The Future of iTunes: Album Artwork Banned by Steve Jobs!
So going through this blog I cam across this article...
http://sqwink.com/news/2008/01/24/itunes-album-artwork-banned-steve-jobs...
The author discusses how a couple of bands are opposed to iTunes Album Artwork, incase some of you don't know what this is referencing...in iTunes you can save and embed album covers into MP3 files and allow that artwork to display when sorting through your music and when also when a song from that specific album is playing.
The author continues to say that if more bands do this then the future of iTunes is on jeopardy..and instead of album artwork we may have Steve Jobs' face become the replacement. For the majority of the article, the author seems as though he's against the "album artwork" feature in iTunes, and then within the last sentence he says "We need CD artwork to represent the music, pure and simple. So this is my little blog protest to put it as humorously as I can…"
Overall I agree with the author in that we need to keep this album artwork feature, and that this artwork is a central feature of many albums. In fact what I would really like to see iTunes start to do is incorporate the album booklets and the user to embed booklets, if wanted, into their MP3's...to take it a step further...lyrics would also be kinda cool too!!!
I had no idea bands were starting to do this. I can't really think of any reason why bands protest album art. Sure it doesn't serve the same purpose on itunes but it's not that much of a burden. Obviously the author was joking around when he said he would put Steve Jobs face on a cd, but realistically what would he do? If i was him i would just put in bold BAND REFUSED TO PRODUCE ALBUM ART, to make them look bad. In regards to the future of itunes' album artwork feature, the new ipods have that virtual organizer that revolves all the covers as though they are cd's. I think it would be an awesome idea to be able to click on each cover and open them as a booklet.
Submitted by er0l12 on Tue, 02/12/2008 - 21:18.I don't think that programs such as iTunes would have a problem just getting a different picture of the band to represent the bands songs. It kind of seems as if the article isn't about bands opposed to iTunes album artwork, but rather creating cd artwork in general. They just discuss the imagined potential future of iTunes without album artwork, since it is such an important element to the program.
As for the bands being opposed to album artwork, two things popped into my head immediately. First I immediately thought about how silly it would be to not want artwork. It really seemed like they were lazy or weren't really interested in getting a message across.
As I was typing this, I thought about Rush's song Freewill. "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice." Not making any album artwork is actually a form of artwork. They've chosen to not do anything about their artwork. Here is a picture of their album cover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hard-fi_-_Once_Upon_a_Time_in_the_Wes.... I wasn't expecting something as "elaborate" as this, but there is plenty of artwork involved in this. They chose very specific colors and fonts to display their rejection of conformity. Wikipedia says the artwork for a single, "Surburban Knights," is simply this phrase:
"EXPENSIVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO OF BAND NOT AVAILABLE."
This "absence" of artwork is artwork in itself with a message.
Submitted by lcsnare on Wed, 02/13/2008 - 02:14.I do not see why they would be opposed to this. The bands are prob thinking they spend all this money for album art but people are buying one song. They loose money this way. Its the same thing with the writers guild. They went on strike because they are not reciving money from internet sales.
Submitted by cloud586 on Wed, 02/13/2008 - 06:30.If you read the articals from last week it costs about 5000 dollars to make album art. Now if you have your songs on I-tunes and people are downloading one song and they are getting the whole booklet then what would stop the people from "acquiring" the rest of the cd.
I believe that artists need to catch up with the times. Current mediums are all going digital over the internet. If you are going to complain then dont create anything.
Does this mean that Hard-Fi didn't even release a traditional album, and decided just to release their music electronically. That seems pretty boring. I guess it makes sense though, since almost everyone has a computer or ipod instead of a discman (isn't that what portable CD players are called). Hopefully, music quality won't suffer along with the lack of art.
Submitted by twykoff on Wed, 02/13/2008 - 10:35.There actually seems to be a lot of bands these days that release digital only releases. There are a lot of iTunes exclusive releases. Or, you can look at Radiohead. They released In Rainbows digitally. They also didn't release any type of album artwork. It didn't seem like anyone cared. I know that now it is available for purchase and there is album artwork, but it didn't affect the way people accepted it.
I think releasing music online has become just another way that artists can get music to people and cost them less. A lot of bands are poor and have very little funds. The internet has made it possible for smaller bands to make some money without having to pay for all the production of cds.
Submitted by zmcnulty on Wed, 02/13/2008 - 12:29.iTunes does give you the digital booklet when you purchase an album. And lyrics.
Submitted by iamaustin on Wed, 02/13/2008 - 13:05.