Automatic download of album covers (with a Simple Bash Script)

Managing a digital music library can be both fun and a little obsessive. If you’re like me, you don’t just want your tracks properly tagged, you need them to look good too. Having the album cover right there makes browsing way more satisfying (and helps music servers like Navidrome or Jellyfin look polished).

That’s why I put together a small Bash script that automatically fetches album art using Last.fm. No need to manually copy-paste images anymore, just run the script in your album folder, and it does the heavy lifting for you.

How It Works

The idea is simple:

1. Guess the album artist and title from the current folder (with some prompts if you want).
2. Construct the right Last.fm album page URL.
3. Parse the page to find the cover image.
4. Download it to cover.jpg.

That’s it. Nothing magical, but it saves a lot of clicking.

Here’s the script itself:

#!/bin/bash

set -e

_error()
{
    echo "$(basename "$0" .sh): $1" >&2
    exit "$2"
}

_info()
{
        echo "[INFO] $*"
}

urlencode()
{
        local length="${#1}"

        for ((i=0; i<length; i++)); do
                local c="${1:i:1}"

                case $c in
                        [a-zA-Z0-9.~_-])
                                printf '%s' "$c"
                                ;;
                        ' ')
                                printf "%%20"
                                ;;
                        *)
                                printf '%%%02X' "'$c"
                                ;;
                esac
        done
        echo
}

##
# Init
#
umask 0002
output="cover.jpg"
batch=

##
# Checks
#
[[ ! -r $output ]] || _error "$output exists" 2
[[ $1 = '--batch' ]] && batch=1

##
# Main
#
defaultArtist="$(cd .. && basename "$(pwd)")"
defaultAlbum="$(basename "$(pwd)")"
if [[ $batch -ne 1 ]]; then
        read -p "artist [$defaultArtist]: " artist
        read -p "album [$defaultAlbum]: " album
fi
[[ -z $artist ]] && artist="$defaultArtist"
[[ -z $album ]] && album="$defaultAlbum"

{
        url="https://www.last.fm/music/$(urlencode "$artist")/$(urlencode "$album")"
        _info "search cover url in $url"
        cover_url="$(wget "$url" -O - | pup 'div.album-overview-cover-art img attr{src}')"
        [[ -n $cover_url ]] || _error 'cannot find cover_url' 5
        _info "download cover url $cover_url"
        curl -s "$cover_url" >"$output"
        [[ -r $output ]]
} || _error "cannot find cover" 99

echo
echo "Done"
exit 0

Usage

Run this script inside your album’s folder. For example:

~/music/navidrome/Afterhours/Ballate per piccole iene$ download-album-cover.sh
artist [Afterhours]:
album [Ballate per piccole iene]:
[INFO] search cover url in https://www.last.fm/music/Afterhours/Ballate%20per%20piccole%20iene
--2025-09-11 09:42:43--  https://www.last.fm/music/Afterhours/Ballate%20per%20piccole%20iene
Resolving www.last.fm (www.last.fm)... 151.101.241.188, 2a04:4e42:39::444
Connecting to www.last.fm (www.last.fm)|151.101.241.188|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: /music/Afterhours/Ballate+Per+Piccole+Iene [following]
--2025-09-11 09:42:48--  https://www.last.fm/music/Afterhours/Ballate+Per+Piccole+Iene
Reusing existing connection to www.last.fm:443.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 632693 (618K) [text/html]
Saving to: ‘STDOUT’

-                                      100%[=========================================================================>] 617.86K  4.00MB/s    in 0.2s

2025-09-11 09:42:50 (4.00 MB/s) - written to stdout [632693/632693]

[INFO] download cover url https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/500x500/d0993bb25c9ea5085beb29486dcb5408.jpg

Done

When executed, it will suggest the folder names as defaults for artist and album. You can simply hit enter if they’re correct, or type something else if not.

• By default, it downloads the cover as cover.jpg.
• If you already have a cover.jpg file, it won’t overwrite it.
• There’s also a --batch mode to skip interaction, which can be handy if you want automation.

Dependencies

You’ll need:

• wget (to fetch the Last.fm HTML)
• pup (for HTML parsing)
• curl (to download the image)

On most Linux distros, these are easy to install with your package manager.

Why This Is Handy

For someone running a headless server or managing a huge MP3/FLAC collection, this is a lifesaver. Media players and tools like Navidrome, Jellyfin, or even plain old file explorers look so much better with consistent artwork. And because it’s just a shell script, you can tweak it however you like, change defaults, switch sources, or even integrate into a bigger tagging pipeline.