Album Art: Visualizing your Music

Once upon a time, the first exposure audiences had to a new musician was over the radio. They heard you first, which is great for a musician. But these days, the audience is almost always going to see you first. More specifically, they're going to see your album art.

In our age of endless scrolling thumbs, you might only have an instant to capture someone's interest. Your album art is the key to making the most of that instant, communicating what your music is about and who you are as an artist — no easy feat.

While it's beyond the scope of this (or any) article to tell you how to create good art, we can at least explain the importance of album art and offer some tips to help make sure your artwork is as effective as possible.

What Is Album Art?

Album art is the core imagery that visually represents you and your music to your audience. In most cases, it's the first thing they'll see before they hear your work, and they'll permanently connect this imagery with your sound. All your musical efforts boiled down to a single image — no pressure!

Album art serves at least three key functions:

• Identity: Your album art shows audiences who you are, what you're about, and the artistic voice you're projecting to the world. It should reflect the unique personality of both you and your music. What makes you special?
• Marketing: Album art is the primary imagery used to create marketing materials to promote your work, including posters, CD covers, thumbnails, and more. It must have the power to instantly connect with your audience.
• Professionalism: High-quality artwork shows audiences and industry insiders that you're a professional. Even if you can't define exactly what professional album art is, almost everyone knows it when they see it.

Album Art Tips for Success

Here are some essential tips that will help make sure your album art is as effective as possible.

Pro-level work is essential

As mentioned above, your album art is an indicator of your status as a professional in the industry, and nothing screams "amateur" louder than sub-par album art. If you have visual design and creation skills, you can probably create your own.

But, if you lack the skills to generate a professional result, hire a professional. It's too important to wing it as an afterthought. You might save some up-front money doing it yourself, but at the expense of long-term problems. Think big picture and invest in yourself when necessary.

Create big, shrink later

Always create your art at the highest resolution possible. Like recording high-quality master tracks for a song, you need to create a high-quality, high-resolution album art master that you can shrink later as necessary.

Various streaming platforms always have different resolution requirements for art, which is no problem if you have a high-resolution master. If you create master artwork that's too small, increasing the size will result in a blurry, pixelated mess — and it will look unprofessional. Remember, you can always reduce resolution, but you can't increase it.

Study examples and trends

As a musician, knowing trends in the music landscape is essential. Whether you want to follow the trends or innovate something fresh, you need to understand what everyone else is doing. The same is true when creating album art.

Maybe you want your art to follow a current trend to create an unconscious connection with other artists; maybe you want to do something totally new. Either way, you need to study current examples to know what's going on.

At some point, you switched from listening to music as an audience member to listening with the critical ear of a musician. You need to apply the same approach to album art and study the market and competition with a critical eye.

Test and iterate your way to success

Great songs rarely pop into existence on the first try. Songs are iterated and refined over time before finally arriving at the exact sound you're looking for. Album art can be similar. Take the time to iterate as many versions as needed to get it right. Test it on large and small scales and look at it on different screens. Once it's out in the world, you can't take it back.

Seek trusted feedback

In any artistic process, there comes a point where you've done all you can, and you need an outside opinion. You would never release a song without trusted feedback (your mom doesn't count; she loves everything you do), and the same should be true for your album art. Only fresh eyes can give you the perspective you need to make those final adjustments.

Metadata must match album art

When you or your distributor submit tracks to streaming platforms like iTunes or Spotify, metadata such as artist name and song title is included. Your album art must match this metadata for your songs to be ingested correctly. For example, the spelling of the song title on the artwork must be identical to the spelling in the metadata. Failure to get this right could result in your songs being rejected, so make sure to get the details right!

Know and follow industry guidelines

Streaming platforms also have specific album art rules that must be followed. Rules vary by platform, but there are some general guidelines that you should follow. First, your art must not include extreme violence, pornography, or copyrighted material. It also should not include website URLs, social media handles, pricing information, contact information, barcodes, or anything else. Talk with your distributor for more details.

The key thing to remember is that you're not creating a poster or advertisement or flyer or CD cover or anything else. Marketers and other industry people create that stuff. Your job is to produce the core artwork that will be used later to create these kinds of promotional materials.

Conclusion

Album art is a vital part of your music’s identity and your identity as an artist, giving audiences a visual gateway into your sound. By prioritizing relevance, quality, and creativity, you can create artwork that enhances your music and helps you connect with your audience. Remember, your album art might be your first impression with an audience — so make it a good one!

If you’re an aspiring artist seeking an experienced publishing and distribution partner, Sugo Music Group can help. Sugo has been helping artists publish and distribute music worldwide for over 40 years. By working with one of the industry’s top leaders, you can get your music the exposure it deserves and become the musician you’ve always wanted to be.