Musician Categories: Music Industry Tips

Last week we looked at Song Artwork, and I promised you guys that today, we’ll look at how to design your song artwork yourself on Canva. This article was written by the C.E.O of Katapult Global Consulting Limited, a design company in Nigeria. I thought it important to learn design from a professional. The next words you’ll read from this point are his.

It is no secret that design is no longer limited to some selected few in our time. Easy-to-use digital software and platforms have levelled the playing field that anyone with a little learning and consistency cab leverage on the immense power of these platforms to craft great designs.

One of such platforms is Canva, the leading online design platform for beginners, Do-It-Yourselfers and small businesses. Canva excels in crafting unique and visual-compelling templates that anyone can turn around in a matter of minutes and not hours. Canva excels when we talk about speed.

Canva for Music Artists

Canva has templates for almost anything or field you can think of. So, Music is a broad field that has been captured in the workings of Canva. So, your song artwork is 99% done for you, if I may say. It’s as simple as searching for a template of any related song artwork and replace the title and image. Voila! Download and start sharing your song artwork.

How exactly do you go about using Canva for your Song Artwork?

I will share 5 easy steps to get started with your first Song artwork on canva. Irrespective of your level of graphics design mastery, you can easily find your way around Canva. Here are my five steps. Let’s go:

1. Visit Canva website and Sign Up

Since Canva is not an offline software you can download and install on your laptop or desktop, you only use it online. So, power up your internet connection and use your browser to visit Canva.

It will require that you sign up as a new user or login if you have registered there before. Your signing up grants you the access to use thousands of templates available on the site. So, you have to sign up/login to use Canva.

2. Search for and choose a suitable template

Now that you are in your design space, you will find a search bar that returns anything you search for. Go ahead and search for ‘album cover’, song artwork, or anything related to what you have in mind. Definitely, there will be quite a lot of templates available for you. Click on your preferred template.

3. Customize the Template

Start replacing the template with appropriate photos and text. Please note that some of the templates are not free to use. You subscribe to a premium plan in order to access and use them. This step is where you need all your design skills on the table.

4. Download the finished Work

Once you have designed to your taste, it is time to own your design. But before that, let’s be sure we are good to go on the design. Tweak and re-tweak if you need to. After that, click on the button ‘Download’ and select JPEG or PNG. That’s all. Your song artwork is now on your device and ready to use now.

5. Share everywhere!

This last step is very crucial. It doesn’t matter how good and solid your design is, if you don’t share it to relevant platforms, it’s as good as you don’t start at all. Share everywhere and let your fans start downloading your song.

Conclusion

Now, I strongly believe that you are on a good path to getting a very beautiful song arwork for your new release.

However, for an advanced design with many features, you will need the help of a professional designer. That, my friend, is very important. Engage the service of a professional designer if you’re not sure of the output you get or do not like what you designed.

For such professional design service, contact katapult Designs today.

Last week, I encouraged you to keep trying and not quit. Today, we’re going to look at an aspect of music that some musicians don’t pay much attention to; the artwork. So, let’s talk Song Artwork.

What’s a song artwork?

A song artwork is a picture usually attached to the song and shows on the screen of the playing device whenever the song is played.

Before the digital era, when music was only sold in Cassettes and CDs, songs were only released as albums (a compilation of songs). The artwork for the album used to be printed on the case of the cassette or CD. This implied that there was just one artwork for all the songs in the album (this is still valid till today).

However, you don’t need to have an album to release your music, today. Music can be released as singles, hence the need for song artworks for individual tracks that are not part of an album.

What’s the use of an artwork?

Can you imagine ordering a product online with no picture to see what exactly you’re buying? You can only do that if you completely trust the seller right? The artwork plays a very important role in promoting your song to prospective listeners, and many times, these are people who don’t know you. It’s what they see first before they hear the content of your song. Just like the song title, the song artwork can either attract someone to listen to your song or repel them from listening. This is especially important now that we’re in the age of music streaming, and remember that music steaming sites have millions of good music. It all boils down to which of the songs caught the attention of the listeners with their title and song artwork.

Are there specific rules for song artwork?

The mere fact that it is called artwork suggests that there is no limitation whatsoever to what your artwork should look like. It all depends on what the artist wants to depict. One time, a band I admire wanted their album art to be a plain reflective casing (like a mirror), so that anyone who purchases the CD would see their own face as the artwork. You might think that’s crazy, but I thought it was creative and I loved that idea.

Things to bear in mind in making your song artwork

1. Your artwork should be attractive to your target audience. Think of your target audience (their age, cultural orientation, worldview, religious beliefs, etc) and what would be attractive to such people. This would help you decide on the concept of the design.
2. Find out the specifications of the music streaming sites you hope to upload your music to, with regards to the size and format, and make sure you adhere to them. Many of these sites would require perfect squares, with a minimum of 1000 x 1000 size.
3. Be original in your design. And be creative too. Don’t just use your picture because everybody is doing that (even though your picture is necessary if it’s your first song, so people can see who they’re listening too), but be yourself.
4. As much as possible employ the services of a professional graphic designer. Explain the concept you have in mind for the artwork and let bring their professionalism into it. However, if you can’t afford one you can always do it yourself (watch out for next week’s article).

 

This is where we’ll stop today.

I’m sure you’ve learnt something about Song Artwork. In next week’s article, I’ll be featuring a guest; the C.EO. of Katapult Global Consulting Limited, a design company in Nigeria. He’ll be walking us through how to design your song artwork by yourself.

Remember that you can get unbiased song reviews for your songs (whether you’ve released them or not). We could review them privately (for your consumption only) or publish the review on our site. You’ll get honest appraisals as well as constructive criticism of your songs. This would help you get better in your music. Plus, other people who might never have heard about you before would get to listen to your songs when they read the published reviews (who knows, they might even turn to fans). If you’re interested to get your songs reviewed. Send an email to jeplunemusic@gmail.com and attach an mp3 of the song to be reviewed. Also state if you would like a private review or if you would want it published.

You can read my previous song reviews here.

 

Last week, I showed you 3 important things you probably ignore while uploading YouTube videos. Today, I’m going to share with you, two of the most important accounts every musician should have.

Before the release of my first single in 2013, I spent the last five months in 2012 reading and learning about the music industry, around the globe and in Nigeria. I learnt a lot of things that helped me (and still helps me) in my music. Things like accounts I needed to open, songwriting tips, promotion tips, etc. I just didn’t have money to implement a lot of the things I learnt. Now, I know a lot has changed/ evolved in the music industry since then, but some things have remained unchanged. So, here are two accounts you should have as a musician.

1. An account with a video streaming site.

In the era that we live in, visuals is everything. As an artist, it is not enough to have songs released in audio format, you need to release visual content for your listeners/ fans as well. And to do that, you need to have an account with a video streaming site.

Even though there are many video streaming sites today, YouTube remains the most popular. In fact, I originally titled this first point as “You need a YouTube account”, but I decided to change it just before I uploaded.

You see, YouTube is the largest video streaming site in the world, with over 2 billion logged-in users monthly, and more than 500 hours of video content uploaded per minute. YouTube remains where millions of people discover new music daily. But beyond being the largest video streaming site, another reason you should consider having a YouTube account is that YouTube is owned by Google, the biggest search engine in the world. So, having your video on YouTube increases your chances of popping up on google search (well, there are other things involved, but that’s an article for another day).

So, you see, it is absolutely essential that you have an account with a video streaming site, especially Youtube.

 

2. An account with an audio streaming site.

Today, unlike 15 years ago, there are several audio streaming sites, some of which include Spotify, Apple music, YouTube music, Soundcloud, Audiomack, Boomplay, etc. The list is endless. It is true that Spotify has become number 1 music streaming site in the world, but considering how difficult it is to get your music on Spotify (actually you need a third- party music distributor to do that) and the fact that Apple music only works on Iphones, Soundcloud still remains a great option especially for us over here in Africa. In fact, labels and industry executives would still ask for your Soundcloud link if they want to know what you sound like. Another advantage of Soundcloud is that it enables you to place widget on any site, such that your song can be played directly from the site. This could be helpful when you finally build a website for your music.

Yes, you can upload your songs on different sites for the sake of promotion, but you should still have all your songs (at least your best songs) on a widely accepted music streaming site like Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Music, etc. That way anyone could google your name and find your songs in one place. Untill you are able to build a website for your music, this is next best option you have to appear professional. And it is absolutely essential that you do so.

 

Now you may ask, what about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, Snapchat and the likes… I didn’t include those because I assume you are already on two or more of those platforms. Those platforms are general for everyone and you can use those to promote your music and drive traffic to where you have all your music. My focus on this article are the sites you need, specifically, as musician.

 

I’d like to know what you think, so please leave a comment below.

Today, I’m going to show you three important things you probably ignore while uploading YouTube videos. One of the services we offer, at Jeplune Music Studios, is lyric videos for music artists. But over time, I observed, as I check the YouTube links that some of our clients share after we make videos them, that most of them ignore some very important details while uploading. This is why I decided to dedicate today’s article to educate you guys on this. I also made a video to demonstrate this, you can watch the video below

1. Title

Even though this should be very obvious, but some of you upload videos and leave the title the same as the title the video editor gave the video while rendering. This is a very bad practice. Your title is the major thing people see when you share links for them to go watch the video. Video editors do not owe it to you to name/title your videos. So, the first thing you should do as soon as upload starts is to edit the title to what you want it to be.

2. Description

A lot of artists upload videos without a proper description, some without any description at all. This is also wrong. Your description is what people see under the title of your video. It is what would determine whether or not they would click on that link to watch the video. So, make sure you adequately describe your video. It doesn’t have to be too long, but it should adequately describe the content of the video.

3. Thumbnails

I see a lot of people allow YouTube to automatically select the Thumbnails for their videos. This is also not professional. Usually, YouTube would generate three picture frames from within your video to choose from. Make sure you select the one that most accurately describes the remaining content of your video. Alternatively, you could upload your own custom image and use as Thumbnail for the video. This could be your best option, especially if the ones automatically generated by YouTube do not accurately represent your video.

 

The good news is that now that you know these things, you can still go back to your previously uploaded videos and edit these details to reflect the video more accurately. They don’t have to remain the way they are now, looking very unprofessional.

So that’s it. Those are important things which I’ve seen a lot of artists ignore while uploading videos on YouTube. I hope you have learnt something new today. Let me know, in the comments below, which of these you have been ignoring for a while now. You can also read some of my previous articles on Musicians’ Corner.