Apple Replays Glory Days of Vinyl Covers

Remember the excitement of buying the latest vinyl release from your favorite musician, complete with a generous square-foot of artwork on the cover and an even bigger "gatefold" spread when opened up like a book? No? Then surely you're familiar with the CD, with its smaller but still somewhat art-friendly booklet with lyrics and photos (don't get me started about the cassette tape, with its awful sound and even worse real estate for cover art).

Nowadays, of course, more music is packaged without packaging and sent as a digital file — nothing to have or to hold, per se, but the music itself (which some say is of a lesser quality) — and the concept of the album is all but lost. You can't separate seeds and stems with a digital file, but Apple has plans to re-energize the album in conjunction with its rumored tablet-sized computer launch, according to an article by The Financial Times.

Four unnamed sources told FT that Apple is working with the four largest record labels to "stimulate digital sales of albums" by "creating a new type of interactive album material, including photos, lyric sheets and liner notes that allow users to click through to items that they find most interesting. Consumers would be able to play songs directly from the interactive book without clicking back into Apple’s iTunes software, executives said."

The inference is that those who just download a track or two from an album are not privy to the extras, just those who want the whole thing.

Of course, the fact that purchasing a whole album means extra dollars for Apple and the record company suits is not lost on my more cynical half, but I happen to really like listening to well-conceived albums. So, in my humble opinion this is a good thing — not to mention a way to help struggling musicians sell more music and to get all recording artists to return to the glory days of cover art and liner notes.

But can Apple also recreate that mildewy smell of an old record?