Music Distribution 101: Cover Arts

For your music distribution, there are a few things you need to prepare in advance: Audio files, metadata (album title, track titles, artist names, release date, etc.), and cover art. You have to make sure the submitted assets comply with the requirements of music stores.

Today we will be talking about cover art. We found that some artists do not know how to design the right one, while some just get disapproved due to incorrect cover art and have no idea how to fix it. Uploading your artwork in an appropriate format is a defining step for music dsitribution.

To start with the most fundamental issue, formats. The accepted cover art needs to meet several technical criteria:

Format: JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIF, TIFF, or GIF

Dimensions : 1400x1400 px - 4000x4000 px

Size: Minimum 1Mb, Maximum 10Mb Per Image

（Correct cover art with only artist name or track title)

Apart from the above basic requirements to your cover art, there are some other things that you have to keep in mind when designing cover art:

1. No blurry or pixelated images

2. No URLs

3. No logos or branding that you do not have rights to use

4. No references to physical packaging or pricing

5. No pornographic imagery

（Incorrect cover art with social media or producer name）

In addition, the cover art should include either the release title or the artist names on it, otherwise, it would be disapproved. Sometimes artists release a single of an upcoming album, in advance of the album release. If this is the case, the release title on the cover should keep the same with the single.

Shall you meet any problems on cover arts during distribution? Let us know in the comments and we will reply to your questions. Afrotunes would like to assist with your cover arts, but we need to hear your voice before that.

Check out more at afrotunesdigital.com and sign up for free.

You can also check our previous article for more details about Afrotunes.

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*Limited offer: free music distribution service to Boomplay. (original price:1.99$ per artist)