Reinventing the Album Cover
From WIRED:
The album cover — once a crucial part of any band’s identity — has been dying a slow death for decades. For the most part, music fans put up with the shrinkage of album art from expansive vinyl records to hand-size plastic jewel cases. But with the music experience moving almost exclusively online, album art has suffered another compression — this time all the way down to thumbnail images. (Worse still — they’re missing from most of the music files we’ve all ripped and downloaded.)
But music label designers are working to raise the album cover back up to an art form. They’re experimenting with new tools and hatching plans to reinvent album art for the digital age, all while weathering the tectonic shifts that ultimately rule the music industry.
Ever since I bought my first mp3 player back in the beginning of 2002, I’ve wondered what the future holds for the idea of the album cover. As I ripped all of my CDs over the course of a few days and put the cases back on the shelf, I realized that I probably wouldn’t be looking them any more. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal, since I had already read every last word in each set of liner notes. And if I ever wanted to take another look they would all still be there.
But then came the iTunes Music Store. And eMusic. And a bunch of other online stores that I’ve never used. Not to mention the illegal downloading. Pretty soon I had quite a few albums for which I only had a small thumbnail image of the album cover, if that. I have some albums that I don’t even know what the cover looks like because I’ve never seen it. After the way that I grew up analyzing every last inch of every record I ever owned, it’s a sad thing to realize it may never be the same.
Sure, I can still buy CDs if I want the full experience. But being in a band myself, the real sad part is knowing that most of the kids out there today aren’t having that same experience with the full package of an album. Should we even spend the time and money on cool packaging if the majority of the people who buy it are gonna look at it once (or not at all)?
For the last few years I’ve been trying to come up with an idea for the future of album art. Pretty soon, I would imagine that CDs will be completely dead. Everything will be digital files that you’ll be able to transfer wirelessly between your iPod, laptop, car stereo, PS4, TiVo Series 5, Refrigerator 2.0 and eventually even your toilet. You can’t beat that kind of convenience, but where does the album artwork fit in?
Well, it seems that more and more of these devices are bringing advances in listening options… but they’re also featuring bigger and brighter screens, and in the case of (most of) the next-gen consoles, HD-quality video. I think somewhere in there lies the future of the album cover.
Imagine that when you download the new Sinch album, that it also comes with not only an album cover, but an interactive video experience. Instead of a still image for the cover, you could have a 30 second (or longer) animation or video. Instead of squinting to read the lyrics in 6pt Helvetica, you follow along with big animated text/video sequences on your HDTV. With the rate that technology has been advancing, the possibilities will become endless.
The hard part for now is convincing the people running the media and electronics companies that this is where things are heading and that they need to get on board now. Come up with some standards that can work across all devices, whether you have a 2″ iPod screen or an 60″ plasma TV. If Apple releases a new iPod that shows not only album thumbnails, but allows you to provide Flash Lite content (which can contain videos, vector animations and interactivity) for a particular album, I’ll be the first one in line. Get some working hardware out there and let the artists and labels see what is possible.
There’s not gonna be a huge market for this kind of stuff right off the bat. But if artists can start getting some really compelling and even groundbreaking ideas out there, I think the idea will eventually sell itself.
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I think music for the most part is becoming a more secondary activity. Back before mp3/cd players in cars and iTunes and all that, you had a cd player at your house and that was it. Before that, a record player. If you were listening to your favorite music, odds are you were indoors, and with that came fewer things to be doing. You were actively listening to music and that’s what you were focused on, coupled with looking at the album art and reading along with the lyrics.
I can’t quote any studies right now, but I’d bet 90% or more of music listened to now is basically ‘background’ music. You’re either listening to it while exercising, driving, traveling, anywhere “on the go”, or on the internet writing a comment about the way we listen to music. You can’t find music videos on television anymore without subscribing to it, but you get little jingles for free on commercials.
Until people get burnt out on listening to thousands of songs as background music and not having much of a connection with the artists, I don’t see album art or album content playing much of a factor in the iGeneration (I just coined that, I’ll sue anyone who says it, even in the past).
That being said, where’s the Sinch DVD?
I have to admin I don’t remember the last time I sat down to *just* listen to music. I probably pay the most attention to it when I’m driving, but even then I’m not as focused as I used to be, laying on my bed reading along with the lyrics or whatever.
I think there’s something to be said for music as “background music”, though. There are so many songs that have stuck with me over the years simply because they were the background music to a particular event or time in my life. But I agree, if that’s all that it becomes there’s not much use for the album artwork.
I guess what I’m saying is that if there were a way to so something more with it. To make it more engaging and interesting, maybe more people would care about it. As it is now, unless you would normally have an appreciation for visual arts like painting or graphic design or whatever, you probably aren’t gonna think of an album cover as anything more than the picture that lets you know what CD is in the case.
We live in a way more interactive world now and I think the average person is drawn in much more by something that’s interactive than a static piece of art. Look at how Myspace, You Tube and even the video game industry have taken off in the past 10 years. If you can play with something, and have your involvement make a difference in what the art actually is, I think people are more likely to have an interest in it.
We tried to do something like this with the Lividtron but I just think it wasn’t integrated in to the experience enough. It’s a separate program that you have to install and we had some other issues that prevented some people from even being able to use the thing. Not to mention the fact that it ended up being only about 20% of what I originally had in mind.
But I think if we had something similar to that, but you had access to it every time you listened to the album… automatically. It just opens the door for a lot more people to play with it.
As for the DVD, we’re actually working on some video stuff right now. We have no official plans to release anything on DVD, but you never know. It might end up just being a downloadable thing at first. We’ll see what happens.
i think that would be a cool idea, and i definitely think that mp3 players in the near future could have the capability to do what you’re suggesting.. like you said, just a matter of making it seem needed.
i personally buy cds whenever i can because i like the whole physical package. i only buy music from itunes when it’s a band i’m not too interested in.. but i admit, i hardly take out the cd cases once i put the songs on my ipod. strange that.
interesting comment Aerock, hadn’t thought about my listening habits in that way, but i think you’re probably right..
I think the best way at this point in time for bands to distinguish themselves as a unique entity is the live act. A lot of the big bands nowadays can have elaborate sideshows on images projected to the screen like Tool and The Mars Volta and such. That imagery coupled with the band’s music really conjoins the two experiences into one indelible memory about the band.
A lot of bands also can’t afford to do stuff like that and just have a giant banner hanging behind them the whole show, which is nice too. And then of course you have you guys, who are inimitable in the live show because of the ONM.
The point made about interacting with the music as opposed to using it to help interact with something else is intriguing. Other than the Lividtron, I can’t think of anything else that matches that. You have some DVDs but that’s just a static product too. Pretty Girls Make Graves had a thing where they held a contest for the fans to make their music video, and the winner got a bunch of cool stuff as well as being awarded with them using the video as their official one. I guess there’s no “one” or “best” way to provide interactivity with a band’s fans with their music, it’ll just take some creative thinking, I guess.
i was thinking..
do you think that the more “commercial” bands would actually prefer to do away with the whole album package? while personally i think having interactive media would be awesome, it does mean that bands/labels have to find some way to design/integrate it, and that’s something that they wouldn’t have had to do before.
I think it really depends on the band. I’m sure there are plently of bands that most people would consider “commercial” that see themselves as being an “arty” band.
As far as having to actually design this stuff, it’s not that much different than building an interactive e-card, flash website or a DVD menu. The problem isn’t in what it will take to build these things… it’s that there’s really no way to deliver them with the album in a seamless way.
If all media devices would allow you to attach Flash Lite content to an mp3 file (or groups of files) you could do some pretty cool stuff:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/
Anyone who develops for Flash already has a great head start on building these kinds of things. And most labels, especially the big ones, have lots of resources with all the websites and interactive promo pieces that they’re already doing, it wouldn’t be that much different. It’s less about the work involved and more about being up to come up with innovative ideas.