{"id":62924,"date":"2022-04-21T04:20:55","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T04:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/?p=62924"},"modified":"2022-04-21T04:20:55","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T04:20:55","slug":"whats-the-purpose-of-cover-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/blog\/whats-the-purpose-of-cover-art\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s The Purpose of Cover Art?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LKNHVDPKy7g?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe>The conversation about album art is similar to the conversation about the value of music. People who don\u2019t \u201cget\u201d art accuse it of being a luxury, or a distraction from more important things, like their idea of what music should be. But there are plenty of people who believe in music, even if they don\u2019t go out of their way to listen to it every day. Those people understand that there is more to it than just the sounds.<\/p>\n<p>And then there are those people for whom music is not just sounds but something more, something deeper (or higher), something that gets into your soul and changes you. That\u2019s what cover art is for: It is the visual expression of the sound, and the additional thing that can get into your soul and change you.<\/p>\n<p>If we are talking about popular music, at least in America, I think this gets at the heart of why people are so upset by bad cover art. The cover art sets up expectations in us as listeners and when those expectations aren\u2019t met, we feel cheated. We feel like our time was wasted and we didn\u2019t get what we paid for (even if we didn\u2019t pay for it).<\/p>\n<p>The thing is this: We<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a question that gets asked a lot in the age of mp3s and streaming services, but it&#8217;s one that&#8217;s been asked as long as there have been albums. Album art has a complicated history, for sure, and some of the best album art ever made doesn&#8217;t even show up on the album itself. But even if you&#8217;ve never heard the term &#8216;album art&#8217; before, there&#8217;s a good chance you know what it means.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s because there is a point to having cover art, even if that point is mostly now to look cool when you&#8217;re scrolling through your phone or computer. And that point is: marketing.<\/p>\n<p>Album covers are marketing for a product \u2013 and yes, we&#8217;ll include CDs and vinyl here too \u2013 that has already been recorded and released. To understand why this is necessary we need to think back to an earlier time when the market was beginning to change drastically with regard to recorded music in general.<\/p>\n<p>Nowadays we can pick and choose which songs we want to listen to whenever we want, but things weren&#8217;t always so easy. Before streaming services, before the internet even really existed in any significant way (and certainly not as easily accessible), music was at first sold in singles rather than full albums. When vinyl<\/p>\n<p>Album art is a weirdly important part of the music experience, and it&#8217;s one of the only elements that fans and artists agree on &#8212; especially in the indie world.<\/p>\n<p>In some ways, cover art is a lot like cover songs: they&#8217;re both &#8220;homage,&#8221; they both have to be approved by the publisher, and they both are hard to make money from.<\/p>\n<p>The original reason for including art with an album was to inspire record-store browsers to buy it. You could look at an album poster in a store window, or look at the back of an album and decide whether you wanted the music inside. You didn&#8217;t have to buy it immediately; you could take it home and listen to a few tracks first.<\/p>\n<p>And if you chose not to buy it&#8230;well, we did all have giant CD-case displays full of binders that we&#8217;d fill with Kazaa printouts, so you had a lot of options.<\/p>\n<p>But as more people moved away from owning CDs and listening to music on their computers or phones, album art became less important. If I&#8217;m looking for something new on Spotify, I&#8217;m staring at tiny thumbnails for a song&#8217;s title, artist name and album art; if I want to preview more than one song<\/p>\n<p>The purpose of music album art is to, first and foremost, sell music. In the past decade or so, the role of album art has expanded greatly to encompass many more functions. For example, it can be used as a way for an artist to express themselves and showcase their artistic side. Music fans use it to connect with the music they love and as a way to promote their favorite artists.<\/p>\n<p>The cover art of an album is not necessarily intended to represent what is inside the album. It could depict something literal or symbolic; it could be abstract; or it may just be designed with a particular color scheme in mind. Sometimes it is used to represent the artist&#8217;s personal thoughts and feelings on a subject matter. For example, a black-and-white photo may be used to symbolize sadness or death.<\/p>\n<p>The cover art can also be used to create intrigue and excitement about an upcoming release. A great deal of thought is put into the creation of each piece of artwork before it is released for sale.<\/p>\n<p>This type of artwork can come in many forms: paintings, drawings, photographs, or sculptures. Today technology has made this even easier, with the ability to manipulate photos via Photoshop or design pieces from scratch on a computer.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, when you hear the words \u201calbum art\u201d a picture of David Bowie\u2019s Aladdin Sane face might pop into your head. We all have our favorite examples of brilliant record cover art. But today, with streaming services and MP3 downloads being the way most people listen to music, album art has become more of an afterthought than ever before.<\/p>\n<p>But album art can still tell us a lot about what music means to people. A good album cover can walk you back through a musician\u2019s life or even tell the story of an entire genre. And it can be a great opportunity for an artist to show off their skills, both visually and musically. Here are just five examples from across the rock genre that all show how powerful album art can be, even when you no longer hold the physical record in your hand.<\/p>\n<p>With the rise of the LP and later CDs, the cover art became more important, because it was one of the few ways in which you could promote yourself. The artwork had to capture your mood and ideally your music. For example, if your music is a collection of songs about love, you can use beautiful flowers to symbolize love. If your music is about war, you can use guns as a symbol for war.<\/p>\n<p>The cover art also allows you to express yourself without words. If you want to tell a story through your artwork, you can do it with pictures. You can also use pictures to describe the feeling that your music gives listeners.<\/p>\n<p>Artists today are no longer limited to just CD covers; they use many different resources to promote themselves and their music, such as videos and Internet sites. There are even artists who don&#8217;t want their CD covers to be known until after the album is released so that it will be a surprise for their fans. Album artwork has become more than just promotion; it is an art form unto itself.<\/p>\n<p>The CD and mp3 covers are the most important part of the album. Why? Because this is what people see first. If you are a musician, you want your CD cover to be eye-catching so that your music will be heard by many people.<\/p>\n<p>The purpose of a CD cover can be divided into two categories: informational and aesthetic. The informational part includes the title of the CD, the name of the band, and other necessary information like the price and copyright information. The aesthetic category contains all the artwork on the front and back covers as well as any images in the booklet.<\/p>\n<p>The primary purpose of an album cover is to attract attention. That&#8217;s why there are so many different types of images used on CD covers today: anything goes! Usually, it works best if every individual element or aspect on a CD cover has some relationship with all of the others, but this is not always necessary. As long as each piece attracts attention, it will be effective.<\/p>\n<p>A group should create their own style for their CD cover for several reasons. First of all, it shows that they have a unique sound and personality; second, it gives them an edge over other bands since most musicians use premade templates for their CDs; finally, it makes their CDs stand out<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l34Vf8Wvbmw?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N5YbursWFeo?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The conversation about album art is similar to the conversation about the value of music. People who don\u2019t \u201cget\u201d art accuse it of being a luxury, or a distraction from more important things, like their idea of what music should be. But there are plenty of people who believe in music, even if they don\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62925,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62924\/revisions\/62925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}