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# FetchArt Plugin

The `fetchart` plugin retrieves album art images from various sources on the Web and stores them as image files.

`fetchart` supports fetching images in `JPEG`, `PNG`, and `WebP` formats.

To use the `fetchart` plugin, first enable it in your configuration (see Using Plugins). Then, install `beets` with `fetchart` extra

    pip install "beets[fetchart]"

## Fetching Album Art During Import

When the plugin is enabled, it automatically tries to get album art for every album you import.

By default, beets stores album art image files alongside the music files for an album in a file called `cover.jpg`. To customize the name of this file, use the art_filename config option. To embed the art into the files’ tags, use the EmbedArt Plugin. (You’ll want to have both plugins enabled.)

## Configuration

To configure the plugin, make a `fetchart:` section in your configuration file. The available options are:

- auto: Enable automatic album art fetching during import. Default: `yes`.

- cautious: Pick only trusted album art by ignoring filenames that do not contain one of the keywords in `cover_names`. Default: `no`.

- cover_names: Prioritize images containing words in this list. Default: `cover front art album folder`.

- fallback: Path to a fallback album art file if no album art was found otherwise. Default: `None` (disabled).

- fetch_for_asis: Fetch album art from online sources during import, even when the as-is option is selected in the Auto-Tagger. When `no`, only local filesystem sources of art are considered for as-is imports. Default: `no`.

- minwidth: Only images with a width bigger or equal to `minwidth` are considered as valid album art candidates. Default: 0.

- maxwidth: A maximum image width to downscale fetched images if they are too big. The resize operation reduces image width to at most `maxwidth` pixels. The height is recomputed so that the aspect ratio is preserved. See the section on Cover Art Archive Pre-sized Thumbnails below for additional information regarding the Cover Art Archive source. Default: 0 (no maximum is enforced).

- quality: The JPEG quality level to use when compressing images (when `maxwidth` is set). This should be either a number from 1 to 100 or 0 to use the default quality. 65–75 is usually a good starting point. The default behavior depends on the imaging tool used for scaling: ImageMagick tries to estimate the input image quality and uses 92 if it cannot be determined, and PIL defaults to 75. Default: 0 (disabled)

- max_filesize: The maximum size of a target piece of cover art in bytes. When using an ImageMagick backend this sets `-define jpeg:extent=max_filesize`. Using PIL this will reduce JPG quality by up to 50% to attempt to reach the target filesize. Neither method is guaranteed to reach the target size, however in most cases it should succeed. Default: 0 (disabled)

- enforce_ratio: Only images with a width:height ratio of 1:1 are considered as valid album art candidates if set to `yes`. It is also possible to specify a certain deviation to the exact ratio to still be considered valid. This can be done either in pixels (`enforce_ratio: 10px`) or as a percentage of the longer edge (`enforce_ratio: 0.5%`). Default: `no`.

- sources: List of sources to search for images. An asterisk `*` expands to all available sources. Default: `filesystem coverart itunes amazon albumart`, i.e., everything but `wikipedia`, `google`, `fanarttv` and `lastfm`. Enable those sources for more matches at the cost of some speed. They are searched in the given order, thus in the default config, no remote (Web) art source are queried if local art is found in the filesystem. To use a local image as fallback, move it to the end of the list. For even more fine-grained control over the search order, see the section on Album Art Sources below.

- google_key: Your Google API key (to enable the Google Custom Search backend). Default: None.

- google_engine: The custom search engine to use. Default: The beets custom search engine, which searches the entire web.

- fanarttv_key: The personal API key for requesting art from fanart.tv. See below.

- lastfm_key: The personal API key for requesting art from Last.fm. See below.

- store_source: If enabled, fetchart stores the artwork’s source in a flexible tag named `art_source`. See below for the rationale behind this. Default: `no`.

- high_resolution: If enabled, fetchart retrieves artwork in the highest resolution it can find (warning: image files can sometimes reach >20MB). Default: `no`.

- deinterlace: If enabled, Pillow or ImageMagick backends are instructed to store cover art as non-progressive JPEG. You might need this if you use DAPs that don’t support progressive images. Default: `no`.

- cover_format: If enabled, forced the cover image into the specified format. Most often, this will be either `JPEG`, `PNG`, or `WEBP` (see image-formats). Also respects `deinterlace`. Default: None (leave unchanged).

Note: `maxwidth` and `enforce_ratio` options require either ImageMagick or Pillow.

Note

Previously, there was a `remote_priority` option to specify when to look for art on the filesystem. This is still respected, but a deprecation message will be shown until you replace this configuration with the new `filesystem` value in the `sources` array.

Image formats

Other image formats are available, though the full list depends on your system and what backend you are using. If you’re using the ImageMagick backend, you can use `magick identify -list format` to get a full list of all supported formats, and you can use the Python function PIL.features.pilinfo() to print a list of all supported formats in Pillow (`python3 -c 'import PIL.features as f; f.pilinfo()'`).

Here’s an example that makes plugin select only images that contain `front` or `back` keywords in their filenames and prioritizes the iTunes source over others:

    fetchart:
        cautious: true
        cover_names: front back
        sources: itunes *

## Manually Fetching Album Art

Use the `fetchart` command to download album art after albums have already been imported:

    $ beet fetchart [-f] [query]

By default, the command will only look for album art when the album doesn’t already have it; the `-f` or `--force` switch makes it search for art in Web databases regardless. If you specify a query, only matching albums will be processed; otherwise, the command processes every album in your library.

## Display Only Missing Album Art

Use the `fetchart` command with the `-q` switch in order to display only missing art:

    $ beet fetchart [-q] [query]

By default the command will display all albums matching the `query`. When the `-q` or `--quiet` switch is given, only albums for which artwork has been fetched, or for which artwork could not be found will be printed.

## Image Resizing

Beets can resize images using Pillow, ImageMagick, or a server-side resizing proxy. If either Pillow or ImageMagick is installed, beets will use those; otherwise, it falls back to the resizing proxy. If the resizing proxy is used, no resizing is performed for album art found on the filesystem—only downloaded art is resized. Server-side resizing can also be slower than local resizing, so consider installing one of the two backends for better performance.

When using ImageMagick, beets looks for the `convert` executable in your path. On some versions of Windows, the program can be shadowed by a system-provided `convert.exe`. On these systems, you may need to modify your `%PATH%` environment variable so that ImageMagick comes first or use Pillow instead.

## Album Art Sources

By default, this plugin searches for art in the local filesystem as well as on the Cover Art Archive, the iTunes Store, Amazon, and AlbumArt.org, in that order. You can reorder the sources or remove some to speed up the process using the `sources` configuration option.

When looking for local album art, beets checks for image files located in the same folder as the music files you’re importing. Beets prefers to use an image file whose name contains “cover”, “front”, “art”, “album” or “folder”, but in the absence of well-known names, it will use any image file in the same folder as your music files.

For some of the art sources, the backend service can match artwork by various criteria. If you want finer control over the search order in such cases, you can use this alternative syntax for the `sources` option:

    fetchart:
        sources:
            - filesystem
            - coverart: release
            - itunes
            - coverart: releasegroup
            - '*'

where listing a source without matching criteria will default to trying all available strategies. Entries of the forms `coverart: release releasegroup` and `coverart: *` are also valid. Currently, only the `coverart` source supports multiple criteria: namely, `release` and `releasegroup`, which refer to the respective MusicBrainz IDs.

When you choose to apply changes during an import, beets will search for art as described above. For “as-is” imports (and non-autotagged imports using the `-A` flag), beets only looks for art on the local filesystem.

### Google custom search

To use the google image search backend you need to register for a Google API key. Set the `google_key` configuration option to your key, then add `google` to the list of sources in your configuration.

Optionally, you can define a custom search engine. Get your search engine’s token and use it for your `google_engine` configuration option. The default engine searches the entire web for cover art.

Note that the Google custom search API is limited to 100 queries per day. After that, the fetchart plugin will fall back on other declared data sources.

### Fanart.tv

Although not strictly necessary right now, you might think about registering a personal fanart.tv API key. Set the `fanarttv_key` configuration option to your key, then add `fanarttv` to the list of sources in your configuration.

More detailed information can be found on their Wiki. Specifically, the personal key will give you earlier access to new art.

### Last.fm

To use the Last.fm backend, you need to register for a Last.fm API key. Set the `lastfm_key` configuration option to your API key, then add `lastfm` to the list of sources in your configuration.

### Spotify

Spotify backend is enabled by default and will update album art if a valid Spotify album id is found.

### Cover Art URL

The `fetchart` plugin can also use a flexible attribute field `cover_art_url` where you can manually specify the image URL to be used as cover art. Any custom plugin can use this field to provide the cover art and `fetchart` will use it as a source.

## Cover Art Archive Pre-sized Thumbnails

The CAA provides pre-sized thumbnails of width 250, 500, and 1200 pixels. If you set the `maxwidth` option to one of these values, the corresponding image will be downloaded, saving `beets` the need to scale down the image. It can also speed up the downloading process, as some cover arts can sometimes be very large.

## Storing the Artwork’s Source

Storing the current artwork’s source might be used to narrow down `fetchart` commands. For example, if some albums have artwork placed manually in their directories that should not be replaced by a forced album art fetch, you could do

`beet fetchart -f ^art_source:filesystem`

The values written to `art_source` are the same names used in the `sources` configuration value.