What Are You Listening To?

[bob_32_116]

either way mate....its whats in the jewel case/slip case that really counts, right?

Of course. Still...

There was a time when I would have said that having an attractive and inspiring album cover was a bonus, that I did not really care much if the music was good. these days however, when so many people buy digital downloads (that's if they actually pay for them at all), if an artist wants to sell a few physical copies of an album, surely it's more important than ever to present it in an attractive package?

I think the industry made a big tactical mistake when CDs took over from vinyl in the mid-1980's. Believing that the quality of the sound would sell itself - which it did, for a while - artists and record company executives often paid little or no attention to how the CD was presented and packaged. Remakes of classic vinyl albums were presented with cut-down versions of the album cover; lyric sheets and other inserts were often omitted entirely, or the lyrics sheet might be compressed to the dimensions of the CD case, requiring a microscope to read the printed words.

Lately, many artists seem to have woken up to themselves about this. We have seen the rise of the "de luxe reissue". Even with a standard CD reissue, you notice there is usually much more attention paid to presentation than there would have been inthe early days of CD. There is often a booklet with lyrics or other information, missing from the original CD issue. The more you move away from mainstream pop, the more you are likely to see this. In the field of "new progressive", it is now more or less normal to have lots of inserts, booklets etc. in an attempt to create something that is a visual and tactile product as well as an aural one. From what I read on progressive music fora, those fans may listen first to an album on Spotify or some other online source - but then they will BUY it. Not buy the the right to a digitial download, but order an actual physical copy to be delivered to their door.

None of this is in any way a criticism of the Church album, or the presentation thereof.