High quality album art?

July 15, 2006 11:29 AM

I need high quality album art (> 450px square), and I am willing to pay for it. Anybody know anything? Obviously the iTunes Album Art hack doesn't work and freecovers.net is unreliable, annoying, and the images are sometimes not very crisp.
posted by ofthestrait to Technology (6 answers total)

Album Art Aggregator polls the various Amazons for album art. It depends on how obscure something is, but you can usually find 500x500px images for common (and some uncommon) albums.
posted by Drunken_munky at 11:45 AM on July 15, 2006

I've had better luck finding 500x500 album covers at walmart.com than at amazon.
posted by booth at 1:20 PM on July 15, 2006

I always tried buy.com first. Their new Ajax-y (?) enlarging images make it seem like you can't copy the large image, but just right-click and select view image to get it in a new window.

If you're really willing to pay, you could send me a list and a ballpark figure (whatsplanb at Google's email service) and maybe we could work something out...
posted by Rock Steady at 8:26 PM on July 15, 2006

Check out istockphoto.com for imagery. It's only $1 each. Then if you know your way around Photoshop you can add text or anything else.
posted by livinginmonrovia at 12:33 AM on July 16, 2006

If any of your music is electronic/dance, search Juno's catalog and see if they have it. Their fullsize artwork scans are gigantic compared to most.
posted by Señor Pantalones at 4:45 AM on July 16, 2006

Depending on what you're using it for (i.e. if you're using it for publication), you may have some luck contacting the PR firm/label representing the artist. If they're smaller, contacting the artists themselves is also an option. This works especially well if a lot of the albums you're looking for happen to be on the same large label; often people like Geffen or Universal will have media sites set up.

If you're just looking for something to drop into iTunes, of course, this tip is unlikely to work for you.
posted by chrominance at 10:51 AM on July 16, 2006