This page outlines websites that MusicBrainz can use to retrieve cover art besides Amazon.

Amazon is the preferred and most common way of retrieving cover art via Amazon relationships.

However there are a number of times that cover art isn't available on Amazon, either due to customer-submitted images or to an absence of a release. Also Amazon does not stock a lot of indie music that other smaller retailers on the net sell.

In order for MusicBrainz to deep link (link directly to a JPEG file on someone else's site) for the purpose of displaying cover art MusicBrainz needs permission from the provider. Each provider should be contacted to ask for permission to deep link to their site, MusicBrainz should NOT link to a retailer if no permission has been granted.

For direction on adding cover art see how to add cover art.

Supported Web Sites

Specific permissions for individual releases is tracked on the release permission page.

Ruoak has said that links to art on an artist's own website may be linked to, but only if written permission to do so is requested and received from the artist or their representative. In such a case, that written permission must be published here in the wiki. -- BrianFreud [2007-05-10:4:33EST]

Using the Internet Archive (archive.org)

As of December 8th, 2009, linking to absolutely any image on the Internet Archive is allowed!

This includes any image hosted locally on the Internet Archive and those that have been archived using the Wayback Machine, however, if we receive a request to remove a link to an image from a copyright owner, we will comply.

If you believe that MusicBrainz violates your copyright by linking to a Wayback Machine image, notify us, and we will address the issue as quickly as we can.

Unsupported Sites With Permission

The following sites have given us permission but are not yet supported in the server. It may be OK to link to some of these, but support is not guaranteed to be added.

Proposed Web Sites

Please note that no permission has been granted for any of the following sites, linking to images directly off their servers is not permitted. When adding a site, please include an example release and a direct link to its cover. Please also keep the list in alphabetical order. Entries highlighted in blue have been contacted for permission.

Contact

This section should contain form letters that volunteers could use to ask for permission. Please volunteer to write such a letter!

References

Discussion on MB-Users: http://www.nabble.com/Proposal%3A-URL-based-cover-art-tf2817425s2885.html#a7863760

FootNotes

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} http://bugs.musicbrainz.org/browser/mb_server/branches/RELEASE_20090524-BRANCH/cgi-bin/MusicBrainz/Server/CoverArt.pm#L39
2. ↑ Permission has been given, however, they do not seem to allow deep linking so the usefulness of their urls is questionable.