Diversionary Daily

MP3s are convenient — I love being able to skip around across albums, artists and genres at work — but I'd feel cheated buying an album for download online. I'd miss out on the cover artwork. The booklet. The design on the CD itself.

It's about the experience

Buying a new album is an almost religious experience.

I'll buy an album, and wait until just the right time to have a listen. I'll try to find time to sit down and actually listen to the album, and leaf through the booklet. Reading the notes, lyrics, credits. Considering the choice of photos, typefaces, paper stock, the way all these visual and tactile things influence the way you interpret the album.

It's part of the whole experience of an album as a creative whole (I've got a rant about Shuffle mode, but that's for another day).

As much as record companies try and mimic this experience in online stores — digital booklet downloads, bonus behind-the-scenes videos — it's still a purely on-screen experience, it's depriving all the other senses (sometimes for the better: the last Cat Empire album came in a cardboard digipack that reeked of whatever varnish they'd used before shrink-wrapping it).

The end of cover art and OCD re-ordering

Digital downloads also mean an end to the art of the album cover and booklet design. Quoted in a short article on CD cover art in Australian Creative, designer Jonathan Zawada says:

"The introduction of digital music is probably the final nail in the coffin. Consumers are probably quite happily letting the physical element of the music industry slip away for the sake of convenience and savings, but I think it'll be missed greatly once it's gone."

And there's something underwhelming about a music collection that exists only on a hard drive. You can't rearrange it (which is admittedly quite sad but satisfying in a High Fidelity kinda way). There's something meditative about deciding what album you want to listen to and loading it into a CD player, especially ones that treat CDs like art (Bang & Olufsen in particular raise the act of loading a CD to a scary level of reverence: the BeoSound 9000 even puts the CDs back the right way up when it's finished playing them).

I'll leave the last word to Kare Martens from Sopp Collective, also from the Australian Creative article:

"I may be a bit sentimental but I hope people still buy CDs because they want something tactile, something they can wrap up and keep."

Here here.

Your thoughts?

What about you? Why do you still buy CDs, or choose to buy an album from the iTunes store?

Wow, a post with lots of words. :)

I'll always buy a CD - it's nice to hold, caress, sniff, you really own it, it's not just bytes somewhere.

Posted by: Miles Burke on May 12, 2006

I like CD's but I'm downloading a lot of digital music at the moment (legal). In my experience it's often not worth buying a whole album when all I want to listen to are songs that I've heard and that I like.

Great post btw.

Posted by: Krissy on May 12, 2006

I am a bit of a stickler for listening to the whole album in its entirety in the order the artists intended - sometimes it takes me a few goes to find the album for the mood but once it's on, it's on!

Furthermore, there's something infinitely more satisfying about cds to have and to hold... not least when ipod is playing funny buggers and cds are in another state.

Last, digipaks... ohhh sweet digipaks. How can Takk or The Life Pursuit (or ?) have any proper physicality to them without the paper they are cased in?

Posted by: n on May 12, 2006

I'm not paying them for DRM-ruined mp3s as you'd get from iTunes. I'd buy mp3s online if they weren't crippled with rights-management crap, though.

But in the meantime, it's CDs. (OR OTHER OPTIONS.)

Posted by: Can't say on May 12, 2006

I love CDs. I can pretty much agree 100% with everything you said about them in this post. I love reading the "artist thanks" lists and trying to spot recognisable names and references. But even geekier than the CD fanatic: the vinyl afficiando :)

Posted by: Kay Smoljak on May 12, 2006

hm... I wish I could afford CDs because I'd love nothing more than to have an entire room filled with CDs from the decades!

Posted by: fragileheart on May 13, 2006

The obvious solution is to ramp up the alternative to 'cover-less' albums, and I mean flash packaging, bonus dvds etc and that seems to be the way it's going. Sigur Ros's Takk is a prime example. Dye-cutting, embossing, debossing, differing stocks in a cloth bound book. Sweet. Tool are always on top of this too.
I have a theory how the industry is going in the future and I don't have the funds to make it work yet....yet.

I think the way of the future is that music won't be available on CD. You will buy a physical copy of the album on DVD with clips for every song and stuff (don't want to give away too much). But music is just something everyone feels they have a right to, like education or water and to pay anything for it is too much. Fair enough but what that leads us to is a situation where a band, even playing live, is a soundtrack to commerce, a mere distraction or muzak while you buy the T-shirt or stubby holder.

(Nice shot of the clear Fourth Floor disc. For the record, it was meant to be silver in the centre, not a white base print).

Posted by: Dan on May 15, 2006