[Tip] Getting Album Art to show on your device

Kryten2k35 · July 11th, 2010, 11:57 AM

I'm writing this for the HTC Desire, but it should work for all other models and most likely all other Android phones. The process was identical for my old Sony Ericsson C905 and my girlfriends SE W580i.

The problem is the phone is looking for the album art within the track itself. So, we need to embed it, because having a .jpg file in the folder will not do. The phone does not look for the album art there, so it's not going to find it!

1. First you need to download a freeware program called mp3tag. Install it and run the program.

You may donate to mp3tag if you like the software. I've been using it for quite some time and I gave them $20. Not much, but I hope it helped them

2. Secondly, drag and drop all the music that does not have album art stored within the file. Highlight a number of tracks, best to do this an album at a time. Now you can either right click in the empty album art box like the image below and find the album art on your computer.

Or you can highlight all the tracks (again, best to do this one album at a time) and click "Tag Sources" on the menu bar and choose "Cover Art" then pick either amazon.com or amazon.de. It doesn't really matter which.

Now the album in my screenshot wasn't found automatically by the amazon search, but most other albums are.

3. If your albums aren't found via the amazon searches you need to the first part of step 2. However, you still need your album art. A good website (that did have the art for my example album) is: Albumart - CD and DVD cover searchengine

4. Copy your tracks to your phone!

CarsnGadgets · July 11th, 2010, 12:14 PM

I did exactly the same thing when i got my Desire, It worked well for me.
Good guide, well done.

Hardcore · July 11th, 2010, 12:23 PM

Good tip!

Phantom1275 · August 31st, 2010, 03:23 PM

Sorry to bump this topic, but I'm having some problems in loading my mp3 album art.

All my mp3 have embedded album art. I use mp3tag to embed it in ID3 tags. However, there are some album art that are not displayed in HTC music player.

Most album art are showed, about 4/5 of all. It's the 1/5 that bothers me. After embeding album art, what else do I have to do to get them all showed?

Phantom1275 · August 31st, 2010, 08:17 PM

Well, I've sorted it out, kind of.

I had many album arts with 200x195 to 200x200 dimension, and they were not showed. I guess HTC player deals better with album arts bigger than that, because I have changed them to bigger images, and now they are displayed.

Still, there are some weird things. I have some small album arts, 130x130, and I have no problem with them. Go figure!

coos lick · September 22nd, 2010, 12:09 PM

If your needs are simple - album art grabber (free from the market) also works.

Casual Pete · September 23rd, 2010, 04:10 PM

Dbpoweramp imbeds the album art as it rips the cd.

For the albums that I've downloaded that haven't got art I just rename the art "Folder" and put it in the same folder as the album.Works fine for me.

CarsnGadgets · September 30th, 2010, 04:45 AM

the phone app, 'MP3 Cover Fetcher' is good for getting the odd cover that doesnt work for the MP3 tag method, it searches and embedds the cover art into the mp3 for you.

You need the other info to be accurate though like the artist, album, track name etc. or it wont find it, but you can modify those tags from within the app as well I think.

processchip · October 1st, 2010, 08:45 AM

I used " Album Art Grabber" solved all my album art problems.

randonneur · October 16th, 2010, 06:08 AM

Hi,
I have transferred music to subfolders of the mp3 folder, for example "let it bleed" is one of my subfolders. In that folder I have the jpg art file and all the music tracks for that album.

when I select that album in the music player it shows the artwork.