Album Cover Size: What is the Recommended Size?

An album cover art is one of the most important ways of showing your work to new customers; it shows what your music album is about, what genre it is, and how you want others to feel about the songs. That makes it essential to choose the right picture and album cover size.

Most of the time, musicians have a professional designer design their album cover art, following the album’s themes and genres, so the musicians themselves don’t need to worry about it. However, not everyone can afford that, so some might decide to design the album cover art themselves.

Album cover art size may vary from platform to platform, so you may need to design different covers for different streaming services, platforms, websites, and places where you will publish your album.

What’s the Recommended Album Cover Size?

As said earlier, the dimensions of album covers vary from site to site, and there is no universal size that is known to be the best. Most timing cover tries to go with the size of a typical CD cover, a square with a 1:1 aspect ratio and 4000 x 4000 pixels resolution. That’s why we usually see square album cover art.

However, sites don’t need to follow that because they don’t use CDs, and that’s when the question comes in: what dimensions do different streaming services, platforms, and sites usually use and follow?

Spotify Album Cover Size

The recommended Spotify cover art size is 1600 x 1600 pixels with a minimum of 640 x 640 pixels, making it a perfect square with an ideal aspect ratio of 1:1.

But that’s not where things end; you should keep the following requirements in mind when uploading your Spotify album cover art:

• Your file size shouldn’t exceed 4Mb.
• You can only upload the cover in limited formats: JPG, PNG, and TIFF.
• The cover art should be encoded with sRGB (standard Red Green Blue) color space at approximately 24 bits per pixel.

Additionally, if you want to add a playlist cover, the recommended Spotify playlist cover size is 300 x 300 pixels with a 1:1 aspect ratio.

Apple Music Album Cover Size

Apple Music album cover size follows the 1:1 aspect ratio perfect square and with the size being at least 4000 x 4000 pixels in JPG, PNG, or GIF format.

Additional guidelines:

• No misleading or generic cover art (for example, prominently depicting or referencing an artist who does not perform on the album).
• Only include relevant information such as the artist’s name, release title as text, and the exact song title or album as released.
• No blurry, pixelated, tilted, or cropped images unless intended.
• No additional information (including social media handles, email, website, logos, or any other reference to competitors of Apple Music and the iTunes Store).
• No references to pricing (for example, “Reduced Price,” “Low Price,” or “For Promo Use”).
• No brands or advertising.
• No year or dates.
• No barcodes.
• No pornographic imagery or a URL for a website that contains or links to pornography.
• No images from other copyright holders without written permission.
• No references to physical packaging, digital packaging, or retailers (for example, vinyl or CD).
• No parental advisory logo if the release is not explicit.

iTunes Album Cover Size

iTunes album cover size uses a more significant size with the same aspect ratio of 1:1. They use 3000 x 3000 pixels.

Still is the perfect square but allows more detailed imagery on album cover art. However, you can also use the same size as Spotify, given that the minimum size for an album cover is 1600 x 1600 pixels on iTunes.

Additionally, you should keep the following requirements in mind when uploading your iTunes album cover:

• The minimum album cover size is 1600 x 1600 pixels.
• For the image resolution, the recommended value is 300DPI (Dots Per Inch), but you can go as low as 72 DPI.
• The highest-quality RGB color mode is mandatory, even with black and white and monochrome images.
• The acceptable file formats for the album cover art are JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and GIF.

It would help if you kept in mind that Apple has some content guidelines that prohibit explicit content (such as nudity or extreme violence) on the album cover art. If you don’t follow the guidelines for your album cover art, album title, or even your artist name, Apple has the right to stop your album release and remove it altogether.

SoundCloud Album Cover Size

SoundCloud album cover art size still has a 1:1 aspect ratio, but there is a difference; SoundCloud album cover art has the recommended size of 800 x 800 pixels.

In addition to that, there are also some other regulations that you should follow:

• The maximum file size for your image is 2MB.
• Compared to other platforms, SoundCloud only allows two file formats, including JPEG and PNG.
• While this is necessary, SoundCloud asks users to use high-quality and better images to make sure there are no issues if they’re resized for different devices.

The album artwork on SoundCloud is usually designed according to CD covers. That’s why there is also an image resolution requirement of 300 DPI. That ensures that it retains its high quality if someone prints the album cover design.

If you’re setting up your SoundCloud profile, you should also keep the ideal SoundCloud banner size and SoundCloud profile picture size in mind. It will help you ensure that your profile is personalized correctly and that all your images are clear and visible.

Bandcamp Album Cover Size

The recommended Bandcamp album cover size is 3000 x 3000 pixels with the aspect ratio of 1:1. Minimum Bandcamp album cover art size is 1400 x 1400 pixels. Still, that size is not recommended at all because it makes the album cover very low quality.

The cover should be one of the formats of JPG, PNG, or GIF with the maximum of 10Mb.

You can also add a background image and a custom header to your Bandcamp account to make it more appealing to the viewer.

Amazon Music  Album Cover Size

Amazon Music album cover size follows the 1:1 aspect ratio with 1600 x 1600 pixels. Since this Amazon on-demand store album covers are designed to be printable, the only acceptable formats are GIF, PNG and JPG. And the maximum file size put by amazon is 15 Mb.

YouTube Music Album Cover Size

YouTube has made extra efforts to ensure good visual quality for your album cover. YouTube Music Cover Art Size must still be a square with the aspect ratio of 1:1 but with a maximum size of 4000 x 4000 pixels and a recommended minimum image size of 1400 x 1400 pixels with 300 DPI.

The image should be uploaded as JPG, GIF, or PNG. With no limit in size for the album cover but a 2Mb limit for the video’s thumbnail.

You can also make a cover photo for your Youtube channel based on your album cover, with the recommended size being 2560 x 1440 pixels.

Deezer Album Cover Size

There are very few regulations on the Deezer album cover art size, having an aspect ratio of 1:1 being one of them. The recommended album size is 3000 x 3000 pixels, and the acceptable formats for the site are only JPEG and PNG.

You can also use a minimum size of 1000 x 1000 pixels on the Deezer site. The maximum file size for Deezer is 6Mb.

Tidal Album Cover Size

The recommended Tidal album cover size is 3000 x 3000 pixels with the aspect ratio of 1:1

The album cover should be a JPG, PNG, or GIF format with a maximum of 10Mb. Minimum Tidal cover art dimension is 1600 x 1600 pixels.

Napster Album Cover Size

Napster album cover size is 3000 x 3000 pixels with an aspect ratio of 1:1. The album cover should be one of the formats of JPG or PNG.

What’s the Recommended Podcast Cover Art Size?

Podcast cover art sizes are similar to Apple’s iTunes, recommended 3000 x 3000 pixels with an aspect ratio of 1:1. The minimum is also 1400 x 1400 pixels with a minimum image resolution of 72 DPI and the recommended of 300 DPI.

The standard file format for podcast covers is JPEG and PNG.

However, remember that if you want to post your podcast on Spotify or iTunes, you need to change your cover size to its standard size. And because they all have the same aspect ratio, it’s just a matter of resizing your Podcast cover.

Most platform scale down your podcast cover size to 276 x 276 pixels, so keep in mind that your art should be visible and crystal clear even if it’s scaled down. If you don’t do that your cover art won’t be recognized by new and potential audiences for your podcast.

Tips for Creating a Great Album Cover Art

Knowing all the above sizes and dimensions can help you improve your art majorly but to create a good cover, you need to keep a few things. Here are a few tips for your next album cover:

• Uniqueness: try to be unique and yourself and avoid similarities with other works and your own older works.
• Being a minimalist is also very important to try to be as simple as possible while sending the intended message to your audience.
• Avoid putting your social links, website links, promo, and pricing on the cover.
• Traditionally, album covers with more personalization, such as faces, tend to get more attention.
• It’s unnecessary to put the album title and the artist’s name on the cover instead; see if there are other priorities before those.
• Be sure that the art sends your intended message and resonates with your band.
• Make sure you use the right colors and fonts for the album art. For example, if you’re releasing electronic music, you’re better off using futuristic rather than vintage fonts.
• Most importantly, make sure you follow the recommended album cover size.