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Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files

Filed under Podcasting

The Mona Lisa: 150 x 150px

Album art can be embedded into MP3 files fairly easily using ID3 tags. However, before you start filling up all of your MP3 files with works of art, there are a few things that you should stop to consider first.

While MP3 files were not originally intended to store additional metadata within them, the release of the ID3 tag protocol in 1996 suddenly made this a possibility. However, it wasn’t until version 2 of the protocol became available that MP3 files could actually contain embedded album art.

So, before you start cutting and pasting huge graphics and adding them into your collection of MP3 tracks, what do you need to consider to avert potential disaster?

ID3 Tags and MP3 Files

A standard MP3 file only contains audio data, with no additional information about the artist or type of audio contained within it. To include such extra information in an MP3 track, tag data is usually added to the beginning or end of the audio file in ID3 format.

ID3 tags allow you to store additional information within your MP3 files such as the track title, artist name and even album art. If you’re not familiar with ID3 tags, you may find my previous article on What are ID3 tags in MP3 files? helpful.

Image Types

While the ID3v2 tag standard allows any type of image to be embedded in an MP3 file, it does advise that either PNG or JPEG formats should be used when interoperability with playback devices is required. Practically speaking JPEG images have been adopted as the de facto standard in this respect.

The ID3 standard is very flexible with regards to the type and number of images that can be embedded in a MP3 single file. The full list of different images that can be embedded are:

  • $00 – Other
  • $01 – 32×32 pixels ‘file icon’ (PNG only)
  • $02 – Other file icon
  • $03 – Cover (front)
  • $04 – Cover (back)
  • $05 – Leaflet page
  • $06 – Media (e.g. label side of CD)
  • $07 – Lead artist/lead performer/soloist
  • $08 – Artist/performer
  • $09 – Conductor
  • $0A – Band/Orchestra
  • $0B – Composer
  • $0C – Lyricist/text writer
  • $0D – Recording Location
  • $0E – During recording
  • $0F – During performance
  • $10 – Movie/video screen capture
  • $11 – A bright coloured fish
  • $12 – Illustration
  • $13 – Band/artist logotype
  • $14 – Publisher/Studio logotype

Quite an exhaustive list, and while a single MP3 file could embed all of the above images, in practice only one image is ever usually embedded.

File Sizes

Unfortunately, any additional information that you add to an MP3 file will increase its file size and this is of particular importance when adding images due to their potential size, even with compressed images such as JPEGs.

However, this does need to be taken in context. For example, adding an 80kB JPEG image to a single 8MB podcast won’t have a significant effect; it’s only a 1% increase in file size.

If on the other hand you add an 80kB album image to every single track in your MP3 collection, let’s say of 1,000 songs, then you’ll need any additional 80MB of storage, which could otherwise hold a further 20 songs or so (another 2 albums).

Current Media Player Support

Mona Lisa 200 x 200 pixels Windows Media Player embeds album art as 200 x 200 pixel images, although will display larger images if they are embedded in the playing file as a larger size. iTunes currently displays album art as 200 x 200 pixel images. The picture to the right is sized at 200 x 200 pixels by way of example and is 35kB in file size.

The resolution of the iPod nano and iPod classic screens is 320 x 240 pixels. The iPod touch screen is 480 x 320 pixels, more than sufficient to display images of 200 x 200 pixels.

The Current Standard

Mona Lisa 300 x 300 pixels The majority of podcasts that include images embedded within them adopt an image size of 300 x 300 pixels.

The picture to the right is sized at 300 x 300 pixels and is 62kB in file size by way of example.

JPEG images of these dimensions will vary in file size (dependant on the compression ratio used and image complexity) from around 10kB to 80kB or so. A 300 x 300 pixel image is actually over twice the size of a 200 x 200 image, and will consequently lead to approximately double file sizes.

Adding Your Own Pictures

So if you’re producing your own podcast and want to enhance it with your own logo, or just want to embellish some of the tracks that you already have in your MP3 collection with album art, what’s the best way forward?

It’s probably best to standardise on JPEG images to ensure that your artwork can be seen on the majority of possible playback devices.

Image sizes are probably best set at 300 x 300 pixels to display in reasonable quality on most playback systems. However, if you’re concerned about the space taken up by these images, 200 x 200 pixel images may be the better option for you, reducing the image file size to about half that of a 300 x 300 pixel image. The BBC (a useful technical yardstick I’ve always found) embed 300 x 300 images in their podcasts.

If your current software doesn’t allow you to embed or add images to your MP3 files directly, then standalone tag editing software should offer you this functionality. Some useful examples of such are:

 

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188 Responses to “Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files”

  1. Howard says:

    I’ve been looling into metadata a bit recently.

    The phrase “album art” isn’t strictly speaking correct when referring to single track mp3 files.

    iTunes stores artwork in the music file and as such is actually track artwork, whereas windows media player stores the artwork for the album in it’s own library database, and as a separate file in the album directory – so that can be called album artwork.

    If you’re only interested in adding album artwork, then utilities like album art aggregator are very useful. It uses the artist and album data to find artwork on amazon.com.

  2. Rory says:

    Thanks for this post, Richard.

    I’m a little bit in the dark about embedded artwork. Does the artwork itself actually get embedded, or is it purely a link to the artwork file? So, wherever the mp3 goes, the artwork must also go, by necessity.

    If it is just a link to the artwork, why not simply use the old “folder.jpg” deal? If the image itself is embedded in the ID3 tag, can you then dispose of the original image?

    …if you get what I mean…

  3. Richard says:

    @Rory: The artwork is actually embedded within the MP3 track, so once it’s embedded you no longer need the original image. Hope this answers your question.

  4. luk says:

    hi,

    i have an old imac i just use as a jukebox, and i would like to copy my mp3 files to it, only when they have artwork added.
    is there a way to do so?

    regards
    luk

  5. Richard says:

    @Luk: I’m not immediately aware of any software that will do what you want, but it may be worth trawling through the web to see. Alternatively, depending on your technical prowess, you could write a script to copy files only if the source MP3 contains an embedded image ID3 tag.

  6. Danny says:

    Thanks for this post. Are you aware of any software which can consolidate iTunes, WMP, folder.jpg and embedded artwork? I have lots of music and the artwork is all over the place so it would be great if there was a utility which would show what artwork from different sources I have on my system for each album and then let me select which to keep (the iTunes artwork is better for this album, the WMP artwork is better for this one) and consolidate them down into ID3 tags.

    • Richard says:

      @Danny: That sounds to be a very unique application that would probably require custom software. I certainly don’t know of anything that comes even remotely close to what you’re looking for. I assume that you’ve trawled through the search engines?

      I use MP3Tag to edit my ID3 tags, the latest version of which allows you to save (export) embedded album art, which may help you, although it would be somewhat tedious.

  7. Adam says:

    Very handy article thanks. I use iTunes for my mp3 library and download and add all the artwork myself. I set the size to 300×300.

    Tag&Rename is another great program for sorting out art work and tagging mp3′s.

  8. Adam says:

    I’ve been spending ages getting all my music into itunes with all the album art and it looks great. I want to know if iTunes “embeds” the image to the mp3 or holds it in a seperate location, any way I can find out?

  9. hannndy45 says:

    I’ve been using Mp3tag to edit files. When I select ‘add cover’, and select a jpeg image that has been downloaded from the web, it sometimes comes in to ‘fill’ the window in Mp3tag, and sometimes it is only 1/4 size of the window. What is the relationship between pixel size and dpi value for artwork, and what is the ‘best’ size to use. I have tried resizing (using Pixillion Image Converter) the small sized images to a larger size ie from 150 to 300 or 500, but it dosen’t seem to make the image fit the window. I would somehow like to get it all standardized, thanks

  10. Adam says:

    I decided before spending days putting all my music into itunes that I would use 300×300 for my art work.

    Before I would add the artwork using itunes but when I play the files on other machines sometimes the artwork didn’t show up.

    I now add the artwork before using Tag&Rename. To be honest I have never used this Mp3tag but keep hearing only good things. Maybe I’ll give it a shot.

    I kind of wish I used a larger size, maybe 600×600. The art looks fine on the ipod or other portable device in 300×300, but full screen on the PC it ain’t so pretty!

  11. Richard says:

    @hannndy45: What version of Mp3tag are you using? I’m using V2.42, which has some improved cover art handling. Also, how do you import the cover art; drag-and-drop, from the clipboard or import from a file? This may affect things.

    I use 300×300 artwork imported from a JPEG file directly (72 dpi resolution) and have never experienced any problems like you’re encountering.

    You could also try the Mp3tag forum for advice.

    @Adam: Glad to see you’re making some progress at last

  12. John says:

    What I found is that there are devices that will not display artwork larger than 200×200. For example, I spent days trying to figure out why some art would display and others not on my new DLink DSM-520 Media Player. After trial and error, I confirmed that 200×200 is the maximum size that would display on that device. I also like Mp3tag to edit tags. It works well.

  13. Dacey says:

    is there a way to become a content writer for the site?

    • Richard says:

      I’m happy to have guest posts and to credit the guest author.

      If you have any articles or posts that you think may be appropriate to my blog, please let me know.

      I can’t guarantee to publish everything submitted, but if it’s appropriate for the site, then I’m happy to consider it.

  14. darren says:

    great site, forum, and thread…i’ve been looking all over for this info..glad to find it in an easy to use manner. Thanks.

  15. Adam says:

    @hannndy45

    I use an old paint program (Paint shop pro 7). It loads in a flash and within a few clicks you can have your image resized.

    300×300 is fine for most of today’s devices. So I simply find the image then load it up, if I have nothing better to do I’ll maybe jazz it up a bit, save it as folder.jpg in My Documents.

    Then load up your tagging software and import the image. You can then save the next file over the old one for quick and easy access.

    If the artwork is “embedded” in the actual MP3′s themselves then most devices will show the artwork with no problems.

    If you get everything setup first time round hopefully your never need to do anything with your files again, well, that’s the way I look at it!

  16. ronald says:

    on my ipod touch under artist,when i select an artist the screen moves to show the album covers with album name, touch the album it then shows the tracks within the album.perfect! NOW with some artist, it goes straight to the track, no album cover. i ise media monkey to embed the artwork for albums and cover. my itouch shows the covers for all albums in cover flow but doesn’t show the album artwork in album category. i tried to reembed the art work, remains the same. any ideas why. thank you if you can reply

    • Richard says:

      @ronald: I’m afraid that I’ve no direct experience with either the Apple ipod touch or media monkey.

      However, is your artwork actually being embedded in the tracks, as often album artwork for a collection of album tracks is actually saved in the album folder as a separate JPEG image and not embedded separately in each album track?

      Embedding album artwork in every album track is obviously a very inefficient way of doing things.

      It might be worth checking if you can to see how things are being done by the software as this could explain the results that you are experiencing.

  17. abel says:

    This is too confusing. I noticed that some music albums form the net come with artwork hidden and when the songs are in the mp3 player the images are displayed. How can i put this to my songs that i ripped from my CDs?

    • Richard says:

      @abel: Artwork hidden in MP3 files is embedded using ID3 tags as described in the post above. If you want to do the same with tracks ripped from your own CDs, you’ll need to use a tag editor to add the artwork to the MP3 files.

      Alternatively you could use different ripping software that would rip your tracks and add the artwork at the same time, like MediaMonkey for example.

  18. abel says:

    Thanks a lot very helpful, I think I just got the right software.

  19. Neil says:

    I have a common folder on an NAS for all of my MP3s. I am teh only one that has write privileges to it, so as to avoid accidental deletions by the rest of my family. I recently went through, using iTunes, and added album art to all of my MP3s. I then went to my wife’s machine, ran iTunes finagled around a bit and was unable to see the album art as I had expected. I even deleted an album from her iTunes and then re-added the folder and still there was no album art. So, I am currently confused, as while I accept what you say, it would seem that my files are not holding the album art. In fact, right now I have selected all songs in her library (all of which are located on this read-only share for her) and told iTunes to update the album art – which it is now doing. This is suggesting to me that iTunes is storing the album art in its catalogue and not the mp3 file itself. Can you confirm or explain what I am witnessing?

    • Richard says:

      I’m afraid I’m a Windows man and use Windows Media Player to store and rip all of my music, so have no direct experience of iTunes.

      However, if iTunes is anything like Windows Media Player, then the album artwork is not stored in any of the tracks themselves, but rather in a separate image file within the album’s folder/directory.

  20. Sachin says:

    Can anyone help me on inserting album art using ID3 form.
    If somebody like to help me please send a message to +94712950269 or reply by leaving a comment to this!
    I would be gratefull if you’d help me!

  21. [...] (englisch)Vergleich der Tagnamen verschiedener Formate (englisch) Einzelnachweise? Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files Kategorien: Multimedia | Dokumentation © Diese Definition / dieser Artikel zu ID3-Tag stammt [...]

  22. Chris B says:

    I have added album art tags to all my music files (set at 600 x 600 pixel resolution).

    I want to add back covers and sleeve notes, which I can do – but don’t know of any players that will actually SHOW anything but front cover art work.

    Any suggestions?

  23. Chris B says:

    Thnks Richard – I guess that will save me a lot of time and effort, as I have 8600 mp3 files I was going to add additional images to!! Still, I will continue to scan the back covers and notes – I am sure a player will appear with viewing capabilities one day.

    Don’t know if anyone has checked out “AlbumArtExchange.com”. Its a site for sharing high resolution album images (600 x 600 pixels). There are thousands of albums already on the site – and its free to download these images. I am currently uploading my images to share with the site.

    Chris

    • Richard says:

      The albumartexchange.com website is an excellent resource that I’m sure a lot of people will find really useful.

      Here’s hoping that the next generation of MP3 players will have a more sophisticated approach to handling album art.

  24. Gerard says:

    Hiya,

    Very informative article. Especially the max supported size for embedded images was hard to find on the net.

    Regards,

    Gerard.

  25. John Bartholomew says:

    Your article is extremely helpful. However, you do not mention what setting to use for dpi (unless I missed it). I’m scanning images from CDs and resizing them using Photoshop. My 300 x 300 pixel photos are about 150 kb. You mentioned a 62 kb size. What dpi should I be using? What jpg quality should I select when saving the files?

    • Richard says:

      I use 72 dpi resolution, which seems to be a fairly standard resolution for web/computer based images.

      Regarding the JPEG quality, that’s probably a bit more subjective as lower quality will lead to smaller file sizes, but will obviously lead to poorer images, which can be in the eye of the beholder. Maybe a bit of experimentation is required; trying a few different settings to find a quality level that you find acceptable without too many visual artefacts.

  26. Lucas says:

    If you’re a unix console user, this recipe may be a helpful starting point:

    mp3info2 -F “APIC < 300×300.jpg" tgt.mp3

  27. Philip says:

    Hi

    Im trying to embed the album art in the mp3 tag file using VB code but cant find the instructions to do it. Could anyone help me in this respect?

  28. David says:

    Richard-
    Thanks for a very informative thread.
    My question is this: “If you embed album art in a single mp3, will that be sufficient to display the cover for the entire album, or would I need to embed that art in each track on an album? Would it need to be the first track on the album? Last?
    With +\- 9000 mp3 files, it would save so much time and disc space if I could simply embed once per album.
    Thanks!

    • Richard says:

      Hi, a very good question, but unfortunately the answer isn’t simple as it really depends how your MP3 player has implemented the ID3 specification.

      My post on Alternative ID3 Tags for Adding Artwork to MP3 Files should explain things for you however.

      I would certainly counsel against putting artwork in every track as this would, as you say, take up a huge amount of unnecessary space.

  29. Karsten says:

    I hate MP3.

    A few years ago, I added cover art to ALL my mp3 files using iTunes. Now after I installed Win7 with WMP, I no longer use iTunes. Unfortunetely, WMP cannot read the cover art from all mp3 files – only som of them.

    If I add album art to an album in WMP, it refuses to add the cover to all files in the album. Nomatter how I do it. Likewise, Windows Explorer can read the album art for the album, but not all files in the album.

    What is wrong with people making software for playing mp3 files? I mean, this is not getting a rocket to the moon or something. How hard can it be?

    So, all I have to do is once AGAIN to add the abum art to each file using 3. part software? This is not only lame – it is plain stupid.

    • Richard says:

      I do indeed sympathise with your plight having experienced how different media players handle track artwork first hand!

      • Karsten says:

        Hi Richard

        I followed your guide and installed the Mp3Tag software. It works outstanding! I can change everything (even remove hidden iTunes tags) and add Album Art to EVERY file. Great!

        Now I only need to edit another 638 albums – or delete 90% of them which I never hear anyway :)

        Thanks for your guide.

  30. Mike says:

    I’ve put art on my Mp3′s through I tunes. The art has also shown on another itunes on another PC. The art has also shown up on Windows Media Player on various other computers. Does this suggest that the art IS embedded in the MP3′s from Itunes (rather than put in a seperate folder?). I realise that you haven’t used itunes but I would have thought that this is the case given that the art is shown on various computers.

    Opinion?

    • Richard says:

      Like you say, I’m not familiar with iTunes, but it does seem to suggest that the artwork has been embedded in the files, although it’s always possible that the artwork could be saved in the album folder with the tracks associated to the particular album.

      You could always use a free tool like mp3tag, which will show you all the additional data actually embedded in the tracks themselves. That way you’ll be certain and be able to see what’s actually happening for yourself.

  31. Scott says:

    My favorite place to search for high quality album artwork is AlbumArtExchange.com. IMO, the selection of images there is miles above the other sites.

  32. Eddy says:

    Hi Richard I have a little problem I recently ran into, Ive been tagging and putting artwork to all my mp3′s using Music Brainz Picard first for the info and then mediamonkey for the artwork and I was doing fine until I realized that most on the info and artwork doesn’t show on the explorer windows, winamp shows it fine, itunes and zune player also, i dont know what im doing wrong, any help would be kindly appreciated !! P.D.: I really don’t care about the WMP showing it since I don’t use it but I would really like it to be displayed on the explorer windows ! by the way i’m on windows 7 x64

  33. Adam says:

    @Eddy

    For the art to show in windows explorer you will need to place a “folder.jpg” in the folder. Then when you look at the folders in thumbnail view it will replace the standard yellow folder with whatever the folder.jpg file is.

    • Eddy says:

      thanx Adam, but I discovered what the problem was, music braiz picard was messing up my files cause it wasn’t copying the info over to id3tag v.2 and it wasn’t cleaning the old tag until i clicked on that option, now its fine and media monkey is perfect for finding the artwork, until now i have half on my mp3s perfectly tagged and with the correct artwork and everything shows perfectly on the explorer windows, i really recommend this method to everyone !! P.D.: the wmp can read the metadata and the artwork just fine with this method, theres no need for a folder.jpg file cause all the artwork is embedded into the mp3 with mediamonkey !!! its perfect !!! al my media players read all the info, itunes, winamp, zune player, wmp and my iPhone !!! if anyone wants any info mail me at hudtwalcker@hotmail.com I will answer all your questions !!

  34. Melodian says:

    I’m having the exact opposite problem: I’m trying to REMOVE artwork from mp3 files, for reasons too complex to discuss here. Problem is, the picture (900×900 jpeg) does NOT seem to be in the tag. I’ve stripped out all id3 tags with numerous tag editors and the picture is still there, embedded somehow into the file itself. The only way I can get rid of it is to decode the mp3 to a wav file, then re-encode it back to mp3 again. Not only is this a pain, but I’m sure the double conversion degrades the quality as well. Anyone have any ideas as to how these pictures are embedded, and how to get rid of them? I’m using Windows; is it possible they were added with some specific Mac software? Thanks for any info.

    • Richard says:

      You are indeed correct that decoding and re-encoding an MP3 track will degrade the quality and is best avoided if at all possible.

      If you want to send me one of your tracks that is exhibiting the problem, I’d be happy to have a look at it for you as you’ve certainly sparked my curiosity.

    • Sumit says:

      Try using Winamp player. I use it to delete artwork that is embedded into the song. It deletes the artwork but you cannot paste artwork again via Winamp.

  35. Adam says:

    @Melodian, I would not re-encode.

    What software have you tried? I can’t give Tag&Rename enough props, have you tried this? This deals with adding art and showing already added art.

  36. Alan says:

    But how do I change album art that has alredy been embedded in a track previously that is incorrect. I tried dragging the new artwork over the old within iTunes but it just flashes back to the old incorrect one and wont let me change…………. infuriating!!!!

    • Richard says:

      Try another tag editor like Mp3Tag. I’ve changed artwork in the past using this tool. Maybe iTunes is trying to be too clever and is overriding what you’re trying to do?

  37. Melodian says:

    Hi, thank you for the replies. I’ve tried ID3-TagIT (my tag editor of first choice), mptagger, winamp, foobar2k, id3kill, media monkey, and a couple of others whose names escape me at the moment. I do have tag&rename, although I haven’t used it in a while but will dig it out and see what it can do.

    I’ve also checked to be sure there’s not an external album art jpg somewhere that these are referring back to. My best guess at the moment after digging into this some more is that the problem files seem to use the id3v2.4 format, and perhaps tag editors that expect to see a v2.3 tag are unable to remove the picture, even when they say the tag has been completely removed. I’m going to explore this angle in more depth.

    Richard, I appreciate your offer to take a look at one of the tracks, and I’ll be glad to send you a copy of the next one I encounter. (I’ve deleted the originals of the last batch I “fixed” by converting … and I agree, this is a solution to be avoided if at all possible.) I’m certain that I’ll run into others shortly, though.

    Thanks again for your help.

    • Richard says:

      Mp3Tag is my preferred tag editor and it reckons to support ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tag, so if you think it could be an ID3v2.4 issue, perhaps this would help?

  38. Melodian says:

    Mystery solved … I think.

    When I first opened the files with Id3TagIT, it showed that a v1 and a v2.3 tag were present. I removed both of them (it reported no tags of any kind at this point), and closed the program. However, the pictures were still present in the mp3, as shown by ACDSee (which displays any image in any file). Looking at these files with various tag editors, there were no apparent tags present at all in the files … yet still the embedded pictures.

    It wasn’t until I accidentally opened the problem files a second time in Id3TagIT that it reported a v2.4 tag was present! I removed this 2.4 tag and presto! the images were gone. I’m not sure if there were both versions present originally (is that even possible?) and the v2.3 masked the v2.4, or what. Also not sure why any of the other tag editors failed to spot the 2.4 tag. But no matter, I’m good now. Just thought I’d mention it in case anyone else ever has the same problem. If you don’t succeed the first time, try again. :-)

    • Richard says:

      An excellent bit of detective work and I’m pleased to hear that you’ve finally solved your problem. Thanks for posting your solution, hopefully this will help others who find themselves in a similar pickle.

  39. kiki says:

    Hi,

    I have an fusion n-power, and I want to know how to add album art onto it, I don’t quite understand the instructions, but can you walk me through?

    Thanks:)

    • Richard says:

      Hi, I’m afraid I don’t have any experience of the Fusion n-power, but would suggest you need to add album art to the files on your main computer before transferring to your media player using one of any number of popular tag editors.

  40. luke says:

    Thanks for taking the time to help people with their problems. I’m having sort of the opposite problem. How do I get windows media player to stop with the album art? It is useless and starts to take up a lot of space. I delete them from where I have my songs stored, but as soon as I open up win. med. player they all come back, 4 for each album picture; there’s 3 called album art, 2 just say albumart and 1 says albumartsmall, and then there’s 1 that says folder with the other 3 in it. I originally pasted some pictures to the album art spot, but now, well, there’s a lot of songs and all the extra album art things just take-up too much space. How can I permanently delete them so they won’t just come back? The properties folder gives me their location, but deleting them from there doesn’t do anything. This is driving me nuts and if anyone has any idea, it would be helpful

    • Richard says:

      Hi Luke, Unless you are really struggling with storage on your system, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort (if indeed it’s at all possible) as the storage requirement for the artwork is fractional compared to the music itself.

      Windows Media Player stores artwork per album, which is much more efficient than storing the same artwork for every track. I’m not sure if you can stop this behaviour in Media Player, I suspect that it’s deeply embedded within the inner workings of the software.

  41. Ted says:

    I have old mp3 files that doesn’t support id3, is there anyway I could convert them so it can support id3 and I can add all this artworks?

    • Richard says:

      From my understanding all MP3 files should be able to accept ID3 tags. Try downloading one of the free ID3 tag editors and have a go with one of your old MP3 files, it should work. I’d be interested to hear how you get on.

  42. Lorenzo says:

    Hi Richard, sorry for the question and for my bad English..
    have you some ideas how to extract cover images from an ID3 taf to show it in a HTML (or php or…) page in web?
    I’m tryin to find someone who tell me if it is possible or not: the only solutio, until now, I’ve found, are to put images from Amazon or Doscogs.. There’s no way to take it from the mo3 (better if from a playlist “.pls” or something like this..)

    Thank you very much.

    • nzj says:

      Hey Lorenzo, I happen to have the same need! Have you manage to find any solution?

      • Lorenzo says:

        Hi nzj!

        Sorry for the delay: if you can readmy answer to Richard, you’ll be able to understand that I was away for a while and I haven’t find solutions before the one suggested me by Richard: I’ll try it and I’ll post my resutsa as soon as possible^^

        Have a nice day.

        L.

    • Richard says:

      Hi Lorenzo, Sorry for the delay in responding, but I’ve been away for a few weeks.

      I believe it is possible to extract the album artwork from an MP3 ID3 tag. PHP has some classes that you could use for this if your web server has them installed as part of its PHP installation:
      http://www.php.net/manual/en/refs.utilspec.audio.php.

      I’ve never tried this myself, so I’d be interested to hear if you have any success with this.

      • Lorenzo says:

        Hi Richard!

        I had the same “problem” of you ^^

        Sorry for the delay. Ok, thank you very much, I’ll try to use that clases and I will post my results as son as possible :)

  43. chef archie says:

    which is the best size of album art to use for my nokia 5530 and nokia 5230, is it 500 x 500 or 300 x 300 for it to embed. or you have a suggested size. thank you…

    • Carlos says:

      For phones I think 300×300 is a good size, but I use bigger sizes because I use the same mp3 files in my PC and in my phone, in my PC I prefer big album arts.

      BUT, I realized that album art (embedded directly into the mp3) bigger than 600×600 pixels don’t show up in Nokia phones music players, so now I use a maximun 600×600 in all files and it shows up perfectly in my PC/Winamp and in my phone music player. My phone is a Nokia 5320, but I think this is the same for all the Nokia phones with Symbian OS/S60 system, which is the system of my phone. I hope this help you.

      I use Mp3Tag for tag editing and album art embedding and never had a problem, I strongly recommend this powerful tag editor, works perfect and you never have surprices.

      (PS: sorry for my english)

      • Richard says:

        Very interesting what you say about the maximum resolution for album artwork on Nokia phones. I wonder how many others have experienced this issue?

        Your English is excellent by the way; much better than I am at ANY foreign language.

  44. [...] i mp3-filen. Tänk på att göra en logga för din poddradio. Och bädda in loggan i mp3-filen. Att visuellt kunna identifiera poddradion i mobiltelefonen underlättar dramatiskt. Den syns [...]

  45. Is there any way of adding album art to MP3 files using ffmpeg CLI on Linux?
    Thanks in advance.
    ~ Ansuman

  46. Christopher says:

    @Ansuman

    I found this (http://blog.lostpaperclips.com/2010/10/16/embedding-images-in-mp3-files-redux) useful. Perhaps not so helpful for those not on Linux, but this let me put artwork into all my MP3s so that I could see them on my Android phone.

  47. nadir says:

    hi there,

    i decide sort my mp3 collection, but i have little problem with album covering. I have used mp3Taggers, but they just linking my mp3 with jpeg file. When jpeg deleted, covers deleting automaticly as well. But i have one mp3 file which no idea where from came, but it has cover without any linked jpeg. I couldn’t reach why it’s like that. please gimmi advice.

    Thanks.

    • Richard says:

      Hi, I use MP3TAG all the time and it actually embeds the artwork into the MP3 file, not just a referenced link like you seem to be experiencing. It’s free to download, so why not give it a try? You should also be able to edit or delete the image that is embedded in your one file.

  48. Martin says:

    This is an excellent thread, but I’m still not clear! Some of my album art appears quite large in WMP, but most is a tiny postage stamp in the middle of the screen. I’d love to fill most of the available screen space if I could.
    I’m battling with the same problem in other areas too: onmy mobile phone, some contact .jpgs show full screen when a call is in progress, but others are tiny. A large one and a small one each show about 1150*1652 pixel size and 72dpi, yet the displayed image varies enormously. I think if I could crack this for WMP, then I could resolve all……

    • Richard says:

      Not really sure what to suggest. You could try copying a 300×300 jpeg onto your clipboard, then go into WMP, right click the existing small album art and paste the new artwork from the clipboard to see if that manages to overwrite the smaller artwork for you.

  49. Waldo says:

    Hi! Is there a way to embed an album cover to wave files, like e.g. MP3TAG does for mp3 files?

    • Richard says:

      Hi,

      Unfortunately not. WAV files don’t really support metadata as such, although some flavours of WAV such as the Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) do support some limited metadata, but aimed more at the broadcasting industry and not consumer oriented stuff such as album art.

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