YouTube Music Thumbnail Downloader

Because YouTube Music plays the same videos as YouTube. The ID after watch?v= is the same 11 characters in both apps, and the images sit under that ID on YouTube's image host, which is why swapping music.youtube.com for www.youtube.com in a link opens the same track. Paste either address here and the results are identical. A link copied from the Music app often carries a list= parameter for the album or radio queue it was playing in; that part is ignored and the track's own images come back.

It depends on which upload you paste. Songs delivered by a label appear as art tracks on a Topic channel, and those use the release artwork as the video thumbnail, so the sleeve is exactly what you download. An official music video is a normal video with a cover the artist or label chose, usually a frame or a designed title card rather than the sleeve. Lyric videos, live sessions and fan uploads follow the same rule as any video. So when you specifically want the sleeve, search the song in YouTube Music and pick the plain audio entry credited to a Topic channel rather than the video.

The square is how the app presents the picture, not how the file is stored. YouTube keeps thumbnails under a fixed set of names and shapes, from Max-Res at the top down to 120 x 90 for Default, and the Music app fits whatever it finds into its own square tiles. What you download here is the wide file behind those tiles. If you need a square, crop the largest download in any image editor: on an art track the sleeve normally sits in the middle of the frame, so cropping to the height gives the square back.

Max-Res (maxresdefault.jpg) when it exists, and art tracks very often have it because the artwork supplied to YouTube is large to begin with. When the Max-Res card shows 'Not Found', Standard (640 x 480) or High (480 x 360) is the biggest file left. Nothing on this page upscales anything, so the sharpest result available is whatever was uploaded: an old single with a small scan behind it will look soft no matter which card you pick.

Not from this page, which works one track at a time. An album or playlist in YouTube Music is addressed by a list= identifier rather than a video ID, and the playlist cover page on this site reads exactly that: paste the album or playlist link there and it returns the cover in every size. Radio and Mix queues are the exception, because a list starting with RD is built for each listener on the fly and is never stored, so no tool can read one.

Cover art belongs to the artist, the label or the designer, and music releases are usually the strictest case of all. Showing a sleeve while you review the record, report on it or teach from it is the sort of use that normally sits inside fair use. Printing it on merchandise, putting it on a release of your own, or fronting a playlist you monetise with it is not. Get permission from the rights holder before any commercial use.