Cheap Cover vs Expensive Cover: What You Pay For

The cover creates the first impression of the song. Here is what the difference between a cheap one and an expensive one actually consists of — not in price, but in what changes.

Time in the trade

It sounds obvious, but this is the main thing separating a beginner from someone practised. People trust a professional and queue for their work. Weaker artists get less demand, and their prices drop to match.

Knowing how to hold attention

The job of a cover is to catch the listener's eye, and bright design is what does it. But bright is difficult: it takes work to keep a saturated image reading as one coherent picture. A beginner hides that difficulty behind muted, desaturated colour, and those images get scrolled past.

Depth of concept

You want the cover to contain a full scene, with an atmosphere the viewer can feel in the details. Beginners tend not to be able to build a complete concept and skip the small things trying to work faster. A professional spends time on each element and ends up with a whole world in one frame.

The designer's own audience

A practical point that gets overlooked: an established designer has followers of their own. Commission someone known and their audience sees it, because they recognise the hand.