Why Does Zune Marketplace Album Art Suck so Much?

[Jason Dunn]

I really like album art. I'm a visual person, so I like looking at album covers. Quite often when I see the album cover I remember the music on it. I was looking at some songs in the Zune Marketplace that I had bought, and the album art is completely pathetic and unimpressive. Check this out:<br /><br /><img border="1" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//zt/auto/1184733335.usr1.png" /><br /><br />Gee. 240 x 240 pixels and badly over-compressed <strong>(UPDATE: it's only 150 x 150 pixels, no wonder it looks so bad on the Zune, it has to scale up from 150 x 150 by 240 x 240)</strong>. That looks incredibly ugly when I'm listening to music via Windows Media Center and that image is shown on a 26&quot; LCD TV. Nasty. When I <a href="http://www.zunethoughts.com/news/show/11884/strip-zune-drm-from-marketplace-songs-with-fairuse4wm.html">stripped the DRM</a> from my Zune Marketplace tracks, I used <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mediamonkey.com">Media Monkey</a> to access the cover art from Amazon.com. Check it out:<br /><br /><img border="1" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/zt/auto/1184733329.usr1.jpg" /><br /><br />That's resized slightly - the Amazon.com album art is 600 x 600 pixels <strong>(UPDATE: it's 500 x 500)</strong>, and not over-compressed so you can still see the album art details.<br /><br />Zune Marketplace, you've got to do better. Oh, if you're looking for high resolution album art, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.jasondunn.com/album-art-high-res-july2007-457">check this personal project of mine out</a>.

[priesmeyer]

We've been down this road before, you and I, Jason, and I'm happy to revisit it.

Because before we were talking about Zune vs. iPod album art and we commented about how Apple would never settle for this.

Now, the iPhone is on the scene and it's the hottest looking piece of iAss ever. Do you think Apple would settle for that crappy, low-res image art on their promotional videos for the iPod functionality of the iPhone? NO. WAY.

This is a classic example of how Zune improvements are apparently being ignored in favor of "hip" zune-arts type advertising in college markets.

<REDUNDANT>< redundant >
I want to be able to use Urge or other playsforsure stores on the Zune and I want to be able to copy my Media Center TV shows on the Zune.
< / redundant ></REDUNDANT>

I know there are other features that we all want as well. But something as simple as not making the album art look bad seems to be a really achievable short-term goal that they could deliver.

No wait, the guy who does that is too busy doing a Flash movie of a paper cut out guy and a girl flying through the clouds 'sharing'.

Thanks, Zune!

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks for sharing my pain. ;)

<redundant>I want to be able to use Urge or other playsforsure stores on the Zune and I want to be able to copy my Media Center TV shows on the Zune.</redundant>

Well, with the Urge problem, why don't you just cancel your Urge account and then us the Zune Pass account to feed both your Zune and whatever other PlaysForSure device you have? You'll have to use WMP11 to feed your PlaysForSure device, but the DRM should allow the music to get onto your device. There's no need to have to pay for two services as far as I know...

And MCE TV Shows? Yeah, no doubt. So lame it's not officially supported.

[Dyvim]

Not to nitpick, but the Amazon art is 500x500.

Most iTunes art though is 600x600. (Although it also has a lot of 300x300 artwork, e.g. most R.E.M. albums- you'd think R.E.M. would be a big enough band to get decent album art.)

I'm currently doing a similar project as Jason- fetching hi-res album art for all my albums. I use iTunes to get what I can (covers about half my albums) and Google Image search to find other stuff and then scan the rest from the physical CD's.

[priesmeyer]

Well, with the Urge problem, why don't you just cancel your Urge account and then us the Zune Pass account to feed both your Zune and whatever other PlaysForSure device you have? You'll have to use WMP11 to feed your PlaysForSure device, but the DRM should allow the music to get onto your device.

Well now, that's interesting. (Oh, I sold my Zune a few months ago but I miss the device itself something fierce.) Because I don't think I ever tried copying Zune Pass songs to my wife's Sandisk or my Samsung PMC. It was just a matter of having 3 PFS devices and only one Zune that I decided to have the majority rule and get rid of the Zune.

I'm waiting anxiously for news of the 2.0...

***long quote trimmed by mod JD***

[grommet]

I posted this before... but I guess it's time to revisit:

The Album Art embedded in Zune Marketplace WMA content is only 150 x 150. The same is true with URGE and, to my knowledge, any other MusicNet (now renamed MediaNet) sourced content. Yes, lame... and Microsoft needs to improve this.

The 240 x 240 JPEG art file you see in the directory is generated using the embedded art if it exists, which is only 150 x 150! That's one reason it looks worse than it could.

So, the first thing I do is delete the emdedded art in WMA downloads.

Additional trivia: The Album Art sourced from AMG (which WMP 11 or Zune Software downloads for your own rips, etc.) is 200 x 200... and generally better quality. These look pretty good scaled to native 240 x 240 on the Zune screen.

[Jason Dunn]

The Album Art embedded in Zune Marketplace WMA content is only 150 x 150.

Wow - you're right! Sheesh, I got BOTH album art sizes wrong. Can you tell I wrote that post in a hurry? :rolleyes: That explains why the Zune Marketplace album art looks so damn bad...150 x 150 scaled up to 240 x 240 and re-compressed. <sigh>