has of identifying your albums and locating the appropriate covers.
Overall, utilizing media organization software is an efficient way to find and add album art to your entire music collection with minimal effort. Let the program do the heavy lifting so you can quickly get covers for those naked albums.
Dig Through Your Music Collection
If you have a physical music collection, dig through your CDs, vinyl records, cassette tapes, or any other formats to try and locate album artwork. Carefully go through each album, single, EP, or other release to check if it originally included artwork or packaging with the artist/album name on it. This is one of the best ways to find high-quality album art that exactly matches your digital music files.
Often the album artwork was included as an insert or booklet with the original physical release. See if you still have these for your physical music collection, as they likely contain or showcase the original album art. For vinyl records, the artwork is usually larger and easy to access. CDs also frequently had album artwork shown on the front, back, and inside booklet.
Once you’ve located the right album art through your physical music collection, you can scan or photograph it to create a digital image file. Make sure to take a high resolution photo or scan so the artwork looks clear when viewed on digital devices. Then you’ll have an accurate album art image to add to your digital music library.
Find High Res Album Art Online
One of the best ways to find high resolution album art is by searching on sites dedicated to hosting such images. AllMusic is a great resource that has an extensive database of album covers and art. You can search by artist name or album title to locate the art. AllMusic aims to provide high resolution images, often over 1000×1000 pixels.
Other users have had success finding quality album art on sites like Album Art Exchange. These online databases allow you to browse covers and download them directly at the size you need. The community often uploads high res versions. Just be mindful of any potential copyright issues if sharing the art publicly.
With some digging through Google image searches and online music databases, you should be able to find a high resolution version for most album covers. Just be sure to check the resolution before downloading to ensure it meets your needs.
Edit and Touch Up Artwork
Once you have found or created album artwork, it’s important to edit and optimize the image before adding it to your music files. Here are some tips for editing artwork:
Resize the image to meet requirements – Album art needs to be a certain minimum size to be readable on various devices and platforms. A good standard size is 3000×3000 pixels. Use image editing software to resize the artwork to these dimensions.1
Crop and clean up the image – Remove any unwanted background areas or blemishes using cropping and healing tools. Focus the artwork on the main visual elements.2
Adjust color, brightness, and contrast – Make sure the artwork is optimized for visual impact. Enhance the color vibrancy, brightness, and contrast as needed.3
Add any desired text or effects – Consider adding the album name, artist name, song titles, etc to the artwork. You can also apply any other desired stylistic editing effects or filters.
Save the finished artwork as a high-quality image file before adding it to your music library.
Add Artwork to Files
Once you have the album artwork file, you can embed it into the audio file metadata or save it as a separate image file. Embedding the artwork makes it portable with the music file across devices and apps. Saving it separately keeps the audio file untouched, but you have to manage and sync the image file.
To embed artwork directly into an audio file like MP3, FLAC, M4A, etc., you can use metadata editing tools like MP3Tag, Picard, or the options built into your music library software. In MP3Tag, for example, you would load the audio files, then under Actions select Add cover art from file. Browse to the folder with artwork, select the image, and click OK. The artwork will be embedded into the audio file metadata.
If you want to keep original audio files intact, you can save the artwork as a separate image file in the same folder. Name the image files using the same naming convention as your audio files for easy manual syncing (e.g. AlbumName_01.jpg). Set your music apps to look in the folder for artwork matching the audio file names.
Automate Artwork Downloads
Using software to automate fetching album artwork can save a lot of time compared to manually searching for covers. There are programs available that can scan your music library and automatically find and download the correct artwork for each album or track.
Some popular free options include Album Art Downloader, which can identify missing art and fetch it from various online databases. It works for MP3, FLAC, M4A, and WMA files. Another open source program is Taghycardia, which can automatically download album art and embed it into ID3 tags.
For Android devices, Auto Album Art Downloader can download and apply covers for music stored locally on your phone. There are also paid programs like MediaMonkey that have advanced auto-tagging and artwork tools.
Automating the process can save a lot of time and effort compared to manually finding artwork. Just be sure to check that the imported art matches the album and is of sufficient quality before applying it to your files.