The pictures the magazine ran alongside its stories, recovered from the archive. Most of Cove's galleries were lost — the image files were never captured — but the portraits it used on its front pages and in its features survived. They are collected here, with the covers they appeared on.
The covers
Cove was published as a web magazine with a designed cover for each issue, in the manner of a print title. Three of those covers survive in the archive at usable size. Each one leads with the artist the issue was built around, and the taglines show the magazine's habit of borrowing the tone of the newsstand — questions in the corner, a price it never charged, and a promise of news “from MTV and Launch.com”.
November 2004: Snoop Dogg.
February 2005: Ashanti, promoting Concrete Rose, with The Game in the corner — the same pair of stories that led the site's front page that winter.
February 2006: Fall Out Boy, under the headline “Let's dance — are they the ultimate rock band?”, one of the last covers the magazine produced.
The artists
Portraits used in features, news pages and the vocalists poll. Where the magazine's own page for the artist survives, it is linked.
Damian Marley, around the release of Welcome to Jamrock.
John Mayer on stage. He placed sixtieth in the original vocalists poll, for which the magazine was told off at length.
Carrie Underwood singing the national anthem, early 2006, months after winning American Idol. A still from a clip the magazine hosted; the video itself did not survive.
Christina Aguilera performing at the American Music Awards. The magazine's 2004 poll put her first, the only perfect score it ever awarded. The 2026 edition explains where she stands now.
50 Cent and The Game at the March 2005 press conference that ended their public feud, where the two donated $253,500 to the Boys Choir of Harlem. The magazine's report.
Ciara, in the year of “1, 2 Step”.
Omarion, after B2K — the group that topped the magazine's Power 50.
Christina Milian.
98 Degrees, in a publicity photograph from the group's late run.
Nick Lachey.
Rascal Flatts — one of the few country acts the magazine covered.
Ronald and Ernie Isley. The Isley Brothers were a recurring reference point in the magazine's writing about R&B singing.
Mike Shinoda, during the Fort Minor project.
3 Doors Down.
Lloyd Banks.
Reader artwork
The magazine ran drawings sent in by readers alongside its photographs. Two survived.
Avril Lavigne, in coloured pencil, by a reader.
Jessica Alba, in charcoal, by a reader.
What is missing
The archive kept 287 image files from the site. The pages referenced roughly twice that many; the rest — the event galleries, the past-issue thumbnails, most of the news photographs — were never captured and cannot be recovered. What is here is what survived, unretouched, at the sizes the magazine used.
