Retrieve cover artwork using Spotify API

Question

There is currently no way to retrieve the cover artwork using Spotify's Web API. Are there plans to implement these or any workarounds?

Answer 1

June 17th 2014:

Today Spotify released a new Web API.

It is now easy to retrieve cover artwork, as all endpoints includes an array of images for every item.

---

Search example:
curl -X GET "https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?q=tania%20bowra&type=artist"

{
  "artists" : {
...
    "items" : [ {
...
      "images" : [ {
        "height" : 640,
        "url" : "https://d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net/original/f2798ddab0c7b76dc2d270b65c4f67ddef7f6718",
        "width" : 640
      }, {
        "height" : 300,
        "url" : "https://d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net/original/b414091165ea0f4172089c2fc67bb35aa37cfc55",
        "width" : 300
      }, {
        "height" : 64,
        "url" : "https://d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net/original/8522fc78be4bf4e83fea8e67bb742e7d3dfe21b4",
        "width" : 64
...
    } ],
...
  }
}

Old Answer:

---

You can get the URL to the cover art by calling Spotify's oEmbed service:

https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=spotify:track:6bc5scNUVa3h76T9nvpGIH
https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=spotify:album:5NCz8TTIiax2h1XTnImAQ2
https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=spotify:artist:7ae4vgLLhir2MCjyhgbGOQ
With JSONP:
https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=spotify:artist:7ae4vgLLhir2MCjyhgbGOQ&callback=callme

http://open.spotify.com/ urls work as well:

https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=http://open.spotify.com/track/6bc5scNUVa3h76T9nvpGIH

{
    "provider_url": "https:\/\/www.spotify.com",
    "version": "1.0",
    "thumbnail_width": 300,
    "height": 380,
    "thumbnail_height": 300,
    "title": "Gusgus - Within You",
    "width": 300,
    "thumbnail_url": "https:\/\/d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net\/cover\/f15552e72e1fcf02484d94553a7e7cd98049361a",
    "provider_name": "Spotify",
    "type": "rich",
    "html": "<iframe src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify:track:6bc5scNUVa3h76T9nvpGIH\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>"
}

Notice the thumbnail_url:
https://d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net/cover/f15552e72e1fcf02484d94553a7e7cd98049361a

/cover/ represents the size of the thumbnail.
Available sizes: 60, 85, 120, 140, 160, 165, 230, 300, 320, and 640.

eg: https://d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net/640/f15552e72e1fcf02484d94553a7e7cd98049361a