Rock Bands Reimagine Album Art and Liner Notes in the Digital Age
As more and more music is bought (or otherwise acquired) online, physical sales of CDs have plummeted over the past few years and have dragged liner notes and album artwork down with them. But some folks in the music business, while they cope with the decrease in sales, are not willing to let liner notes and artwork go the way of the 8-Track, Reuters investigates. As Pink and Snow Patrol have already done, the band Fall Out Boy plans to release an iPhone app resembling a CD booklet, prior to the December 16th release of its newest album, 'Folie a Deux.' Featuring the track listings, photos and lyrics of every Fall Out Boy album (as well as links to buy the albums in iTunes), the app doesn't sound all that different from the band's Web site.
Fall Out Boy and its various publicity and management teams, are just now beginning to respond to complaints that music fans have been voicing since, in some small part, the fall of vinyl records.
During the '80s and '90s, as popular musical mediums shrank (vinyl to cassette to CD), the packaging of those albums shrank, too, giving concern to some music lovers who swore that they could barely see or read a CD's diminutive cover art or liner notes. Now that the musical medium of choice is so small that it's invisible, artwork is even more incidental, and liner notes have largely been left behind.
While we do commend Fall Out Boy's attempt at resurrecting this lost art, we're not sure how well this iPhone app will come off. We just hope that some young mind figures out a way to bring album art back, in a significant way.
Otherwise, what will kids in the future look at while they're listening to Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy?" [From: Reuters]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Miranda Kali said 3:22PM on 11-10-2008
It would be a complete shame if liner notes were left behind in transition to e-media.
I don't think that individual apps by artists are the answer, though. I think there needs to be something in the media player to read liner notes and lyrics stored as meta data on a purchased track. To an extent iTunes and the iPod already have such a feature, but it needs to be given more polish.
If you'll excuse the pun, the token lip-service such features are given don't cut it.
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