It seems that most album covers show nothing of the artists themselves, and I only know of two artists for sure that appear on all of their album covers (also includes distorted/alterated pictures, caricatures and such):

The Beatles
Soundgarden

Yay, now I can compare them and rub it in people's faces...but seriously, can anybody else think of any others?

I know Bob Dylan is out because of "Slow Train Coming."

Any others?

Morrissey would be one if not for Southpaw Grammar. still he's appeared on the front all his albums and comps but that one and nearly all of his singles too.

Ryan Adams has appeared on the front of every album except Demolition.

all of Björk's album covers are self portratis.

PJ Harvey is on every album cover of hers.

David Bowie ibelieve is on all of his covers.

thourgh their debut, Death From Above 1979 are 1 for 1.

Elastica went 2 for 2.

Feist is arguably 2 for 2.

Fiona Apple- 2 for 2.

Ian Brown possibly if thats his eye on the cover of Music Of The Spheres.

Jeff Buckley.

you know what, im gonna stop naming them becos it seems there a lot and its not so rare as you thought.

Badmotorfinger doesn't have Soundgarden on the front cover.

The White Album doesn't have the Beatles on ANY part of the cover.

EDIT: just looked again at my Badmotorfinger CD...so I am wrong there. The Beatles, though, well,that White Album still looks pretty blank to me..

All of those you listed are solo artists...which brings up the point that 'bands' rarely put themselves on album covers (I did ask for "artist", so you were correct).

...and...

Blast it, I forgot about the White Album....but maybe it's a really bleached picture of them.

You'll probably have to look through some pop artist catalogues. Right off the top of my head, Tori Amos and Jimi Hendrix (( only counting his primary albums during his lifetime ))

This is just a guess, but I'm sure any group or band that relies on a lot on image to sell records probably has pictures of themselves on their covers. Im guessing that Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera have been on the covers of all their albums. But if you want bands or group Im sure the Backstreet Boys have been on a lot of their album covers, but I guess they dont count as a band.

Anyways, most bands probably dont appear on the cover of their albums becasue they know that no one wants to see them anyways.

except for Death From Above 1979 and Elastica.

got another and its a band:

The White Stripes

okay we'll take that one...badly exposed film, that's it! You can look real close and see Ringo's beard

We could actually make some hoax out of this...peoeple would be like "yeah, I see the beard..."

Geez, what a good point it would be to make a point that most artists that put themselves on album covers are crappy pop-music factories (with important exceptions like The Beatles, Soundgarden, Jimi Hendrix.....I'll leave it to you to decide on White Stripes, as some people give them crap). Also note that the un-crappy-pop-factory ones always find some either profound or enigmatic way of doing it while people like Avril just show themselves standing on an urban street looky oh so damn poppy.

I wonder what a cover of a Radiohead album featuring a nice headshot of Thom Yorke will do to album sales.