How to Add Album Artwork to an .mp3 File on Windows

Are you missing album cover art from some of your MP3s? There are several Windows tools that make it easy to find and add the correct artwork for your MP3s. You can use Windows Media Player, VLC, iTunes, or Mp3tag to automatically download album art and add it to your MP3 files, or download album covers from Discogs and MusicBrainz and manually add the artwork. This guide will walk you through the best tools for adding or replacing album art on MP3 files in Windows 10 & 11.

Quick Steps: Add Artwork to MP3s with Windows Media Player

Open Windows Media Player and click Library.
Click the Music tab.
Right-click the current cover or placeholder image.
Select Update album info to automatically download cover art.

Section 1 of 6:

Using Windows Media Player

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Open Windows Media Player and click Library. You can use Windows Media Player to change your MP3 album art. To launch the app, press the Windows key on your keyboard, type windows media, and then click Windows Media Player Legacy. Once open, click the Library tab in the upper-left corner of the window.
- You'll have the option to search for new album art online or select an image you downloaded to your PC. If you don't want to use the automatic search option, see How to Find MP3 Album Art to learn how to download album art for your mp3s.
- If you can't find Windows Media Player, you will need to enable it first. Here's how:^{[1]
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  - Right-click the Windows Start menu and select Run.
  - In the Run field, type or paste ms-settings:optionalfeatures and press Enter.
  - On Windows 11, click View features at the top, type media into the field, and click Windows Media Player Legacy (App). Click Next and then Add.^{[2]
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  - On Windows 10, click + next to "Add a feature," select Windows Media Player, and click Add.^{[3]
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It's on the upper-left side of the Windows Media Player window.

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Right-click the cover of the album art you want to update. Scroll down through your library until you find the album you want to edit, then right-click it to bring up a menu.
- Albums that don't have art will have an image of a musical note on a grey background.
- If you use a trackpad instead of a mouse, use two fingers to tap the trackpad or press the bottom-right side of the trackpad.
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Click Update album info on the menu. Doing so will search online for the album's art. If album art is available, it will download and replace the existing album cover.
- It may take a few moments for the new album cover to show up.
- If this doesn't result in the correct album cover, continue with this method to replace the album cover with album art you downloaded.
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Open the album art you downloaded from the web. If you couldn't update the album art automatically, you can easily use the image you found online as your new art. Start by locating the downloaded image on your computer and double-clicking to open it.
- Downloaded images are typically in your Downloads or Pictures folder.
This copies the album art to your clipboard.
You'll see a menu with several options, including the option to paste the copied album cover.
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Click Paste album art. It's in the middle of the drop-down menu. You should see the art appear on the album's cover.
- It may take a few seconds for the album art to update.
- If you don't see Paste album art, try downloading and copying a smaller version of the art.

Section 2 of 6:

Using Mp3tag

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Download and install Mp3Tag. Mp3tag isn't a music player—it's a useful free program you can use to tag and organize your MP3 collection. Mp3tag will automatically scan for and download cover art (and any ID3 tags you're missing) from sources like Discogs and MusicBrainz. We'll show you how to do this, as well as manually replace album art with images you've downloaded. To download and install Mp3tag:
- Go to https://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html in your web browser.
- Click the link for your version of Windows at the center of the page.
  - If you're not sure whether you need the 32-bit or 64-bit version, here's how to check.
- Double-click the MP3tag setup file and follow the on-screen instructions to install.
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Open MP3tag and add your music. When you first open Mp3tag, there won't be any music to edit. You can either add your entire library or just the albums you want to edit. To add music:
- Click the File menu.
- Click Add directory.
- Select the folder you want to add.
- Click Select Folder.
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Select an album or song(s). If you just want to edit one song, click the song once to select it.
- Alternatively, you can select an entire album at once by holding down Ctrl while clicking each song on the album.
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Locate the album art automatically (optional). If you want Mp3tag to locate the proper album art for you, it's easy now that you've selected the song(s) or album:
- Click the Tag Sources menu.
- Click Cover Art.
- Click MusicBrainz (or, if you have a Discogs account, you can choose Discogs. You'll be prompted to log in to your account before you can search the database with Mp3tag).
- Click Next to search.
- If more than one album or release matches your search, you'll see several results. You can click a result and then Preview to see the album art in your browser, or just select an album and choose Next.
- Click OK to accept the new album art.
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Right-click the cover art. If you want to use an image you downloaded from the web, you can continue with this method. While your files are selected, you'll find this box on the lower-left side of the window.
- If there isn't any cover art for your selected song(s), this box will be blank.
- If your computer uses a trackpad instead of a mouse, use two fingers to tap the trackpad.
It's at the top of the menu. A File Explorer window will open.
Go to the location of the photo you want to use, then click the photo. Once you click Open, you'll see your new album art in place of the old cover.
This floppy disc icon is in the upper-left corner of the window. Your changes are now saved permanently to the file.

Section 3 of 6:

Using VLC Media Player

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Open VLC Media Player. VLC makes it easy to automatically find and download album cover art for your MP3 files. If you've already installed VLC, you'll find it in your Windows menu. If not, you can download this free media playback and management app from https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html.
- You'll have the option to search for new album art online or select an image you downloaded to your PC. If you don't want to use the automatic search option, see How to Find MP3 Album Art to learn how to download album art for your mp3s.
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Open the song or album you want to edit. If you just need to change the album art for a single MP3 file, you can open it using Media > Open File. To open multiple files at once, use Media > Open Multiple Files instead.
- Alternatively, you can open an entire folder using Media > Open Folder.
This will make it easier to view and edit the album art. To do this, just click the View menu and select Playlist. Now you'll see the song(s) you've opened in playlist format.
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Select the song(s) you want to edit. If you want to change the cover art for more than one song, hold down the Ctrl key as you click each track name.
- If you're selecting multiple songs, make sure you choose songs from the same album.
This displays media information about the track, including the current album art at the bottom-right corner. If there is no album art yet, you'll see a traffic cone icon.
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Right-click the current album art (or traffic cone) and select Download cover art. This feature queries MusicBrainz to locate the correct album art for the selected track.
- If you are not able to find album art this way, try clicking the Fingerprint button to identify the track first, then click Apply this identity to the file.
- If you still can't find the right album art, you can download album art manually. Once you find the correct album cover, right-click the current art or traffic cone again, select Add cover art from file, and select replacement art.
Your new MP3 cover art is now embedded into the selected file(s).

Section 4 of 6:

Using iTunes

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Retrieve all album art manually (optional). If you use iTunes to listen to music on your Windows PC, you can use it to find, download, and replace all of your album art with the most up-to-date versions. If you downloaded album art already, you can skip this step.
- Open iTunes and click the File menu.^{[4]
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  - If you don't have iTunes, you can install it from the Microsoft Store or https://www.apple.com/itunes.
- Click Library.
- Click Get Album Artwork.
To add the cover art you downloaded manually, click Music at the upper-left corner of the iTunes window.
It's at the top of the window to the left of "For You."
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Select the song(s) or album you want to edit.
- If you want to select one or more songs to edit, click the Songs tab in the left panel under "Library," then select the song(s). To select more than one song at once, hold down the Ctrl key as you click multiple songs.
- To select an entire album, click Albums in the left panel under "Library," then click the album you want to edit.
The menu option you'll see will depend on whether you selected an album or song.
You'll see this at the top of the window just below the current album artwork.
Now you'll be prompted to select a file from your computer to replace the current album art
Your new album art now appears in the upper-left corner.
Your changes are now saved permanently.

Section 5 of 6:

Using an Online Editor

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Go to https://tagmp3.net/ in your web browser. If you just need the cover art for a few songs, an online MP3 tag editor like TagMP3 is a great option.
- Online MP3 editors won't be ideal if you want to get cover art for multiple albums or larger files, as you'll have to upload and then re-download the files later.
- This tool won't automatically search the web for cover art, so you'll need to make sure you've downloaded some artwork.
You'll find this button in the middle of the window.
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Select an MP3 file and click Open. Go to the location of an MP3 file to which you want to assign artwork, then click the MP3 file.
- If you want to edit the cover art for multiple different songs, hold down Ctrl while clicking each song you want to use.
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Select new cover art for your MP3 file. Click the Browse button next to "Choose new album art / picture" to select the album cover you downloaded from the web. When you click Open, the new album cover will appear.
- If you selected multiple songs, scroll down to do the same for all songs on the page.
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Scroll down and click Done! Generate New Files. Once the tagging is complete, your files will be available for download.
- Click each file name to download the new file with its newly-embedded album art.

Section 6 of 6:

How to Find MP3 Album Art

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If you don't want to search the web for album art, our sections on using VLC Media Player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and MP3tag (an MP3 tag management tool) will be most helpful. iTunes can even scan your entire MP3 library and update all your album covers.
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If you can't (or don't want to) get album art automatically, there are places to find and download album covers online. If you have rarer MP3s or are using an online tag editor, you can replace your album art manually. These sites are great places to download album JPEG & PNG album covers for even the rarest of MP3s:
- Discogs: On Discogs, you'll often find several options for album art, including covers from different editions of albums.
- MusicBrainz: This site is home to all sorts of music metadata, not just album art. After downloading the images you want for your MP3s, explore the site to find other information you may be missing from your MP3 metadata.
- Fanart.tv: This site has lots of high-quality album covers, so if you're looking for higher-resolution quality, make it your first stop.
- You can also search Google and filter the search results to show only images. You may also want to try searching Amazon.com or other retailers that sell CDs.

Community Q&A

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Question

It doesn't have that Paste Album Art menu on my windows media player; I can only find the album info. What should I do?

Community Answer

Leave your image viewer open when you go to paste the album art. For some reason, once you close the image viewer, the art leaves your clipboard and the option to paste it goes away, too.

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Question

Why aren't all my songs joined with their album art when I paste art?

Community Answer

The album art and file art don't alter each other. You need to change all of them separately.

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What do I do with Windows 8?

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It's the same process; it depends on which version of Windows Media Player you have.

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Windows Media Player is no longer supported by Microsoft, so attempting to update the artwork automatically won't work for every album.

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Create sub folders inside of Window’s main folder for music to separate your different albums into. This helps keep Windows from scrambling your album images while playing a track.

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