MalfomedURLException Protocol not found

I am trying to set an image view to a bitmap taken from a url, however the following stack trace appears after I run the following code:

 public Bitmap getAlbumCover(Context context, String song, String artist) {
    this.context = context;

    song = song.replace(" ", "%20");
    artist = artist.replace(" ", "%20");

    final String finalSong = song;
    final String finalArtist = artist;

    Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            try {
                ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
                Document doc = Jsoup.connect("http://api.spotify.com/v1/search?q=track:" + finalSong + "%20artist:" + finalArtist+"%20" + "&type=track").ignoreContentType(true).get();
                String body = String.valueOf(doc.body().text());
                JsonNode readTree = mapper.readTree(body);
                albumArt = readTree.findPath("url");

                try {
                    URL url = new URL(albumArt.toString());
                    HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
                    connection.setDoInput(true);
                    connection.connect();
                    InputStream input = connection.getInputStream();
                    albumImage = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    Log.e("Error", e.getMessage());
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }

            } catch (JsonGenerationException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (JsonMappingException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    });
    thread.start();

    Log.i("icon", "i"+ albumImage);
    return albumImage;
} 

Here is the stack trace:

03-23 20:18:43.242 6917-6991/.xyz.php_request W/nAnnotationIntrospector: Unable to load JDK7 annotation types; will have to skip
03-23 20:18:43.943 6917-6991/.xyz.php_request E/Error: Protocol not found: "https://i.scdn.co/image/9c2c4a9ac9726bfd996ff96383178bbb5efc59ab"
03-23 20:18:43.943 6917-6991/.xyz.php_request W/System.err: java.net.MalformedURLException: Protocol not found: "https://i.scdn.co/image/9c2c4a9ac9726bfd996ff96383178bbb5efc59ab"
03-23 20:18:43.943 6917-6991/.xyz.php_request W/System.err:     at java.net.URL.<init>(URL.java:176)
03-23 20:18:43.943 6917-6991/.xyz.php_request W/System.err:     at java.net.URL.<init>(URL.java:125)
03-23 20:18:43.943 6917-6991/.xyz.php_request W/System.err:     at pillo.xyz.php_request.songlistadapter$1.run(songlistadapter.java:124)
03-23 20:18:43.943 6917-6991/.xyz.php_request W/System.err:     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:818)

The link is here: https://i.scdn.co/image/9c2c4a9ac9726bfd996ff96383178bbb5efc59ab If you click on it, it does pull up an image. What am I doing wrong? I already tried to encode the URL in UTF-8 as well.

EDIT:

Logging album art returns: I/album art: "https://i.scdn.co/image/bf44daf8c3f35de83e5875bc49791c1347ef36f0"

What am I doing wrong?

You called the wrong method of albumArt in this line: URL url = new URL(albumArt.toString());. You should call albumArt.getTextValue() instead of albumArt.toString().

Why:
toString() gives the string format of the JsonNode which in your case is string "\"https://i.scdn.co/image/9c2c4a9ac9726bfd996ff96383178bbb5efc59ab\"".

Instead, getTextValue() gives the string "https://i.scdn.co/image/9c2c4a9ac9726bfd996ff96383178bbb5efc59ab" which is what URL wants.

See the difference?