The fetchart plugin retrieves album art images from various sources on the Web and stores them as image files.
To automatically get album art for every album you import, just enable the plugin by putting fetchart on your config file’s plugins line (see Plugins).
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 disable automatic art downloading, just put this in your configuration file:
[fetchart]
autofetch: no
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 regardless. If you specify a query, only matching albums will be processed; otherwise, the command processes every album in your library.
Currently, this plugin searches for art in the local filesystem as well as on the Cover Art Archive, Amazon, and AlbumArt.org (in that order).
When looking for local album art, beets checks for image files located in the same folder as the music files you’re importing. If you have an image file called “cover,” “front,” “art,” “album,” for “folder” alongside your music, beets will treat it as album art and skip searching any online databases.
When you choose to apply changes during an import, beets searches all sources for album art. For “as-is” imports (and non-autotagged imports using the -A flag), beets only looks for art on the local filesystem.
This plugin fetches album art but does not embed images into files’ tags. To do that, use the EmbedArt Plugin. (You’ll want to have both plugins enabled.)