Blog Header Layout

Album art is a little different for Foobar than for other programs like iTunes and JRiver.  These other programs have repositories of album art that are automatically downloaded into the player when music files are added, whereas Foobar requires a bit more effort, but gives you some added flexibility to choose the cover you want (often with higher resolution).  Album Art Downloader (AAD) is the only program I’ve found that makes getting artwork relatively quick and easy and without it you’ll really be spinning your wheels.

To get started, navigate to the site below, download the software and run the installation process (I usually select all the options when installing).

https://sourceforge.net/projects/album-art

AAD will scan your music library folder(s) and show which albums don’t have a cover and then search about 25 Internet sites for covers and associated pics.  Open the program to get the window below.  The area to the right side under “Sources” shows the websites where the software will look for artwork.

AlbumArtDownloader

Click:  File > New > File Browser, to get the File Browser window.

Navigate to the path where your music library folder (or folders) is located, by clicking the square button to the left of the “Search” button.  Once your path shows in the box click Search.

AlbumArtDownloader1

This pic shows the albums in a library that don’t have cover art.  Those folders with covers are Green and those without are Pink.  Check the box next to any of these lines and search for that cover by pressing the “Get Artwork for Selection” button.

AlbumArtDownloader2

By the way, if you click “Options” under the folder path, here are the settings I’ve been using.

AlbumArtDownloader3A new window will open for each album you selected in the check box, which will show the search results.  You can see the options settings I’m using for this window (both “Group By” and “Sort by” are set to “Size”).

Some results will have a better image than others.  Some will be completely unrelated to what you’re looking for and  some will have random pictures of the artist that you may prefer to the cover.

AlbumArtDownloader71If you click a cover and hold the mouse button down until the pic comes into focus you can preview it, like below.   To automatically download the image into the album folder, click the little floppy disk icon to the right and the image will download to the album’s folder and named “folder.jpg”; I have Foobar set to automatically detect a file called folder.jpg in each album folder as the cover.

AlbumArtDownloader6

It will take a little while if you have several hundred covers to download, but this is the best option I’ve found for a program like Foobar.