West’s creative director Virgil Abloh explained in an interview with XXL magazine that “it represented the death of a CD. And even though the digital artwork is now simply a photograph of his artless product, it has become artwork in its own right. Perhaps the album artwork that utilized its newfound freedom the most - or perhaps the least - was that of Kanye West’s 2013 release “Yeezus.” The album shipped to physical retail in a clear case with no artwork at all. However, this change does not come without possible drawbacks, and certain traditions may fade as artists find more and more creative ways to incorporate text into art, such as the Beatles did in their 1967 release of “Sgt. In fact, out of the four best-selling albums of 2016 - Drake’s “Views,” Adele’s “25,” Beyonce’s “Lemonade” and Rihanna’s “Anti” - none of their covers contain the respective artists’ names, and only “Lemonade” contains the title. As a result, it has become increasingly popular for album artwork to not incorporate the information at all, allowing artists to use the entire space more freely. Including the information on the artwork becomes redundant. Today, however, when viewing an album on most digital music applications, an artist’s name and the title of their work are already listed elsewhere on the interface. In this way, including an artist’s name and the title of their work was almost a foregone conclusion. If you couldn’t figure out what an album was, you would likely glaze over it. Now, it’s 1990, and you’re combing through bottomless shelves of CDs. On “Best I Ever Had,” a single from a mixtape prior to the release, he even rapped “I could probably sell a blank disk / when my album drop will buy it for the picture.”įurthermore, the shift from physical to digital has allowed cover art to be branded far less obviously.
However, here he has freed himself from selling his looks as he did on his 2010 debut “Thank Me Later,” which depicted his clean-cut face. Some may perceive 2016’s “Views,” a miniscule image of Drake perched on the CN Tower, as bland and complacent. However, in today’s digital domains, one paradigm shift often unnoticed is how album cover art has changed alongside the shift in format preference.Ĭonsider the evolution of Drake’s cover art. The transition from physical to digital sales is well-documented, and streaming has most recently affected a wide array of aspects of the industry. 2015 marked a shift in the music industry’s landscape when the total revenue from digital consumption surpassed physical retail for the first time. In lieu of previous pressures to bolster sales, more freedom exists nowadays for album artwork. While eye-catching moments are found in publicity stunts and artists are often sexualized in music videos, a consumer likely views an album cover on their smartphone only once they are already listening to the product. Some covers even became works of art themselves - think the Velvet Underground’s iconic Andy Warhol banana.īut in today’s digital domains, the function of album artwork itself differs. Artwork could drastically impact sales, and as a result, album artwork was overtly eye-catching - often utilizing tactics such as bright, shocking and sexualized images. An album’s artwork possesses the ability to either grab consumers’ attention or cause them to continue skimming. It’s 1970, and you’re in a record store stroking through never-ending crates of records lining every aisle.
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