Digital Booklets are a great, low cost way to share even more content with your fans. With the quick growth of digital music and the lack of a physical product, many music fans have expressed that they miss the ability to flip through the album booklet that would traditionally be packaged with a CD. iTunes has solved this industry dilemma, and now allow consumers that same ability, but this time in a digital format.
Digital Booklets take the place of the traditional physical CD booklets (i.e.: the multiple page booklets that normally would contain lyrics or other biographical information as well as pictures of the artist). They are attached to your album in the iTunes Music Store, and when a customer purchases your album they receive the Digital Booklet for that album free of charge. They can then view that artwork from within iTunes or some other .PDF viewer.One of the main benefits of the Digital Booklet for an artist or label, is that in order to download it from iTunes, the customer must purchase the entire album (not just one song) which is likely to increase revenue due to the demand for the booklets.
If you are interested in attaching a digital booklet to your new album submission, we would highly recommend searching for an album in iTunes that has one and then purchasing that album so you can see what they look like and their format.
Requirements for iTunes Digital Booklets:
- PDF format with .pdf extension
- Four-page minimum (In a single file)
- All fonts embedded
- 72 dpi minimum
- Dimensions of 11" x 8.264"
- RGB color
- Horizontal presentation
- All images full-bleed (no surrounding white space)
- Page number on all pages excluding page 1
- When saving as PDF, make sure the document opens full screen with no negative space surrounding the document.
- File size should be reasonable (8 - 10 MB max). If the digital booklet is many pages, consider using fewer images or optimizing images to achieve lower overall file size.
- Printer's marks are not allowed.
- You cannot sell or advertise other products or services. No other promotional sites are allowed.
- No links to anything outside of the booklet, except to the artist and/or label website(s).
- No time-sensitive information (for example, a promotion or dates for an upcoming tour or concert).
You can only attach an iTunes Digital Booklet to a new album submission. You cannot attach one once your album has been delivered to iTunes since they consider an album complete and final upon delivery.
When designing your iTunes Digital Booklet, you MUST conform to all of the requirements above or it will be rejected. iTunes Digital Booklets must be expressly designed for the iTunes Store format and cannot be reproductions of the physical CD's liner notes with borders to increase their size!