I for one hardly ever add a new release to the Db without adding its respective cover… only unless after exhaustive search no cover comes up. What’s the percentage of releases with cover art? 5%? Whatever it is, it’s a sad figure 
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Well, if you compare our stats with the ones from TheAudioDB, we still have 300.000 more releases with cover art than they have releases/“albums” in all. And keep in mind that one of the things TheAudioDB wants to do, is to provide access to album and artist images…
I don’t think the ratio necessarily is as important as the fact that we do continue to get more releases with cover art. As long as we have more correct cover art for more releases than elsewhere, I don’t care if that means 1% of releases or 91%. 
(I’d also personally rather have 1 release added with full ARs than 1 release added with cover art (and no ARs), but that’s just me.)
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Let’s not forget that a lot of releases on MusicBrainz are from the pre-digital era. Unless you happen to have it yourself, finding cover art is often impossible.
And also, it is better to not upload a cover when we are not sure it is correct for this edition (square images are wrong on digipaks; many editions have the cropping and text placements slightly different from each other and especially iften different from concept arts found online).
Uploading a wrong image makes other editors think it is correct and they don’t need to look for a correct image.
It’s the general idea of better nothing than wrong (release date, CAA, tracklist, etc.).
@AzoreanGigolo, you should rather look for release groups without image, because there are so many editions of albums. 
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Have you ever heard (or in this case seen) of any album release that didn’t have accompanying art work?
Unless it’s digital it’s impossible not to, so for that fact alone, I think it’s still no excuse and find it shameful to have such low ratios…
I don’t agree. The Cover Art Archive hasn’t even been around for a long time, and for a lot of releases it will simply be impossible to find cover art in the first place. The amount we do have is actually quite impressive.
I’d like to encourage everyone to add as much as they can (as long as it’s the correct artwork, of course), but artwork is really just another kind of data that will never be complete on MusicBrainz. Which personally isn’t a problem, as long as everything I care about is correct and complete. And that is something I can make happen myself.
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I’m a visually oriented person:
When I think “The Dark Side of the Moon” I see prism.
When I see “The Rolling Stones” I see stuck_out_tongue 
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First time on forum. I agree that cover art is important and I always associate a cover with the album in my head. I do my best to add artwork when I add an album. Can usually find it on the web but occasionally need to scan in my own copy. Sometimes scan as the only available web source is too low res for my liking. I’m at an advantage in that I only add in CD’s and then only those that I physically own so can always get the correct cover art.
P.S. How many kB should the JPEG image be? I am used to trying to reduce it to lowest level that is still good quality.
The Cover Art Archive has plenty of space, so no need to skimp. Of course, more is not always better (you’ll find a lot of images on the web that are simply resized smaller images, especially on iTunes), but if you’re going to scan them anyway, you may as well scan high dpi and save to png (jpg is, simply put, a shit format). Some time ago I wrote a short how-to on scanning. You can find it on the wiki.
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To add to what @mfmeulenbelt said, the Internet Archive automatically creates smaller thumbnails for the images, so there’s generally no need to worry that someone will end up with 10 MB of cover art embedded in every file (unless they want to).
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There was also this thread about Tools you can use to recompress JPEGs and PNGs losslessly in the old forums
I do all mine in 600dpi and just leave them… so potentially 100MB + for a booklet.
Nobody’s complained (that much!) yet, so I don’t see a problem wit hit. It also future-proofs your images - it might seem like overkill now, but as storage space gets cheaper and cheaper it might eventually be the norm. See old videos on Youtube as a good example! 240p just doesn’t really cut it anymore believe it or not 
edit: I really should look into saving to png instead of jpg though
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IMO it is completely overkill… Both the PNG and the super high resolution.
The required size is just to make them readable, not printable.
It is a pity for the environment, as well, for what added value, I am wondering…
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For your useage case, I’m sure that’s the case.
As a designer, I’m interested in preserving as many visual elements of a release as possible 
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I think it’s important to save all the details for archival purposes. The Cover Art Archive is, after all, an Internet Archive project. It may be the only source for these things a hundred years from now, especially for older and rarer releases. The amount of information about music that’s already lost for posterity is immense. Such a waste!
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Would it be possible/allowed to have a cover art robot that pulls cover art from linked sources (Amazon, Discogs, Bandcamp, Last.fm et.c.) and uploads them to the archive?
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In theory, yes. In practice however, the lack of a human eye to see whether the cover art really fits a specific release would cause a lot of bad matches. Discogs is usually quite reliable, but Amazon and Last.fm can’t be trusted.
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Fine, unless the final output is free of artifacts! At 600 dpi most of the times halftone screen and moiré artifacts are introduced by the scanner/scanning process. Factors include:
-
Quality of printed originals -
Quality of a scanner -
Scan settings -
Descreen filter settings
I’ve settled @ 360 dpi for most jobs and if screening does creep in I use this plug-in (undoubtedly the best de-secreening tool you’ll find out there) Descreen 5.1 Professional Edition plug-in for Adobe® Photoshop® (Windows and Mac OS) ← *The free demo version has all abilities of Home edition version, except image sizes are limited to 2000х2000 pixels. A new version seems to be in the works as well.
Also read the tutorials 
Rather than focus on size (kb) one should focus on size (image dimensions). Not trying to impose any standards, here’s the sizes I use:
600 px (square) should be the (classical) bare minimum ← size for folder.jpg image
1000 px ← my size for medium (CD) images
1500 px ← my max size
I don’t always compress, but when I do (ha, I sound like the Dos Equis’s commercial) I use these tools:
Radical Image Optimization Tool (RIOT for short)
Stay thirsty my friends