Cover Art & Design: Music Business Tips for the Independent Recording Artist

Video Transcript

"I'm Chris Knab for Expert Village. What I've found when I was in retail is that the cover that you make of your CD, your lst one or your 21st one whatever it is, is absolutely crucial to stand out from all your competitors who is making records as well. So I want to give you some tips about making a CD cover. We are in a digital age; there's no doubt about it. But right now in 2007, 80 percent of records sold in 2006 were good old fashion CD's folks and 20 percent were digital files, downloads, I-Tunes, etc. those types of sales. So what that means is you can go digital and you have to but still the industry is weighed toward that good old pastic CD. How to design an affective CD cover. Here's one right here. Band name is in the top third. It says Liquorice John Death and at the bottom is the title of the record. That's fine. Now easily seen if you are in the store and you are looking for the band Liquorice John Death, not a problem. Very easy to find on the shelves. We we look on the back of a record what we waant is the listing of the song as this CD did and the times. Have a logo and the logo design is going to be right there on the back some place and I did mention that you put your contact information on the back. Your URL address, your website, your MySpace page perhaps and your e-mail address. What you put on the spine is the name of the artist again, the name of the record and you will see a code number of some kind. That is called a catalogue number and you have to make up a catalogue number in order for stores and distributors to be able to order your record. You will also notice on the back of records that we see the emphamas bar code. Got to have a bar code on the back of your record. That is just the way a company called Sounds Scan when that product is store through a store or retailer of some kind on or off line, they can track sales through that bar coded information so be sure to go get yourself a bar code. A tip on that would be suggest if you are brand new, go to a place like CD Baby.com and they can help you with that. They can introduce you to the topic of bar codes and get one for you and that is whole another subject I will leave up to CD Baby. Just go there; they are great people. "