[rchaud]

Glad to see one of my pet peeves finally get some notice!

I too bought an iPod Touch back in 2008 because of how the player UI treated album art: as actual 'art', and deserving of a full-width display on the screen. I would meticulously tag my music library with the correct album art files precisely so that they would be displayed nicely on my portable player.

I think one reason the art got smaller is due to phone screens getting larger and higher-res. A full-width image spanning the iPhone SE would be 214 x 214 px. But on the iPhone 12 it would be 390 x 390px.

That would take up a lot of the screen's real estate, perhaps leaving less available for UI controls. Also, if digital album art tends to be low-res to begin with, it would look pixelated if displayed at full width on a high density pixel screen.

Digital album

[zinckiwi]

As screens have grown they’ve mostly grown vertically. If anything it should be easier to display a full-width album cover and still have plenty of room for controls and other UI chrome.