# Where is the album cover art stored in my MP3s?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-album-cover-art-stored-in-my-mp3s/776191>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 3, 2017, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-album-cover-art-stored-in-my-mp3s/776191 "2017-01-03T01:59:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-album-cover-art-stored-in-my-mp3s/776191/1 "2017-01-03T01:59:32Z")

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I have a USB reader in my car, and the display shows the song title and artist of what is being played. I knew that information is readily available in the MP3 metadata. But I am also seeing the album cover. Is that information actually stored in the MP3 metadata also? I thought part of the design philosophy of MP3s was to keep the file size down but it seems like adding graphics would subvert that goal.

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**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-album-cover-art-stored-in-my-mp3s/776191/2 "2017-01-03T02:29:47Z")

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It is stored in the ID3 tags along with the rest of the metadata, in each MP3 file. Wikipedia has a brief overview of the [ID3 format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3#ID3v2_embedded_image_extension).

The album covers themselves are generally not super high-res, but they do certainly take up space. Worse is the fact that MP3 has no way to reference any kind of external resource, so you’re storing a copy of the album cover in every single song from that album.

But if you’re really pressed for space, you can use whatever MP3 manager you like to delete the cover art images.

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**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-album-cover-art-stored-in-my-mp3s/776191/3 "2017-01-03T14:05:52Z")

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From [id3v2 spec](http://id3.org/id3v2.3.0#Attached_picture):

> [@](#):
>
> Picture type:  
> $00 Other  
> $01 32x32 pixels ‘file icon’ (PNG only)  
> $02 Other file icon  
> $03 Cover (front)  
> $04 Cover (back)  
> …  
> $10 Movie/video screen capture  
> **$11 A bright coloured fish** \<--------  
> $12 Illustration  
> …

🙂  
Apparently some of the “picture type” codes can be quite specific.