Whither Digital Album Art?

The record companies are selling more and more music online, but they're paying scant attention to digital packaging: there's no good album covers for online music.

That's the conclusion of Adrian Shaughnessy at Design Observer, who's spent the last few months researching online alternatives to album art. And unfortunately, there aren't any.

As downloading threatens to become the main distribution method for recorded music, it is widely believed that the album cover will be replaced by some new online format — perhaps animated — that will make CD packaging redundant. Well, I might be missing something, but I’ve found nothing in the digital arena that offers a viable alternative to a well-designed CD or vinyl album cover. Instead, I’ve discovered a grim-faced resistance movement amongst dozens of tiny record labels determined to hang onto physical packaging and expressive cover art, no matter what.

CoverFlow in iTunes -- which displays a JPEG of the album when a song is playing -- is a start. The artwork is static and there's no lyrics or band bios, but the artwork certainly helps navigate the music collection. It also makes the music feel like a collection, rather than just a bunch of files.

There are signs that the record companies are looking at iTunes and the iPod as a platform for designers to play with.

George White, Warner Music Group's senior VP of strategy and product development, put together a digital packaging demo for Apple to re-imagine album artwork as more than a JPEG on an iPod.

"We've been looking at a few technologies (for digital album art), and have been trying to bring these to Apple, to encourage them to bring that level of experience to the iPod," says White. "A very simple demonstration that we've done takes the Gnarls Barkley liner notes and does a fly-through (using Adobe Flash Lite). You're actually moving through the lyrics and artwork. It's sort of like a theme park ride through the album. It's really, really cool-looking on an iPod."

(Apple did not respond to questions about whether it's considering any of Warner Music Group's suggestions.)

White also pointed to Warner's Wamo pack, which gave Japanese cell phone users digital albums with ringtones, video, full tracks and artist interviews. Wamo packs aren't new -- they launched overseas a year ago. But White says Warner plans to produce more of these bundles. He also mentioned that while Wamo packs use Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, or SMIL, for their interactive menus, Adobe's Flash Lite would be a better candidate for "the level of sophistication people expect from Warner Music Group's artists."

(Adobe confirmed that Warner's iPod/Flash Lite demonstrations had taken place, but said that the company "has not announced any joint plans for Flash or Flash Lite to be used in next-generation digital albums.")