How to get your cover art ready for distribution

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Cover art is one of the most common things our Distribution team has to ask artists to update before we can send a release to stores.

Most of the time, the fix is pretty simple. Stores need the image itself to meet their technical requirements, and anything shown on the artwork needs to match the information attached to your release.

Here’s how to get both right before you submit.

Get the image itself ready for stores

First, the technical stuff.

Your cover art needs to be:

Square, with a 1:1 aspect ratio
Between 1500 × 1500 and 6000 × 6000 pixels
A JPG or PNG
In RGB colour mode
Free from a P3 or eSRGB colour profile
Clear and properly aligned
Free from blurriness or pixelation
Correctly oriented, rather than rotated

There are also a few things stores don’t accept on cover art:

website URLs
QR codes or barcodes
social media handles or logos
brand logos or brand references
pornographic or offensive content
copyrighted or unlicensed images
duplicate artwork already being used for another release (for example singles covers needs to be different to the album cover - title change is enough)

Your artwork also needs to be an actual image or design rather than simply a solid field of colour with nothing on it.

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Make sure the artwork and your release information match

This is really important.

Stores compare what they see on your cover art with the metadata you enter when you build your release. If you include information on the artwork, it needs to be represented correctly in the release too.

The information you can include is:

your primary artist name
featured artist names
your release title
your label name, if applicable

You don’t have to include all of those things. Your artwork can have no text at all.

But if you do put something on the artwork, make sure it matches what you’ve entered with the release.

For example:

If a featured artist appears on the artwork, make sure they’re also credited as a featured artist in the release metadata.
If your album or single title appears on the artwork, make sure the title is entered the same way in your metadata.
If you’re releasing a single, the artwork should only refer to that single. Don’t reference an album the track may appear on later, as the single and album are treated as separate releases.
Don’t put another artist’s name on the artwork if they aren’t actually performing on the track.
If you use a Parental Advisory label, make sure the track actually contains explicit lyrical content and is marked Explicit in your release metadata.
If the track isn’t explicit, leave the Parental Advisory label off the artwork.

There can be some light exceptions when text is clearly incidental and isn’t being presented as information about the release. For example, if the artist in your cover photo happens to be wearing a graphic T-shirt with a word or phrase printed on it, that will generally be fine as long as it’s clearly part of the image rather than something designed to look like an artist name, release title or other release information.

The key distinction is whether the text looks like it’s part of the release information or simply happens to appear naturally within the image.

This also means keeping unrelated information off the artwork. Hashtags, social media information, websites and other promotional text don’t belong in release metadata, so they shouldn’t appear on the cover either.

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Make sure you have the rights to everything you use

Your cover art needs to be artwork that you own or have permission to use.

That means making sure you have the rights to any photography, illustrations, graphics or other images included in the design.

You shouldn’t use:

copyrighted images you don’t have permission to use
copyrighted or trademarked characters
fan art of trademarked characters
brand logos
other protected intellectual property you don’t have the rights to

If someone else created the artwork for you, make sure you have permission to use their work commercially as your release artwork.

Use unique artwork for each release

Stores don’t accept the same cover artwork being reused across multiple different releases.

If you’re submitting a new release, give it artwork that represents that release specifically, and make sure any text on the image matches the new release information.

That doesn’t mean every design has to look completely different. If you’re working within a visual series or a consistent artist identity, that’s fine. The artwork itself just shouldn’t be an identical duplicate of artwork already being used for another release.

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The main thing to remember

Stores are looking for your cover art and your release information to tell the same story.

Use a clear, correctly formatted image you have the rights to, keep the information on it relevant to the release, and make sure anything you write on the artwork matches the metadata you submit.

Getting those details aligned before you send the release through means there’s much less chance we’ll need to come back and ask you to change something before we can deliver it.