I noticed that the cover art pictures in the section "Recent Additions" on the main page of MusicBrainz http://musicbrainz.org/ are downloaded in full resolution into my web browser.

------ example:
<div class="artwork-cont" style="text-align: center">
<div class="artwork">
<a title="Lojze Lebič by Lojze Lebič" href="http://musicbrainz.org/release/66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d"> <img src="//coverartarchive.org/release/66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d/6847810755.">
<script>
$('img').last ().bind ('error', function (event) {
if ($(this).attr ("src") === "//coverartarchive.org/release/66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d/6847810755-250.jpg")

{ $(this).attr ("src", "//coverartarchive.org/release/66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d/6847810755."); }

else

{ $(this).closest ('a').replaceWith ('<em>Image not available yet, please try again in a few minutes. <\/em>'); }

}).attr ("src", "//coverartarchive.org/release/66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d/6847810755-250.jpg");
</script> </a>
</div>
</div>
------
The URL
http://coverartarchive.org/release/66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d/6847810755.
redirects to:
http://ia600507.us.archive.org/28/items/mbid-66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d/mbid-66df0c19-0bf8-4a90-8554-824f5ebada3d-6847810755.jpg
which has almost 4 MB.

I have noticed that out of 10 cover art pictures only the oldest 4 ones were downloaded as 250 pixel versions. I guess that this is caused by delayed generation of the scaled-down versions of the pictures but downloading 6 pictures at full resolution can consume a lot of bandwidth. The pictures can display very slowly in a browser.

Should not be the priority of generation of the 250 px versions reconsidered? I can imagine that 250 px versions could be generated first and 500 px versions could be generated later at time of low traffic. Should not we delay adding of the pictures to the front page until the 250 px versions are generated?