Album Cover Size: The Full Export Sheet for Stores, Canvas and YouTube in 2026

The album cover size that matters most is one square master file, and Spotify publishes the numbers for it: 1:1 aspect ratio, between 640px and 10000px wide and tall, saved as TIFF, PNG or JPG with lossless encoding, at the highest resolution you have. Export that file once and every other size in the release comes out of it. Below is the master spec, the crops the same release needs inside the week, the text that gets artwork sent back, and a check you can run in two minutes before you upload.

The master file: square, sRGB, never upscaled

Spotify's cover art requirements fit in five lines:

• TIFF, PNG or JPG, using lossless encoding
• 1:1 aspect ratio
• Between 640px and 10000px wide and tall, at the highest resolution available
• An sRGB color space, 24 bits per pixel, with color profiles applied directly
• No upscaled images, no embedded color profiles, no orientation metadata

3000 x 3000 px sits inside that range with room on both sides. The free song artwork maker exports exactly that, a square JPEG of 3000 by 3000 pixels, and the tool page calls it the size that distributors and stores ask for. You make the cover with no account there, and the download asks for your email so the design comes back to you on any device.

Color space

Convert the document to sRGB on export instead of attaching a profile to it. Spotify asks for color profiles applied directly and says it does not support embedded color profiles. If your editor shows an "embed color profile" box in the export dialog, clear it, and convert first so the sRGB values live in the pixels.

Orientation metadata

Spotify does not support orientation metadata either. If a file stands upright in your editor and tips sideways somewhere else, it carries a rotation tag. Rotate the canvas and export a fresh copy so the pixels already sit the right way up.

Resolution

Do not upscale images. If the only artwork you own is 900 px, pushing it to 3000 breaks the rule and still looks soft at any size. Rebuild the cover at full size instead. A fresh 3000 px export costs you ten minutes; a rejected delivery costs you a release date.

What belongs on the cover itself

The stores want the cover to show the title and the artist name, and nothing that looks like an advert: no web address, no price, no "out now". That last one catches people every cycle, because the same square often doubles as an announcement graphic. Keep the announcement text on the social crops and leave the store file clean. The artwork maker flags text a store can refuse while you are still placing it.

Apple reviews what you send. The Apple Music Style Guide says a Quality Assurance team reviews your content to make sure Apple Music and iTunes standards are met, and that following the guidelines makes a ticket less likely and gets your music onto Apple Music and the iTunes Store more quickly. Read Apple's guide alongside the Spotify spec before you hand files to a distributor. If you are still choosing one, our guide to music distribution covers how the delivery works.

The crops the same release needs

One square does not cover release week. Three other shapes do the rest of the work, and all three come out of the same master.

9:16 vertical: Spotify Canvas

Canvas is an 8-second visual loop that shows in a vertical format to fill the screen, and it appears in the Now Playing View instead of your album artwork. The spec: 3 to 8 seconds long, vertical 9:16, between 720px and 1080px tall, as an MP4 or a JPG file. JPG sits on that list, so a vertical still cropped from your cover qualifies as a Canvas on day one, and you can replace it with motion later.

Spotify's own advice is to connect your Canvas identity to your album art, profile picture, header image, or even playlists. That is the argument for cropping from the master rather than shooting something unrelated. Our walkthrough on how to create a Spotify Canvas has the rest of the loop choices.

16:9 and 9:16: YouTube thumbnails

YouTube recommends a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels for videos and 2160 x 3840 for Shorts, with a minimum width of 640 pixels for videos and a minimum height of 640 pixels for Shorts. Upload them in image formats such as JPG or PNG. Watch the file size caps, which depend on the device you upload from: 2 MB for video thumbnails on mobile, and 50MB for video, Shorts and podcast thumbnails on desktop.

Two practical notes. Custom thumbnails for Shorts only go up in YouTube Studio on a computer, and you can upload your own thumbnail only if your account is verified, so verify before release week rather than during it. And if you post a vertical video with a 16:9 custom thumbnail, YouTube replaces it with an auto-generated 4:5 thumbnail on the home, explore and subscription pages. Match the thumbnail shape to the video shape and that swap never happens.

For podcast playlists, YouTube asks for an aspect ratio of 1:1 instead of 16:9. Your square master already does that job.

Apple Music album motion

Album motion appears on the Album Page on iPhone, iPad and Mac, as well as on smart TVs, and it may also appear on the Home tab based on a listener's music preferences. Apple's guidelines outline how to create album motion artwork and the formatting requirements that go with it. Take those numbers from Apple's page in the week you export, not from a list someone wrote two years ago, because the QA review still stands between your file and the album page.

Making the cover takes an afternoon. Making every crop around it, in one look, takes the rest of the week. Music24 builds the release kit from the song, the cover and the lyrics, and stories, countdowns, lyric videos and the release plan follow the look of your cover, then it schedules and posts them to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Threads. See what the kit covers on the promote page. Full-song videos and motion artwork for Apple Music start at the Pro plan, and Manager and Label include them too.

The two-minute check before you upload

Run this on the master and the crops, in order:

1. Shape: the store file is square, 1:1.
2. Side length: between 640px and 10000px, and you never enlarged a smaller file to get there.
3. Format: TIFF, PNG or JPG with lossless encoding.
4. Color: sRGB, 24 bits per pixel, the profile applied directly, nothing embedded.
5. Metadata: no orientation metadata riding along.
6. Text: title and artist name, no web address, no price, no "out now".
7. Crops out of the same master: 9:16 between 720px and 1080px tall for Canvas, 3840 x 2160 for a YouTube video thumbnail, 2160 x 3840 for Shorts.

If a file fails a line, fix it in the export rather than in the upload form. Stores and platforms read the file, not your intention.

One look across every size

The sizes are the easy half. The harder half is keeping one visual identity across a square store tile, a vertical loop and a wide thumbnail, so a fan who sees the Reel recognises the cover in the search results. The artwork maker ships eight looks for that reason, and each look sets the fonts and the place of the words, and you change what you want. Choose the look once, then crop.

Build the crop list into the calendar instead of chasing it on release day. Our music release strategy guide lays out the weeks around a release, and the asset sheet above slots into the announce, countdown and out-now posts.

Start with the cover

Make the square first at music24.com/song-artwork-maker. It is free and runs in your browser, though the free file carries a small Music24 mark and a paid plan removes it.

When you want the rest of the release to follow that cover, signing up needs no card and starts 7 days of the Pro plan. After the trial the account moves to the Free plan and stays there as long as you like, with nothing charged. Be clear on one limit: Free and trial renders are low-resolution previews with a watermark, so the trial shows you the whole campaign before you pay, not a full set of files to post.

FAQ

My only artwork is 600 px. Can I just enlarge it? No. The floor is 640px wide and tall, and Spotify asks you not to upscale images. Rebuild the cover at full size. The free maker exports a square JPEG of 3000 by 3000 pixels, which the page describes as the size distributors and stores ask for.

Is there a maximum file size for cover art? Spotify's published requirements list the format, the resolution range, the aspect ratio and the color space, and stop there. YouTube thumbnails do carry caps: 2 MB for video thumbnails on mobile, and 50MB for video, Shorts and podcast thumbnails on desktop.

Can a still image work as a Spotify Canvas? Yes. The accepted file types are MP4 or JPG, at 3 to 8 seconds, vertical 9:16, between 720px and 1080px tall.

Why would YouTube reject my thumbnail? Custom thumbnails have to follow the Community Guidelines, and YouTube may reject a thumbnail and issue a strike when it contains nudity or sexually provocative content, hate speech, violence, or harmful or dangerous content. You also need a verified account to upload your own thumbnail at all.

Do I need a different file for Apple Music than for Spotify? Check both specs before you assume one file covers everything. Spotify publishes the cover art requirements quoted above, and Apple publishes its own style guide, with a Quality Assurance team that reviews content against it. Export the master at the highest resolution you have and you have room to meet either one.