Getting your music onto services like iTunes and Spotify is crucial to an Artist’s success, but the guidelines and requirements can be tricky to navigate. Spotify album art size, iTunes cover artwork, and performer’s rights have especially rigid guidelines, and failure to comply can prevent your music from making it onto these platforms.
We are proud to offer our artists a quick and affordable method of digital distribution, and we want to help make sure that your release won’t get rejected by the retailers’ strict guidelines.
With that in mind, we put together a final checklist to make sure that your release meets those requirements and doesn’t end up delayed. Watch the following video, or check out the highlights below for ownership guidelines, Spotify album art regulations, and much more.
Rights Ownership
You alone must own or control all necessary rights to any song or User Content that you submit for Digital Distribution. You are responsible for securing all appropriate permissions, clearances, licenses, or other authorizations and for paying all third-party fees and royalties required.
If you submit a cover song, you must obtain the appropriate license from a rights management organization (Harry Fox Agency, Limelight, etc.) to do so and should be able to provide documentation of this license to us.
You must own or control the rights to all images, logos, and trademarks you display on your album artwork, and you must be able to submit proof of ownership to us.
Size & Content of Artwork
Your album artwork must be a complete square — e.g. the exact same dimensions on either side. Ideally, your artwork should be no smaller than 1500 x 1500 pixels. If your artwork is smaller than that, you will be prompted to add a colored border to your release, which may result in some of the artwork being altered.
This is an example of what adding a colored border to your release could look like.
Also, make sure that you or your designer did not simply enlarge a smaller image to meet these size requirements — this will result in a blurry, pixelated image that will also get your release rejected.
This was a smaller image that was enlarged to meet the 1500x1500px requirement.
Your artwork cannot display any nudity, drugs, extreme violence, company logos, or website URLS. The ONLY text you can display on your artwork is your Album Title, Artist Name, Record Label, Producer, or Contributing Guests. Please note that any text on your artwork must match what you list in your Release Details.
You cannot list URLs, logos, or extra text on your album cover.
Performer Attribution
It’s important to give credit to featured performers who contributed to your work, but you’ll want to do that in the Song Details section of each song — NOT in the song title itself.
Make sure you list any contributors in the right section — NOT in the Song Title.
Questions?
If you need further assistance with any of these issues, please feel free to email our Support team at support@reverbnation.com. To learn more about Digital Distribution, visit here.
(iTunes and Spotify are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc. and Spotify AB Corporation respectively.)
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