Get your next album cover for less than $25. Five creative Graphic Artists on Fiverr.com

If you're reading this blog, you are probably a musician like me, that knows exactly how to spend hundreds of dollars on studio gear, instruments and software, but when it comes to marketing, even the expenses under $100 seem to hurt. Have you ever asked yourself any of the following questions or statements?

1. I wish I could find a graphic artist for my new album cover that costs less than $300 and will actually give me something I want.
2. I am broke and I need an album cover, but I don't know anyone.
3. A lot of album covers that I've seen these days look cheap and simple, why is that?
4. I just need a simple album cover for a cheap price, I am broke.
5. I don't know what I want on my album cover, that's why I'm calling you.
6. Why do graphic artists take my deposit for an album cover and then disappear for two weeks?
7. I know I explained to this graphic artist, exactly what I wanted for my album cover, and they made something totally different and now they want to charge me to make changes.
8. I heard that there are people overseas that are graphic artists that will work for cheap, unlike the spoiled local college brats that are over charging me.
9. Hello Facebook friends, can anyone recommend a graphic artist for me?
10. OK, five bucks, I think I can pay $5 to get a cover for my next single, I just need something basic.

Well, I think you've come to the right blog post? Fiverr is an amazing place, where people across the world offer services starting at $5. You can find graphic artists, translators, musicians, SEO web specialists, graphic designers and more. So why did the title of my blog post say “... less than $25?” Because the truth is, at fiverr, the prices for gigs start at $5, but you probably need a few “extra gigs” to get exactly what you need. But before you start comparing fiverr sellers, there are a few things that I recommend you get, no matter who you hire to design your album cover.

• Get a square version of your album cover that is 3000 x 3000, 300 dpi, .jpg less than 15mb.
• Make sure that you either have the ability to resize your own image, or you pay your graphic artist to output different sizes, based on the table above.
• Make sure to get the source file (photoshop, illustrator, or whatever program they used) 

Getting your source files important, because, you may want some small change later on, two years from now and you can't expect your graphic artist to have archived this file. Save yourself from a huge headache later. The following is a list of some of the artwork dimensions that you need for some of the main distributors. You would think that this is an industry standard, but it seems like every distributor wants something a little different.

Distributor	Dimensions	File Types Accepted
Band Camp	700 x 700 minimum	.jpg, .gif, .png
cdbaby	1400 x 1400	.jpg
Distro Kid	Not Published / Public	Not Published / Public
Loudr.fm	3000 x 3000	.jpg, .jpeg, .png
Mondo Tunes	Not Published / Public	Not Published / Public
Reverb Nation	1000 x 1000	.jpg or .png
Symphonic Distribution	2000 x 2000	.jpg, .jpeg, .png
Topspin Media	600 x 600 min - 1200 x1200 max	.jpg
Tunecore	1600 x 1600 min - 3000 x 3000 max	.jpg, .png, .gif

You'll notice, that on fiverr, some graphic artists charge a little extra for each of the three rules stated above, which is why the $5 simple album cover is rarely a viable option. $25 is more reasonable, and depending on the seller, it may cost you up to $50, but keep in mind … most retail graphic artists are charging anywhere from $200-$500 for album covers. Keep your options open.

Here are five great sellers on fiverr that I have found:

Hatimbahia Team from Morrocco

williamw1987

ateljestudio

kidslikefran

jigs33

Rdio goes bankrupt and Pandora buys a chunk

The former online streaming service Rdio has gone bankrupt. I guess they couldn't compete with Pandora, iTunes radio, Jango and all of the other streaming services out there. I liked their concept and name when I first discovered them. I uploaded a compilation of songs to cdbaby back in 2012 for my music group, "303infinity." I earned some royalties ($0.24) over a two year period. Other online outlets were paying 100 times that per quarter, so either it wasn't a very popular station for EDM or it just wasn't very popular. According to billboard, Pandora is buying up some of the leftover assets from Pandora to help create a new Premium subscription service.

Check out this billboard article for more info.

A link to Rdio's farewell message.

Jango / Radioairplay.com makes a power move with NeuCoin tips.

When it comes to writing a review of radioairplay.com, there are a lot of features to cover and there are many people on the internet that have weighed in on the topic (positively and negatively.) For those that are not familiar with the service, I will break down a few things, so that it will be easier to get your head around the concept. “Jango, Radio Airplay.com and NeuCoin” are three different things that I will cover, as well as how they work together.

What is “Jango?” On their website, Jango describes themselves as “Free Internet Radio That Plays the Music You Love.” Which basically means, listeners can customize their own playlists similar to Pandora. The artificially intelligent Jango Radio interface will play you songs from popular artists on your customized playlist and even insert similar music to introduce you to new artists and music. Listeners can also provide feedback with the 'Like' button and can view info about the song they are listening to like: bio, purchase links, album cover, etc … A great marketing tool for discovering music right? It's genius, many companies have been doing it for years, but why is Jango so different? One of the reasons, is because of radioairplay.com.

Radioairplay.com is a promo tool for independent musicians (like me) that allows us to insert our songs into a listener's customized playlist so that they can be exposed to our music on Jango radio. As far as I know, there aren't many services out there like this. I have found “MondoTunes Radio” and “feature.fm” which I will review in the future. Please let me know if you find other services out there, because I have found radioairplay.com to be a very effective tool for finding new fans and selling music. You can purchase credits/plays for cash and insert them anytime you want, 24 hours a day, to a global audience. Personally, I subscribe to the $30/month plan which gets you 1000 plays/month. There are bonuses for having a recurring subscription, unused plays roll over to the next month and you can even earn bonus plays when your songs get a lot of positive feedback (high popscore) from fans, read all about it at radioairplay.com, these are the basics:

$10 = 250 plays/month

$30 = 1,000 plays/month

$100 = 4,000 plays/month

$200 = 9,000 plays/month

$500 = 23,000 plays/month

$1,000 = 50,000 plays/month

What is a Jango popscore? I will put this in the most basic terms possible, because that question alone will get you thousands of search results on google. A popscore is a weekly measure of positive interactions (1-100) from fans on radioairplay.com, compared to all of the other independent artists using the radioaiplay.com service that week.

For example:

During Week 52 of 2015, one of my songs “303infinity 'Audio Fantasy' TbOnVega Radio Mix” was played over 100 times in various listener's Jango playlist. This song's 99 popscore ranked in the top 10 of the entire website during Week 52 of 2015. The song had a lot of positive interactions, listeners clicked on the 'like' button, shared their email addresses with me, commented several times on my profile and tipped me several NeuCoins. I can read your mind. What the heck is a NeuCoin you ask? I had no idea until a few weeks ago myself, when people started tipping me with them. I got several NeuCoin tips while I was writing this article actually. In my opinion, NeuCoin is a game changer, a power move, and a brilliant partnership for Jango, Radioairplay.com, NeuCoin and independent musicians like myself, trying to reach new fans and continue to create music without dipping into the grocery money to do it.

Quoting directly from RadioAiplay.com “RadioAirplay Artists can now receive tips - in the form of NeuCoins - from listeners on Jango! Neucoins are an easy-to-use alternative to Bitcoin, and can be used in many ways which now include redeeming them for Airplay.”

Perhaps you've been living under a rock and have never heard of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the most popular 'virtual currency' or 'crypto currency' on planet earth (at the time of this post.) Basically it's like money that exists online and is not regulated by the US Treasury or any government entities. You'll find people out there that love Bitcoin, swear by Bitcoin, fear Bitcoin, and hate Bitcoin. The CEO of Bitcoin was even assassinated recently.

Bitcoin's continues to grow in popularity and value. At the moment of this post, Bitcoin's were valued at about $430 USD each. You can check it here yourself on this Bitcoin to USD, NeuCoin to USD calculator, real time price.

By the time you read this post, the value will be different, check it out yourself, sorry for turning this into a Bitcoin article, back to NeuCoin.

NeuCoins were released in 2015, you can read all about them at neucoin.org. There are also some great links about NeuCoin on Reddit. In basic terms, NeuCoin is a virtual currency like Bitcoin, but is used for micro transactions. Every new Jango account comes with 25 NeuCoins and listeners are encouraged to tip artists if they like your songs. I've researched a couple of sites, and NeuCoins seem to be valued around a penny each. ($0.01 USD) So now you are asking, why do we want a useless coin that I can't spend on food, that isn't worth much, that no one has ever heard of?

Because, tipping NeuCoins is a new level of positive listener reaction to your music.

NeuCoins are of limited quantity and Jango listeners are rationing out their NeuCoins in tips to the artists that they truly favor over others. It is a direct comparison to your peers, unlike the other positive interactions that listeners can have with your artist profile. A Jango listener can hit the like button when they hear your track on radioairplay.com, but they are not limited to the number of 'likes.' You don't really know if that listener hit the 'like' button 100 times that day or not. Listeners can share their email address with you, or even give you a positive comment like “Wow, good job, catchy tune.” They can even purchase your song through your buy link, or add you to their Spotify playlist or share your music with their friends. All of those are great things, but now we have the bonus measurement of NeuCoin to let us know which of our songs, the fans are really responding too. It let's us know how much that song personally means to that listener, compared to all of the other music that they are listening too. This is a special thing that truly separates the radioairplay service from all others out there (so far.)

So will the 1500+ NeuCoins that I've earned over the last three weeks make me rich? My NeuCoin wallet is bulging right now. If they were valued at $400+ each like Bitcoins, hell to the yes, but that scenario seems unlikely for now. But the songs I am getting NeuCoin tips for the most are shaping my approach to studio recording and song writing. I have a new metric that shows what my fans are responding to, and I'm going to feed that appetite.

I am currently writing a new review of the radio airplay service and will post it soon.