How do I get allmusic to display the correct album cover?

July 7, 2009 11:05 AM

Any tips for getting allmusic to correct the artwork in their entry on my album?

Allmusic.com posted a review of an album I released in 2007. That's great. However, the album cover displayed in the review is wrong. It looks like they scanned the cover of the album with the sheet from the PR company still slapped on top of it. The PR sheet completely obscures the album artwork and it looks very silly. I recently noticed that the album art was displaying this way on someone's computer after they ripped the album, presumably because the artwork was downloaded from the allmusic database.

I have no interest in promoting the PR company and I'd like my album cover to appear the way it was intended. I've notified them via the "corrections to this entry" form on the web site many times since the review was posted, mentioning that I can provide a high-res version of the album cover if necessary. I have never received a response. Is there anything else I can do about this? I can't find a phone number or email address of anyone who can fix this.

posted by ludwig_van to media & arts (10 answers total)

How long ago did you submit the corrections? I think you've done pretty much all you can do without getting in touch with an actual human. It's amazing how difficult it is to find a phone number for anything relating to Allmusic, so the only thing I was able to find was the number to Allmusic owner AMG's parent company, Macrovision, in an old PDF document. That number leads you to a recording saying the phone number has been disconnected and to call [phone]. That one appears to work.

Good luck.
posted by joshrholloway at 11:47 AM on July 7, 2009

By the way, that number appears to be just the giant megacorp main headquarters number. Who knows if anyone you need to talk to even has a phone or an extension.
posted by joshrholloway at 11:49 AM on July 7, 2009

When allmusic had my band's information wrong, I had to submit the "corrections to this entry" form three times over the course of many months before they (silently) did anything about it. The good news is that it did get fixed eventually.
posted by dfan at 12:01 PM on July 7, 2009

I probably first submitted the correction in late 2007 when the review went up and have submitted the same correction, with variations in wording, several times since then.
posted by ludwig_van at 12:21 PM on July 7, 2009

Maybe you should include a URL to the high-res version, hosted somewhere that you know will be up for a while (as opposed to e.g. photobucket or imgur, which may disappear after some time). If you MeMail me, I'll host it for you indefinitely.

That way, when/if they do finally get around to it, they can just make the correction themselves rather than call you back (which they're less likely to do).
posted by spiderskull at 12:55 PM on July 7, 2009

Is your album carried by any of the online music services like Rhapsody? They purchase metadata from AMG, and have responsive contacts who are responsible for fixing data errors, so complaining downstream, thru a commercial customer, may actually be more effective than complaining thru their free service.
posted by nomisxid at 3:20 PM on July 7, 2009

Anecdotal evidence: I work for a band on a major label, and we had a similar problem with a very out of date photo (ie not current band lineup, ~8 years old) being used on our Allmusic entry. The old photo also populated our iTunes bio via AMG which was fairly embarrassing.

I submitted the correction 3-6 times over the course of 3 years, and then randomly one day I noticed it was fixed. I never successfully managed to contact a human, just many submit-a-correction entries. So i guess my advice would be to just keep trying via the form. If you have a label, it's also probably worth it to have their new media person take a shot at it too.
posted by soleiluna at 3:49 PM on July 7, 2009

Seconding providing a URL to the image, instead of expecting them to reply and get the image from you. That's the difference between 15 seconds of work and 60 seconds of work. The latter ain't gonna happen.
posted by intermod at 8:17 PM on July 7, 2009

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, and thanks especially to the mefite who PMed me. Presumably due to her intervention I received an email this morning from the AMG Senior Pop Music Editor requesting the correct artwork and promising to have it fixed. Mefi comes through again! Huzzah!
posted by ludwig_van at 9:14 AM on July 8, 2009

And the entry's been corrected. Score!
posted by ludwig_van at 9:29 AM on July 11, 2009