Recipe 1: CC0 album cover for a music app

You're building a music app (Spotify clone, personal library, podcast tool). For each album in your catalog, you want the official cover image, ideally 1:1 aspect and 1000px+, with a license you can defend.

Try it: a free API key at app.getwebfetch.com/signup pools iTunes, MusicBrainz-CAA, and Spotify auth so you don't have to wire each one yourself.

#Approach

Stack three providers, in order of authority:

1. musicbrainz-caa — the Cover Art Archive. If an album has a canonical cover, it's here.
2. itunes — Apple's search API. Fast, broad, zero-auth. Returns editorial-licensed artwork.
3. spotify — as fallback for albums iTunes doesn't carry (indie releases, DSP-exclusive).

All three tag as EDITORIAL_LICENSED. For a music app identifying the album by its cover, that's the correct tag: platform ToS allows editorial display in the context of album/artist identification.

#CLI

webfetch album "Radiohead" "In Rainbows" \
  --providers musicbrainz-caa,itunes,spotify \
  --min-width 1000 --json

Output:

[
  {
    "url": "https://coverartarchive.org/release/.../1000.jpg",
    "width": 1000,
    "height": 1000,
    "license": "EDITORIAL_LICENSED",
    "confidence": 0.9,
    "attributionLine": "Cover art for 'In Rainbows' by Radiohead (Cover Art Archive)",
    "provider": "musicbrainz-caa"
  }
]

#Programmatic (Node)

import { searchAlbumCover } from "@webfetch/core";

async function coverFor(artist: string, album: string) {
  const { candidates } = await searchAlbumCover(artist, album, {
    providers: ["musicbrainz-caa", "itunes", "spotify"],
    minWidth: 1000,
    licensePolicy: "safe-only",
  });
  const top = candidates[0];
  if (!top) throw new Error(`no cover for ${artist} — ${album}`);
  return {
    url: top.url,
    attribution: top.attributionLine,
    confidence: top.confidence,
  };
}

#Shipping it

1. Store url, attributionLine, confidence, and the album+artist keys in your DB.
2. Render attributionLine in the album details page footer (small, accessible).
3. Re-run monthly for albums where confidence < 0.8 — Cover Art Archive adds new canonical covers over time.
4. Cache the bytes on your CDN, keyed by SHA-256. webfetch returns the hash; use it as the asset filename.

#Not sure the tag is right for you?

EDITORIAL_LICENSED specifically covers "this image identifies the thing you're displaying it alongside". If you're using cover art as generic decoration (e.g., a generic music playlist hero), you need CC0/CC-BY art instead — use Recipe 4 or the stock provider tune from Providers.