I came across a great blog called Little Hits last night. Each week or so they post up a favourite track from often long forgotten records, the majority being from the punk and post punk era. As the site’s owners are based in the US it’s quite amazing how many obscure British punk and indie records they managed to get their hands on! You can listen to all the tracks they write about on the site, and if like me you are of a certain age, listened to Peel nightly in the late 1970s and early 80s, and bought lots of obscure 7 inch singles, this will be a great trip down memory lane.

One of the featured tracks on the site is by the wonderful Desperate Bicycles. I can still remember hearing the band on John Peel’s Radio 1 show. Their first session consisted of four tracks, one a version of their début single Smokescreen which lasted all of 50 seconds (the single version was padded out to a progtastic 2 minutes). The band managed to press up 1500 copies of the single, with money from the first 500 records being used to press up and distribute the next 1000. Fortunately I’m a proud owner of said single, bought back in the day from the New Record Inn in Sunderland.

One of my favourite singles by the band was their sophomore effort The Medium Was Tedium. The playing on the record makes many of their punk contemporaries sound like ELP, even the mighty Fall sound competent in comparison. But the brilliance of song was its hook, which extolled “It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it”. And it was. And we did. This was the DIY punk ethic in action. The sleeve detailed the cost to record, press and distribute Smokescreen was a massive £153, (probably a few grand in today’s money). It’s amazing to think that 30 years later the total cost to make, distribute and market your own DIY release can be virtually zero! Sadly Desperate Bicycles founder Danny Wigley has resisted the reissue of any of the bands music, but if you fancy taking a trip down memory lane, or want to hear what all the fuss was about back in 1977, you can hear much of the bands recorded output here.

Let's face it; few music fans have ever preferred the CD booklet to the album sleeve. With CD sales continuing to drop, and downloads nowhere near replacing the shortfall in sales and revenues, could making the downloads more attractive to music fans help boost sales?

Fans have always wanted something special. Limited edition sleeves, picture discs, posters or a free 7" single have all been used by label marketers in the past to boost sales. So why is nobody trying the same tricks in the download space? In an increasingly crowded market could packaging be used to give your new release increased stand out? Would a more attractively packaged download encourage P2P downloaders to buy the real thing? After all, most download releases come with nothing more than a copy of the albums front cover. And as there's plenty of widgets that can get the cover art for you, hardly a problem. Wouldn't you think that someone would have looked at how to package a download, and to see if that was one way of making them more attractive?

Well, some labels think they may have the answer by producing a 'physical' product in the shape of a USB memory stick. Some of these little critters are really attractive (see these White Stripes examples, above). But what about the rest of the packaging? Is all we really want a flashy outer-casing? And once you have a few hundred of these pesky USB keys, how will fans use or display them? And importantly in this day and age, is it a particularly green way to release your music?

The second options to provide something for free with the download.

I finally got around to downloading LCD Soundsystem's excellent album of music to exercise to. Nike commissioned the piece entitled 45:33, which was initially only available to download from iTunes via the Nike+ website. And as with an increasing number of album releases on iTunes, it comes with a downloadable booklet. But that's where the problems start! The booklet is simply a PDF facsimile of the CD booklet. Fine you may think but, this has got to be be the most uninspiring piece of packaging I've ever seen. And it's not just this particular release. I've yet to see any digital booklet that looks like it has been designed for the computer rather than for a physical CD. And worst of all these booklets won't work on you iPod or MP3 player, which makes them virtually useless! 

citizensound says: 

It makes us wonder if labels still employed their own art departments, would download packaging have moved on? Would a new breed of digital artists and designers have been employed to develop exciting and innovative interactive packaging that added some real value to the listening experience?

Would something as simple as a karaoke functionality on the lyrics or an interactive gaming facility encourage younger music fans to pay for downloads, rather than bluetooth them from their mates in the playground?

And what do older fans like me want from this sort of packaging? In-the-studio footage of the album being recorded? Or access to technology (like U-MYX) that allows me to make my own mixes of my favourite tracks.

Let us know how what sort of packaging you would like to see attached to a music download…

Here is Meek Warrior the album from Akron/Family. Great visual.

Those people at young gods records sure know something about strong visuals in their album covers. Have a look here

More over at Type Records…

Just another excuse to show the great artwork of equally great music from Type records…

So I have been chatting with my online friends about great album covers. We were thinking of the ones where the visual impact of the album cover fused closely with the sound inside the album. Integrated Communication if you wish…

Here are one example:

Bim Sherman - Miracle. A legendary reggae singer. This album fused his great voice with the sound of the indian tabla…Serene, Calm, spiritual music. Now look at the cover. It gives that sense too…

I came across this from two sources, one of which was Russell.

Very entertaining…

Is music merely a sonic experience?

Are there no other senses affected by the makers of sound?

Of course there is. Let’s start with the Visual.

The artists themselves, the live gig experience, the visual feast at a club, music videos, video blogs of unsigned acts, TV music shows and more.

For many of a certain age, the most regular visual reference for them would have been the album cover.

For some, the cover was the closest they got to the love of their life. It helped to create the dream. Hugging David Cassidy, kissing Marvin Gaye, holding Debbie Harry, drooling over Clare Grogan of Altered Images.

For others, it would be to gaze upon their heroes, their idols, those who speak up for them.
The Hendrix pose, the Coltrane nobility, Patti Smith’s strength, Morrisey’s poetry, Marley rightousness, Bowie otherness and many more…

Sometimes it was a chance to escape into the realms of a sci-fi dream world, or a confirmation of their own life.

The album cover could provide a continual reminder to many budding musicians that ‘these people look like me…I could be them’.

Now that we have moved on from the analogue past, where does the Visual component of music rest in the digital present?

The CD art work is too small, too flimsy and too easily thrown away to warrant any comparison to the visual power of the album cover. So many great covers of the CD generation have been undervalued due to the materials it was showcased in.

Online, we have images on iTunes (if you are lucky), that can hide behind your thumb.

From 12 inches to 12mm…has the initial Visual Impact of music come to this?

Or have we now replaced the visual experience of music with a social one?

What Blue Note is to Jazz, Fania is to Salsa.. The back catalogue is
being re-released by those lovely people at emusica/v2 for our listening pleasure, so I am a happy man.

Yet it is also going to be great to feast my eyes on the blissful album cover art of Izzy Sanabria again.
. Not only a classic, but the late Ray Barretto’s Acid album was a visual masterpiece.