Genre Discussions - Album Covers

Go to any record store (if you can find one), and there is a fairly good chance that you will hear some discussion about the impending "Death of CDs."  The big rumor circulating wildly over the last few months is that major music companies will stop releasing hard copies of items in their catalog by the end of the year... at least on CD.  This could be bad news for the remaining retailers of tangible music recordings.  As iTunes, Amazon, and Emusic have demonstrated in the past few years, digital downloads do not require a physical store. So without new CDs, local record stores would presumably be forced to base their business off of used CDs and Vinyl, merchandise, and the upmarket selection of new vinyl that is still being released.

It is possible that many of the record stores that still exist, would be able to adapt quite easily to this change if it occurs, as many already base many of their sales on used items, and presumably have a dedicated clientele.  Furthermore the rise of digital downloads has been going on for quite a while now, and they have made it this far.  But there could be a major loser if this switch does occur--Album Covers.

In the vinyl LP age, the visual aspect of records was an integral part of the listening experience.  While hearing Thelonious Monk bop away on the piano at 33 1/3 RPM, you could generally enjoy a wealth of information from liner notes, and get an idea of his personality with a glance at a 12x12 image of Monk sitting in a wagon or wearing a weird hat.  With CDs, the importance of the album graphic shrunk as the actual size of the disc did.  Album covers that looked impressive at a square foot, looked squished and hard to read at CD size.  With the increasing boom of digital downloads (and piracy for some), and the supposedly impending "death of the CD" it  seems as though the future of the album cover may be grim.

This is unfortunate, as the covers of famous albums are some of the most familiar images of the 20th century (think: Abbey Road, London Calling, Time Out, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, Dark Side of the Moon, etc.).  The truly famous ones have become a part of the collective unconscious of the modern era, as much and possibly more than much of the art from corresponding decades.

There is still some hope for the album cover.  There has been somewhat of a rebirth of vinyl in the last few years, and though it represents just a sliver of the market compared to what it once was, the covers are still the same old square foot graphics.  Additionally companies such as Apple have tried to create a tangible aesthetic to their digital downloads with products like the "iTunes LP" which is a neat idea, though hardly the same.

The tenuous future of album graphics is unfortunate, as it would be the end of an era and popular art movement that has produced great graphics like:

And this:

Or:

And:

Not to mention:

And that leads to the last downside of the potential demise of album graphics... In a weird way, a collection of albums was also a collection of art.  A collection of music was also a collection of professional quality images in the homes of people who did not otherwise need to be art connoisseurs.  For some albums, the art on the outside was just as important as the music on the inside, and they were often musically reinforcing.

After all, the images above come from my "art collection:" a bunch of neat old (and new) LPs.