MISTAKES THAT GETS YOUR MUSIC REMOVED FROM STREAMING SERVICE
(MUSIC COVER ARTS)
The first point of interaction between any new release and potential listeners is cover art. It has been observed that the quality of the cover art of a song largely determines if the listeners will interact with the music. The same applies to streaming services. If your cover art does not meet their guidelines, it will either not be uploaded or will be removed from the service.
Many are not aware that there are rules that are in place guiding the cover arts of music. It is however important to state that the general rule guiding the cover art is that; all cover art must be unique in itself, depicting the message of the music. Here are some other guidelines to follow when making cover art for your music:
- No Information Mismatch: The information on the cover art must match with the information attached to your music i.e artist name, the title of single, or album.
- There shouldn’t be record label information on the cover art.
- Parental advisory warnings are not necessary, so far there is the ‘explicit content’ tag on the cover art.
- Artist name abbreviation: When abbreviating your name, ensure you abbreviate your name completely and not just a part of the name.
- If you are featuring another artist on the track, ensure there are no information mismatches on the cover art.
- Avoid copyright and trademark infringement. You don’t put the logo of a company or brand on your cover art without express permission.
- Don’t use the tag ‘original’ for cover songs.
- Avoid using watermarked images.
- Avoid stretching your images aspect ratio. The causes image blurriness.
- Avoid up-scaling your image to a larger size.
- Avoid excessive and irrelevant text on your cover art.
- Avoid including your contact info, pornographic images, violent images, racist signs or logos e.t.c
Here are a few things that are allowed, although are still questioned.
- There are no rules guiding ‘Word Casing’. You are at liberty to use whatever casing mix you want.
- You can use the same image for all you release, so far the text on the cover art differs.
- You can have an image without text but you can’t use the same image for another release.
- Your social media handles, so far you don’t mention the name of the social media.