David Emery Online

Music: where next?

1 February 2007

I’ve been having some interesting discussions recently on the future of music, and the general direction the industry seems to be going in. It all leads to some interesting possibilities, and no small amount of contradictions.

With the recent change in chart rules to allow digital only singles, it’s been abundantly clear how increasingly irrelevant CD singles sales are. The in-excapable Mika is going to spend his third week at number 1 on Sunday, but this is the first week you’ve been able to buy it on CD (and still the digital sales are outstripping the CD sales – 17608 physical to 20903). This is not a quirk either – all of the tracks bar one in the top 10 have higher digital sales then physical.

Interestingly, the same cannot be said for album sales which continue to be physical led – digital only accounts for about 10% of album sales. I imagine this is due to several factors – the download format is a very good fit for impulse single sales, whereas when you’re buying a whole album you’re buying it not just for the music but for the experience – artwork, liner notes etc. Also, if you buy single tracks from an album as opposed to the full album bundle it doesn’t count as a sale, which is going to hinder digital album sales for filler-based artists.

While on the topic of artwork, I’ve been wondering what role that plays these days. Obviously the original impetus for cover artwork was to increase presence on a retailers shelves, but it’s now such an established art form that it almost exists as a product in its own right. Due to the historical existence of artwork, digital-only releases still need to have it as all the online stores utilise it to similar affect as a physical retailer as an eye-catcher.

What form should they take though? Digital artwork is a completely different medium with a completely different use-case to either CD or 12” artwork. 500 pixels x 500 pixels is the maximum you realistically get, and even then most users won’t see it at that size. Text goes completely out of the window, as does anything really complicated.

I’m not sure what the answers are; I wonder what people are going to come up with.