Album art gets short shrift in digital marketplace

By Antony Bruno
Fri Sep 21, 8:44 PM ET

DENVER (Billboard) - Does album art have a place in the future of digital music?

In today's digital music environment, album art -- like liner notes, lyrics and other extras considered commonplace in the physical world -- exists as a mere afterthought, if that. Its primary purpose is to serve as icons when shoppers scroll through vast music libraries on the computer or iPod.

In a move that was part protest and part publicity stunt, English band Hard-Fi in August released its album "Once Upon a Time in the West" with just the words "No Cover Art" printed on it, citing the irrelevance of album art in the digital space.

It doesn't have to be this way. There's no reason digital distribution channels can't spark the greatest innovations in cover art since the days of the vinyl LP. Animated album covers, interactive booklets and liner notes that link to other Web sites and multimedia material, customized album art where fans can place their own images -- all are possible in the digital distribution future.

The Musika game for the iPod, in which Sony BMG recently participated, is an example. Technically, it's not an album art innovation, but rather a game that draws on the metadata of Sony BMG titles. But it is a good example of what can be done with digital music as a visual format.

When given the choice, fans downloading full albums from pirate BitTorrent sites almost universally choose files that include scans of the album art and booklet over those that don't.

"It's always more extensive than the album art included in the official package," Warner Music Group (WMG) senior VP of strategy and product development George White said of the art available on pirate sites. "That alone shows that people who aren't bothering to pay for music value the album artwork enough to look for packages that contain it."

TECH LAG

So if fans want digital album art and related material as part of their digital music download, why aren't the labels and digital music services making that available?

For starters, the services don't have the capabilities to offer it yet. According to White, none of today's digital retailers or device manufacturers -- save Apple -- have implemented the technology needed to support advanced album art or other interactive features, such as Flash or Java. Nor have they added a display mechanism capable of anything other than a static image. Of all the services, only iTunes has a downloadable video feature.

WMG tried adding interactive booklets to about 75 albums sold on iTunes this spring, providing extra photos, lyrics and links to multimedia content much like extras on a DVD. But the booklets require Flash technology, which Apple later disabled in Quicktime because of a security flaw for which it has yet to release a patch. White said WMG planned to make the digital booklets a standard element for all top-line releases, but the initiative is on hold indefinitely as a result.

But the music industry needs to agree upon technological and operational standards for how to provide this material across multiple services. It's not fair to expect iTunes or others to create different album art features and technology for each label.

The only thing that will motivate labels to do that is the promise of more sales. White said advanced cover art and interactive features would be limited to full-album sales or that of smaller EP bundles, not individual tracks. The hope is that fans will buy more digital albums rather than cherrypicking singles if more features were attached.

At this early stage, the evidence is at best circumstantial, and the focus is on digital album art as a new form of creative expression.

"One of my major goals is to keep artists in the loop with what the capabilities are and get them to think through (it) as they're creating new records," White said. "It's about providing a platform for artists to get their creative vision across to consumers who have moved on to a new generation of devices that have a whole new set of capabilities and have acquired new habits for how they acquire music."

Reuters/Billboard


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