Why your cover art was rejected

41 · 2026-09-09 · 16 min read · Español

A cover-art rejection is one of three different failures. The file did not meet a store’s image specification; the picture carries something a store bans; or what is printed on the picture disagrees with the fields you typed. The message names which. The first is a re-export, the second a redesign, the third a field — and the third is the one that feels arbitrary and is not.

• Cover-art rejections enforce two kinds of published document: Apple’s Music Style Guide, which carries the content rules, and each store’s image specification. Spotify’s Metadata Style Guide publishes no artwork rule; its requirements are a separate page.
• The file: Apple recommends 3000 × 3000 pixels and accepts 1400 as a minimum, square, JPEG or PNG, in RGB and never CMYK, never upscaled. Spotify accepts 640 to 10000 pixels square, TIFF, PNG or JPG, in sRGB, and does not support embedded colour profiles or orientation metadata.
• The picture: Apple bans web addresses, logos, QR codes, competitor references, audio-format claims, references to CDs, vinyl, digital products or retailers, advertising, pornography and hate.
• The match: Apple requires the album’s original, non-misleading cover art rather than a generic template, and distributor checkers compare the title, artist and producer text on the art, and the Parental Advisory logo, against the fields.
• Change the half the message names — re-export the file, remove the element, or edit the field — and redeliver through your distributor. A change after release takes the same route.

Who rejected your cover art, and against what?

Your distributor, checking the cover against Apple’s Music Style Guide and each store’s image specification before delivery.

Three tests hide behind one word. The file: pixels, shape, format, colour space. The picture: what is drawn or printed on it. The match: whether the words on the picture agree with the words in the form. Each is written down somewhere different, none of the three documents links the others, and a rejection email quotes none of them.

The content rules are Apple’s Music Style Guide, section 7, six short rules. The file rules are two specifications: Apple’s Video and Audio Asset Guide, which carries the cover-art profile the style guide only points at, and Spotify’s cover art requirements, a page of one list. Spotify’s Metadata Style Guide — the document every other rejection on this site traces to — contains no artwork rule at all, and Spotify publishes no list of what a picture may not contain. Read that silence as silence. It is not permission; it is a store that lets its distributors and its other rulebook do the refusing.

On top of the stores sits the distributor’s own checker, and it is usually stricter than either. MusicGateway publishes its rejection messages in full, fifteen of them for artwork alone, which is why it is the distributor quoted here. A metadata rejection is a failed test against a public answer key; the artwork test has three answer keys, and nobody hands you any of them.

What does the file have to be?

Square, 3000 × 3000 pixels, JPEG or PNG, in RGB — one export that satisfies both Apple’s and Spotify’s published specifications.

Apple’s profile, from the asset guide: “Album cover art files should be a recommended size of 3000 x 3000 pixels; minimum size of 1400 x 1400 pixels.” Square, 1:1. JPEG with a .jpg extension or PNG with .png. Colour space, in the guide’s own words, “RGB (screen standard)” — and then the sentence that ends more vinyl campaigns than any other: “CMYK (print standard) images will not be accepted.”

Spotify’s list is looser at the bottom and stranger at the edges. “TIFF, PNG, or JPG format using lossless encoding”, “Between 640px - 10000px wide and tall”, a 1:1 aspect ratio, encoded in sRGB at 24 bits per pixel. Then two prohibitions in one breath: “Don’t upscale images. We also don’t support embedded color profiles and orientation metadata.” Six hundred and forty pixels clears Spotify and fails Apple by seven hundred and sixty. Ten thousand clears Spotify and is three times what Apple asked for. The overlap is the number everyone already tells you and nobody sources: 3000, square, sRGB, saved as a JPEG or PNG from the file the design was actually made in.

The CMYK trap catches people who did everything right. The sleeve went to the pressing plant as a CMYK file, because print is ink and ink is CMYK. The same file went to the distributor, because it was the finished cover. But a CMYK file is a set of instructions for four inks, and a screen is a device with three lights. Apple does not convert it and does not guess. It refuses it, in writing, and the fix is thirty seconds in the file you already have: export again, in RGB, from the layered original.

Why was a sharp-looking cover rejected for quality?

Usually because it was upscaled: Apple forbids enlarging a smaller image to meet the minimum, and a resampled file reads as blurry at delivery size.

The style guide’s quality rule is one line: “Images must not be low quality, pixelated, misaligned, rotated, or have other quality issues.” The asset guide adds the two sentences that explain most quality rejections on Earth: “Do not increase the size of a smaller image to meet the minimum size standard”, and “Excessively blurry or pixelated images will be rejected.”

Here is the message that arrives instead: “Artwork is not high quality for our streaming partners.” That tells you shit. Four different exports produce that sentence, and only one of them is about resolution. The cover was upscaled from a 1000-pixel export. The cover is a screenshot of the cover. The cover went through a messaging app that recompressed it on the way. Or the cover is a phone photo that only stands upright because of a rotation tag in its metadata — and Spotify, by its own statement, does not read that tag. The photo that stands up on your phone is delivered lying down.

Upscaling is the common one, so be precise about what it does. Resampling a smaller image does not add picture; it adds pixels the software invented by averaging their neighbours, and averaging is softness. The design is untouched. The export is not the design. Go back to the layered file — the one with the type still live — and export at 3000 from there. If the layered file is gone, the honest floor is the largest original export you still have, and if that is under 1400 pixels the cover is being remade, not resized.

Two more failures land in the same bucket without being about pixels at all. MusicGateway returns art for a border around it and for a line down one edge — “There should be no border round artwork” — because the store crops and scales the square itself, and a two-pixel white edge on your export becomes a visible frame at thumbnail size. And the store’s own crop is why a cover that is a hair off square is a quality failure rather than a shape failure: the specification says 1:1, and 3000 by 2996 is not 1:1.

What is not allowed on the picture?

Web addresses, logos, QR codes, competitor references, audio-format claims, references to packaging or retailers, advertising, pornography and hate — Apple’s list, by section.

Section 7.3 is the one most people have half-heard: “Art must not contain website addresses, logos, QR codes, or references to competitors of Apple Music and the iTunes Store.” Its second sentence is the one they have not: “Art must not contain references to the audio file format, such as Atmos, Dolby Atmos, spatial audio, lossless, high-resolution audio, high resolution, 24-bit, or 192 kHz.” The reason is not modesty. The store badges those formats itself, next to the cover, from the file it actually serves — and a sticker on your art claiming lossless to a listener on a lossy tier is a claim the store did not make.

Section 7.4 closes the other door: “Art must not include references to the physical packaging, such as CD or vinyl, digital product, or any retailers.” No Available on Vinyl, no Deluxe CD Edition, no Streaming Now on a cover being looked at inside the stream. Section 1.2 sits above both and says the general rule in six words: “Metadata, audio, and cover art must not contain advertising.” Section 1.1 adds that art may not carry Apple’s own marks. Sections 7.5 and 7.6 are the ones no reader of this page needed telling: no pornography, no URL leading to it, and nothing that promotes hatred on any ground the guide lists.

The distributor’s checker goes past that list. MusicGateway returns art for an “Additional URL link”, for “Additional logo and/or text”, for blank artwork, and for the one nobody expects: “Barcode on artwork is not accepted.” The barcode is on the back of the sleeve, where it belongs, and it got into the delivery because somebody exported the back. A label logo in the corner is an additional logo to a checker, and a checker does not know it is yours.

The pattern underneath every entry is one sentence. The store controls the frame, so nothing inside the frame may advertise, claim, or point elsewhere. The handle goes in the bio. There is no gift-shop address in the corner of the Mona Lisa.

Why does the artwork have to match the metadata?

Because Apple requires the album’s original, non-misleading cover art, and distributors compare every word printed on it against the fields you typed.

Apple’s rule is section 7.1, and it is the whole store-side basis for every match rejection: “Deliver the album’s original cover art whenever possible, and do not use generic art templates or art that doesn’t match the album you’re delivering. The art must not be misleading.” Three rules in three sentences. The art is the album’s. The art is not a template. The art does not say anything untrue about what is under it.

The distributor turns that third sentence into a comparison, and MusicGateway publishes what it compares. “Title on the artwork doesn’t exactly match the information in the data provided.” “Text on the artwork doesn’t exactly match the information in the data provided.” “The Display artist does not match the artist(s) shown on artwork.” And the one that catches people who thought they were being generous: “The Producer field does not match the producer(s) shown on artwork.” Print the producer’s name in the corner at eight points and you have filed a producer credit. In Helvetica.

Read the word exactly twice, because it is doing the work. Everything printed on the cover is a claim, and every claim is read against the form. A title on the art with a different capitalisation, a subtitle that never made it into the version field, a featured name on the front that is not in the artist fields, a prod. by line for someone the producer field does not carry — each is two documents disagreeing, and the checker does not know which one you meant. The Parental Advisory logo is the same rule in both directions: art showing the logo while the explicit field is unset is returned, and art that “suggest[s] explicit content and does not display a parental advisory stamp” is returned too.

This is the one check no string comparison can run — a person reads a picture — and the display-artist half of it is the one that arrives labelled as a name problem. That comparison has its own piece, with the rule that both halves are yours and you change the cheaper one. Here is the direction that makes the cheaper one obvious before you ever need the rule: copy the fields onto the cover. Never the cover into the fields. The form is the record; the art is a rendering of it.

What do you change: the file, the picture, or a field?

Whichever half the message names: a re-export for the file, an edit for the picture, a field for a mismatch — then a redelivery through your distributor.

Every row ends the same way: the corrected release goes back through the review it failed. The audio is never part of it, so nothing about the recording’s code changes. And a cover that is wrong after release takes the same road, not a different one. Spotify says so plainly on its own page for fixing music that is already up: artwork is on the list of things you “reach out to your label or distributor to fix”, and “We can’t change this manually on our end because we show music according to the metadata sent to us.”

That is the one comfort in this piece. A name mismatch that passes costs you an artist page and a two-filer repair. A cover that passes wrong costs you a redelivery. Of everything a store reads, the picture is the one most fully yours to fix.

How do you stop it happening again?

Keep the layered file, export at 3000 pixels square in sRGB with no border, and copy the fields onto the cover before you deliver.

• Keep the layered file, and know where it is. Not the export, not the screenshot of the export, not the copy that came back through a messaging app. Every fix on this page starts from the original, and a cover you cannot re-export is a cover you will one day redraw.
• One export for delivery: 3000 × 3000, 1:1, sRGB, JPEG or PNG, no embedded profile. The sleeve gets its own CMYK export. They are two files with one design, never one file doing both jobs.
• Bake the orientation into the pixels. If an image needs a rotation tag to stand up, rotate it in the editor and save. Spotify does not read the tag.
• Crop to the picture. No border, no edge line, no letterbox. The store frames the square; anything you add to the edge becomes a visible frame inside its frame.
• Read the front like a checker. Every word on it is a claim. Title, artist, featured names, producer, the logo — each one exists in a field, and the field and the front say it identically, or the front says less.
• Nothing on the front advertises. No handle, no URL, no QR, no label logo, no barcode, no format badge, no Out Now. The store adds its own badges from the file it serves.
• Sweep the catalogue, not the release. The cover that bounced was exported the same way as the six before it, on five different laptops. The audit checklist walks the whole thing in the order failures propagate, and every release’s art belongs on the list.

FAQ

Can I change the cover art after the release is live?

Yes, through your distributor, and only through your distributor. Spotify lists artwork among the things a label or distributor fixes by sending a metadata update, and states that it cannot change artwork manually because it shows music according to the metadata it was sent. The audio is untouched, so the recording keeps its code.

Does the Parental Advisory logo have to be on explicit cover art?

Neither store publishes a rule requiring it. One distributor’s published checker compares the logo and the explicit field in both directions: art showing the logo while the field is unset is returned, and art that suggests explicit content without the logo is returned too. Whether you may print the logo at all is a separate question, because the mark belongs to the RIAA and using it is a licence matter.

Can two releases share one cover?

Apple asks for the album’s original cover art and bans generic art templates, and one distributor’s published checker returns duplicate artwork with the instruction that each song have different artwork. Neither store publishes a rule on one cover reused across separate releases, so this page states none. Treat a shared cover as a risk at the distributor rather than a right at the store.

Is AI-generated cover art rejected?

Nothing either store publishes bans it. Apple’s only sentence about AI sits in its motion-artwork rules and bans the degradation rather than the tool: distorted text such as titles, unnatural anatomical features, or any other compromise to the visual integrity of the cover. Every other artwork rule applies to the output regardless of what made it, so a generated cover with a garbled title fails the same accuracy rule a drawn one would.

Sources

• Apple, Apple Music Style Guide — §7.1 original, non-template, non-misleading cover art; §7.2 the quality rule; §7.3 website addresses, logos, QR codes, competitor references and the audio-format vocabulary; §7.4 packaging, digital products and retailers; §7.5 pornography; §7.6 hatred; §1.1 Apple’s own marks; §1.2 no advertising in metadata, audio or cover art; §7.20 the AI visual-integrity rule, which sits in the motion-artwork subsection.
• Apple, Apple Video and Audio Asset Guide — the Music Album Cover Art profile: 3000 × 3000 recommended and 1400 × 1400 minimum, square, JPEG or PNG, RGB with CMYK refused, no upscaling, and the rejection of excessively blurry or pixelated images. The Apple Music Specification defers to this guide for the file requirements.
• Spotify, Cover art requirements — TIFF, PNG or JPG with lossless encoding, 640 to 10000 pixels, 1:1, sRGB at 24 bits per pixel, no upscaling, and no support for embedded colour profiles or orientation metadata.
• Spotify, Fixing problems with music metadata — that artwork is fixed by the label or distributor sending a metadata update, and that Spotify cannot change it manually.
• Spotify, Metadata Style Guide (v2.3) — read end to end for this page; it publishes no artwork rule, which is the fact cited.
• MusicGateway, Distribution Rejections — the fifteen artwork rejection messages quoted above, in a distributor’s own published wording: quality, borders, URL, logo and text, barcode, blank and duplicate artwork, and the title, text, artist, producer and Parental Advisory comparisons.

Store rules change, and the ones here are quoted as at the date at the top of this piece; the linked documents are the living ones and every one of them was read that day. Your distributor’s own limits — file size, format, a stricter minimum — are on its page and not on this one, and where its checker is stricter than either store, the stricter rule is the one that bounces you.

Keeping the register

The cover and the fields it has to agree with belong on the same release, kept where the next delivery reads them. CatalogTracker keeps the artwork on the release beside the parental advisory setting, the C-line and the P-line, with a completeness meter that reports how many of the release’s fields are actually filled in, and a history of every change to the art. Which name was on the front of the last one, and whether the field said the same, is the sort of thing a register remembers and a release week does not. In development for iPhone.