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Poll

POLL: DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT ALBUM ARTWORK ANYMORE?

 Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 2:30pm by

As a staunch proponent of physical product even 2-3 years ago I would covet CDs for their tangibility, album artwork, and superior sound quality. Now I just view them as a nuisance, items that take up space when there is a more efficient and convenient option available.

But I really don’t wish this to be a debate about the merits of physical product. The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley already covered that. What I’m specifically concerned with here is how modern metal fans value album artwork, a subject which is inextricably tied to the aforementioned debate but can stand somewhat on its own.

When it comes to album artwork I’m kind of over it too. I definitely enjoy cool album covers and associating visuals with bands, but I feel like these days those visual needs are better served by carefully curating an artist’s appearance via their website, MySpace page, merch, posters and their general aesthetic. These mediums are WAY more expressive than a single image on a sleeve anyway, and in the context of digital music the meaning of the word “cover” — something which serves as the face of and protects from damage what’s inside — is rendered meaningless. The concept of an album cover seems kind of quaint in the Internet age; a cover used to serve as something cool to grab your eye on the record shelves in the store, but it definitely doesn’t serve that purpose anymore. Today we have more efficient recommendation tools that hone in on what a band sounds like much more accurately and efficiently than a drawing or photo, and we easily and instantly look up lyrics, album credits and other information online — more than we ever could’ve crammed into an album sleeve.

Again, I want to stress that I’m not anti-visual or anti-art… I’m just saying that the idea of  an album cover and album artwork is outdated.

What do you guys think? And because this argument is surely (at least to some degree) tied to the way in which you were brought up, please also tell us your age.

n
{democracy:50}
n
{democracy:51}

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  • Slice two

    Album artwork has and always will be an important part of the package. I hate buying digital. I want the tangible palace with art, a cd, and whatever else is included.

    • ghost

      “always will be”? how could you know? things change more than you think.

      • Isaac

        Things changing don’t make what’s lost any less important.

    • Slaughterhouse

      I agree! I hate digital copies! I love having the Cd in my hand!

    • meat mincing machine

      Agreed. I’ll never buy digital over a physical copy.

  • dakotahowe

    First off, i’ve lost respect for vince. Secondly, how are 12 and 18 grouped together?

    • joshkid

      12 year olds hang out on MS? Sweeeeeet!!!

    • Matthew Grant Anson

      Yea dude, I’m 18… I don’t want to be grouped with 12 year olds…

      • Tonberry

        I’m 25. Thanks more making me feel old, Metalsucks.

        • Slaughterhouse

          Im 28…almost 29…haha

  • Genial Gentile

    ^ I think you should have also asked what format people most often buy (given anyone does anymore) their music in as well. It most certainly makes a difference.

  • http://atanamar.blogspot.com/ atanamar

    If physical CDs take up too much space, you need to buy a bigger house. I’ll buy CDs until they stop making them, and I’ll be enjoying the album art till the bitter end. And I guess I’m old.

    • Andy Synn

      If you buy enough cds you can MAKE a new house out of the cases.

      • http://atanamar.blogspot.com/ atanamar

        Already working on it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Christopher-Murrie/1391587458 Christopher Murrie

    Liner notes used to be a hugely important resource for finding new bands. Back before the interwebs thing, when you had to go to “record stores” to buy music, genre stuff like punk and metal was exotic and hard to find. Likewise, information about bands was scarce- you had to rely on zines, word of mouth, mix tapes and live shows to be exposed to new music. Liner notes, where bands thanked other bands they toured with, were in valuable resource- if the band I liked was thanking these guys, they must be good too right?

    I have nostalgia for the joy of finding some amazing record based on pouring over the liner notes- but I wouldn’t want to go back to what was essentially fumbling around in the dark.

    • bucketochicken

      Absolutely. I love the liner notes/thank yous as much as the artwork. And it is a great way to discover new bands. It’s like reading/researching the cited sources in a journal article.

    • Phil

      agreed…as part of the older demographic reading this (40), I have to say that I haven’t really cared about album art since I was actually buying vinyl; and even then it was secondary to the liner notes…

    • cougar party

      Great post. I agree 100%.

    • straightshredding

      im with you on this, i always like to see all the names that were involved on the album from produced,mixed,mastered, all the way down to who books the shows. and for the most part the artwork is pretty cool. without all these people involved the albums wouldnt sound as good or look as good if someone in the band put it together but now a days more and more band members are getting credits for producing,mixing, and mastering albums, just to save some money. if you read this site enough then youll see some of the interviews with some artists talking about how downloads are killing the industry which sucks, cause when they cant afford to make physical records anymore then were going to go to these shitty sounding mp3′s and digital artwork, that you’ll prolly have to buy seprate in the near future along with a “small” fee for the liner notes. and when that happens ill just be listening to the albums i already own.

  • Viking_xxx

    I wish you got the liner notes and album art as a pdf or something when you buy an album from Amazon….

  • infern0

    the album art for the new release by HOWL is probably the biggest reason i even googled for their myspace.

  • Tonberry

    Even though I rarely buy physical CDs anymore, I like to have the artwork on my ipod.

    • Alex_P

      Oh, yeah, it’s necessary. I’m totally OCD on this. I’m the sort to go online, find an image and paste it onto the album art. When I have a bonus disc, or something, I find an image related to the second disc and use that as my album art. I have the Dream Theater logo, without adornment, representing the covers they published for their last full-length special edition.

  • Figh on Hire

    I love album art. How cant you when there are outstanding artists like Arik Roper, Paul Romano, John Baizley and Derek Hess making album covers?

  • Honeynutzz

    Really it depends on the band I think and how they utilize it. A band like Tool presents you with a full package where the art is considered just as important as the music. Where as fans of bands like Nickleback will probably never take that sleeve out of the fucking case.

    Also I believe the art if done well can add to the feel of the music and give you a representation of what that album will be like if you have never herd them before. Album covers for albums like Crack the Sky or Eaten Back To Life give a pretty good representation of what those albums sound like. Although that doesn’t mean as much now since a lot of people probably download stuff and listen to it before they buy it.

  • noobpotato

    I love album art as much as the music. Some bands i became curious about and then ended up loving because of awesome album art,like skeletonwitch’s breathing in fire and soulflys conquer.

  • native

    I’ve always been a pro-album art guy, and therefore registered my votes that way BUT – after reading the article Vince does make a good point about the purpose of album art to sell something the shelf visually.

    I still think album art is worthwhile and a good idea – but I think the implementation could change. I’ve recently been looking at buying some Converge prints/posters for wall framing. Why not offer a cheap wall print of album art on your webstore, and more fancy-pants expensive things for those who really care about it? If I REALLY like the album art (ie: Mastodon’s Leviathan/Remission, Converge’s You Fail Me, etc.), i’d buy a $5 add on of a poster of the artwork for my wall. Which, in my opinion would be way more awesome than album art itself anyway.

    • Watty

      Seconded

  • fightingmike

    For me it depends on who the band is and who the artist is. I usually download new bands that i hear about first and if I really like it i will buy the cd. If it is a band like Converge, Isis, Enslaved, etc…who has always had excellent artwork and/or does the artwork themselves and does an awesome job at it, i will totally the cd right away. I will always buy a record from my favorite bands to support them and i like having a hard copy of my most favorite records!!!

    • gauche

      yeah, this.

  • Exploiting Paranoia

    Unfortunately, it isn’t just your opinion that counts. The consumer public (an age bracket or two down, ones who have money to spend) stop buying the physical media. Fair enough, digital media is much easier to attain, and not destroy accidentally. But now anybody that wants the physical product is going to have a dam hard time finding it, since the market for it had shrunk and the retailers that lasted have moved onto other, more profitable things, like video game consoles and computers. I couldn’t even find the new Nile at 4 different HMV locations for 3 weeks after the release date, and that’s a fairly popular metal band comparatively.

    So, like it or not, I have to adapt. Being stubborn at this point only hurts me, and minimizes my opportunities to explore the vast landscape of music, where the internet has really instigated organic growth like we’ve never seen, and will never see again.

  • metalguy

    i like cover art. its fun and is it really that much of a bother to suggest we just stop altogether?

    • metalguy

      Id also like to say im 16 and would buy albums physically if i had the money to. so dont say the entire new generation is over cds(iknow you didnt in this post)

  • Dwarfskeet

    I be 18 yo. Love me some cover art. And I don’t think they just “take up space” at all. Once I place the CD in my stereo, I’ll look at the artwork for the hundredth time, and read some of the lyrics.

    I also find it quite swell to have someone looking at my CD collection and say, “Wow! This is a sweet cover!” And I’ll say, “Yeah, their music stays equally with the art, why don’t you borrow that CD for a bit and give it back later.” And what happens? I just made someone else a fan of that band. Whether or not they put it on their computer illegally, I don’t know, but the point is I’ve had a few friends become fans of a band and then later buy a CD. They’ve even let ME borrow that same band’s new CD so I could check it out.

    • Dwarfskeet

      I also think I may have a bit of an OCD thing going on, and I’ve GOT to have a physical copy of the CD or else it seems like I don’t have the music at all.

      • http://www.myspace.com/1033metal Jackson

        I’m one of those that has to have the art as well, just like you said it doesnt really feel like you own the music unless you have the art and liner notes to go with it. I should probably note that I’m on the younger side and downloads have been available majority of the time I’ve listened to metal yet I stillbuy almost everything and probably have about 400 cd’s and vinyl’s combined right now and that grows on about a weekly basis.

    • Alex_P

      Yeah, I’m the same way (and your age). I do tend to torrent, especially when I’m broke, but I still love having physical copies, even if I’m just borrowing. My friend lent me his Dream Theater albums, and that’s how I got into them. I tend to listen to music on my iPod more, but it’s fun to sometimes pop an album into my CD player and just let it play while I look at the cover art. There’s so much I’ve torrented that I fully intend to buy in 7 years when I’m pulling a six-figure income as an economist. Hopefully the CD will still exist by then.
      I also tend to buy expanded and special editions for the artwork. I have Death’s first five in those 10-panel pop-up digis which Century released a few years back, accrued at no small cost.

  • Nick

    Album artwork is a great way to create a single visual queue to provide a unifying concept or expressive idea to accompany the music, and it does have a great effect on how I as a listener perceive the music. The album artwork, being on the cover of the album, is always the first impression I get of the album, and so everything else, including the sonic content of the music, is effected by that image.

  • Justin Foley

    I appreciate your point about presentation, but it’s ultimately up to the band/artist how they choose to present what they’re doing. People are going to come into contact with your band in ways other than listening to your music. Maybe you think it’s important to own those interactions, maybe you don’t. Surely part of what drives this is acknowledging where people are most likely to get that interaction, but by no means all of it.

    I’ll step away from the abstract to illustrate. The band I’m in just spent a lot – LOT – of time working on the construction of the vinyl version of our next release. We’ve agreed with the label that we are almost certain that we won’t sell out the 500 of these that will be made. I’ll keep a few, they’ll keep a few, the other guy in the band will keep a few … so that’s maybe 400 people in the entire world who will ever come into contact with us this way. Almost all of them will have some other context beyond what the record presents (listening to our myspace, visiting our website, seeing us at a show) before they decide to shell out the $. But we’ve deliberately gone through the trouble of all of this because we’re interested in creating that object – something that presents the music in a way that’s primarily very satisfying to create.

    Point is that it’s primarily – or most interestingly – a question of whether or not the BAND chooses to continue their expression through that thing that’s being created. While there are other ways that they can to that (except for myspace, because it’s bullshit for a band to spend time thinking that’s an honest expression of what they’re about, unless their band was created to advertise TurboTax), it’s a band’s choice to use the artwork accompanying the release. If a band does this in a way that I appreciate, that’s great – but I assume it’s what they wanted to make and not about me as the audience, any more than I assume they write songs for me as a listener.

    Except, of course, for those that are primarily motivated writing songs/designing album covers/making t-shirts that they think their audience will appreciate (i.e. buy). And screw that.

    = Justin

  • Octillus

    Hey if I find the art to be awesome, it’s a plus. The truth of the matter is that I’ll only buy a physical copy of an album that I find to be spectacular or of an artist I support because I want something to hold in my hands. Most people aren’t trying anymore though.

    Sometimes, the art in the liner notes is greater than the cover though. Look at Devin Townsend’s Addicted booklet. I like the cover, sure, it’s clever but the art inside the booklet is SPECTACULAR.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Anthony-Showalter/100000592087843 Anthony Showalter

    I hate all these stupid digitally made album covers, It’s all about people like Dan Seagrave and Kristian Necrolord Wahlin and Arik Roper who make actual art for albums.

  • Master Chah

    Congrats MetalSucks, you’ve linked 12 year olds to porn. Not that I really care, though.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jake-Ryan/596440962 Jake Ryan

    i’m 16 and i buy cds. i may download a couple songs from a band, but if i find my self really liking the two songs i’ll buy or order the cd. when i buy the cd i feel like its something i own, and therefore i appreciate it more. all the albums i consider my favorites are albums i own physical copies of.

    as for the album art specifically, i personally love art, so having that visual to associate with the music is important. the album cover is especially important because when i listen to a band, i subconciously associate it with the colors and feel of the album cover.
    baroness’s ‘blue record’ just feels blue to me. im sure that if the album cover was purple, the music would feel completely different to me.
    and i think that a big part of the reason i don’t like BTBAM’s new album as much as ‘colors’ is because i never associated BTBAM’s music with the warm colors on the cover of ‘the great misdirect’ so it just doesn’t feel right to me. i’ve always thought BTBAM’s music sounded like it was from outer space, and the ‘colors’ album cover conveyed that theme much better. same with the faceless’ ‘planetary duality’.
    i also think that the fact that BTBAM’s album covers have always been pretty simple sort of lets the music speak for its self and paint its own picture rather than having a cover that gives you preconceptions of what the music might sound like.

    • Alex_P

      Colors has an absolutely fantastic cover. I think the main cover for TGM wasn’t that great, but the special edition slipcase really worked well. I like how the digipack panels are just the same area, without any haze. Too bad the slipcase itself is so fragile, because the concept is very cool, even if they did do it with Colors.

  • http://www.vertebrae33.com/ Rodney

    No doubt in my mind that cover art & merch or website design is important to the overall presentation of a band…but I am bias as I do artwork for bands…I think a band can really tell you who they are very fast with stunning visuals….

  • AntiqueHighHeelRedDollShoes

    This affects me as a buyer but more so as an artist…I’m majoring in art, specifically Illustration, which is geared towards CD covers, posters, etc…Since the publication world is dying, its tougher than ever now for illustrators to find platforms for their artwork, and it would seriously be a shame if CDs start disappearing. I’ve always wanted to do cover art, but we have to understand that it might not be an option in the future.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Rob-Kurkjian/1238131077 Rob Kurkjian

    Music is something special and if ya ask me it is something that should come almost like a gift. When I download or buy online it doesn’t feel special anymore. It just feels like something to do to pass the time. The packing and Linear notes are all part of the gift. I love looking at the album art and just taking it all in. Honest to god I think i stared at Slayer’s reigning blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the abyss for at least half an hour just taking it in because the image looked so awesome. Plus the art just sets the mood for the album.

    I have to say Vince Im quite bummed that you don’t share the same sentiment. I honestly think all metalheads should be in it for the art after all Metal has some of the most amazing artwork

  • MoonSnake

    Man I just love having the actual album and checking it out. I was looking through my buddy’s copy of Yessongs on vinyl, which has like 5 full pages of huge artwork, and it was just making me sad that my generation really never got that the way others have, and that future generations probably won’t get that at all.

  • http://www.twistedcritic.wordpress.com Chris

    Maybe I’m getting old (25), but I still view digital music as a bonus, rather than the be all and end all. I’ll buy a CD, flip through the art (usually while at red lights on my way back from the store, and then more intensely when I get home), and then I’ll add it to my itunes and ipod. From that point I might only listen to the actual disc if it’s in the car, but the way I see it you can get most CDs for $9.99-$11.99 if you know where to look (and much less if you order them used from amazon), so why not get the real, physical thing with all the artwork?

    And anybody who bitches that CDs “take up too much space” is out of their minds. I probably own upwards of 1100 CDs at this point, and they’re all in a tall, super-slim CD wall unit. If I got rid of it I wouldn’t be able to fit anything else in that space anyway.