DIGITISATION album sales halve 2015-18 singles rule again

Lot of great detail here, the bottom line being not just the accelerating decline of physical media sales, but the death of the album - with examples given such as Drake's 25-track album where 3 songs account for over 60% of all streams from the album, 19 others a combined 18%!

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-album-is-in-deep-trouble-and-the-music-business-probably-cant-save-it-753795/

DIGIPAK TRACKLISTING Value is king

Unlike the cheesy old school techno classic, there are limits with the tracklisting ... the maximum running time of a CD (while it still remains a mainstream delivery platform).

You need to approach this simple detail of your work with caution - and thoroughly back up your decision with multiple examples.

Here's a simple (its far from precise on CD length, quite inaccurate on that!) pointer from Dave Taylor - as the saying goes, if Dave says its true, it probably is...

As I've blogged many times before, you should be looking to create a value proposition for what is usually a best of/greatest hits (or B-sides etc) compilation of previously released material ... by adding (and highlighting with a cover sticker) newly recorded bonus tracks. Some past students (see Atomic Kitten example) have even gone the extra mile and created their own lyrics for these new tracks to include in a digipak lyrics booklet!

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WEBSITE ALBUM SAMPLER Suede's non-music vid video!

An example which highlights three points:

1. Websites are routinely updated to centre on the latest album release
2. Bjork, The Pixies and many more are trailblazing a growing trend of creating videos for ALL album songs, not just the singles, recognising this boosts revenue-gaining YouTube hits ... but the importance of additional videos (unwrapping, lyric, live, UGC etc) is growing faster still, and Suede's "album sampler" is a good example. It would have Vernallis jumping up and down screaming I TOLD YOU SO given its narrative-free (is that possible?!) nature
3. Its another reminder of the convergence between film and music video - bear in mind that the 1964 Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night [Wiki] is widely considered as having created the music video template (archetype) with its video-like scenes ... and MJ's Thriller! While you will generally be creating youth-targeting productions with bands' existing (older) audience now the secondary target for you, Suede are possibly reinforcing their mature adult appeal with an entire feature-length arthouse movie released with their album. Its nature might also suggest an oddly upmarket (ABC1) audience for an Indie band. Read more here.

Here it is so you can judge for yourself - you should be thinking of this as an easy, but creatively free, extra (like the single shot video, lyric video...), so long as you remember to keep it MUCH shorter (or it'll just get blocked).

The website splash/landing/home page on 10.10.17:

The "album sampler"

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INDUSTRY ISSUES SUMMARY Digital streams past physical

IN THIS POST: extensive lists of points you might cover to demonstrate your grasp of the music industry. There are lists on digital disruption; the changing audience/producer relationship; the morphing album format; changes with music video ... A LOT of points are covered.
Use this post with DISTRIBUTION overview (especially for Eval Q3) 

Some thoughts and a list of various issues/examples linked to the impact of digitisation (and convergence - the two should always be linked) on the music industry, the album format and the music video, with some points on marketing (which the video is of course part of) too. I've blogged on everything mentioned below. Don't quote me in coursework - find the source/s I've used or do your own search for other quotable media articles.

Album cover art animated

PLEASE NOTE: This video would be rated 18 for gore if it was submitted to the BBFC. NSFW.

If you're okay with the adult content, this is one means to quickly learn about a range of classic album art and maybe pick up some ideas.

It is also an exceptional example of UGC, and must have taken many, many painstaking hours to produce!

https://youtu.be/hQaaVTBSGoU

DIGIPAK: album covers

Created using random Wikis, Flickrs etc!

There are plenty of past posts on digipaks to look up - and I'm half way through tagging the 500-odd posts on this post to make these easier to find (using the tag cloud or a search; there are also links within the blog's top, vertical links list...)

But here's another nice resource I've come across, from the chief examiner of OCR Media Studies; @ Pete's Media Blog (why not subscribe/follow?!) he blogged on album covers ... A really nice demonstration of how quickly an album cover can be assembled, the example pictured was created using his 5 random steps method...

He also discusses the decline of album sales (as have I several times), and includes this rather useful link: http://lpcoverlover.com/ is a site well worth visiting, especially if you're of the generation more used to downloads/streams than physical media (tapes, vinyl, CDs).

Speaking of which, if I can rescue them from a shed in Huddersfield, I'll put up some pics of the vinyl that I picked up back in the day, when gazing lovingly at an album/single cover was a fairly normal thing to do!

MP3 killed the album?

An extract from Pitchfork.com's rundown of the top 100 albums of the 1990s; are they right to say the album is dead ... do YOU still get/listen to whole albums, or listen to single tracks outwith the context of the album they were released in?

001: Radiohead
OK Computer
[Capitol; 1997]

The end of the 90s will be seen as the end of the album. The rise of MP3 technology and file downloading returned pop music consumption to collective pre-Beatles mindset, where songs are judged as singles. Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac were shallowly criticized as B-side collections because they were downloaded and assembled as such on home computers. "Treefingers" and "Hunting Bears" were torn apart, not a piece of a 60 minute or so record, but as worthwhile 34-minute download times (this, remember, was right before DSL/Cable). The resurgence, and arguable final entrenchment, of manufactured Pop Stars by their handlers over supposedly more artistic fare-- and more importantly the acceptance of such common pleasures by critics-- razed the significance of the complete album. Which is why OK Computer , and it's Best Albums Ever companion Loveless , eternally top these polls: somehow we doubt we'll ever see their like again.