Is the Album Cover dead?

Looks like folks have started transititioning completely to digital music from CDs, tapes, and Vinyl. No surprise here, but it is changing our listening and storage habits, especially when it comes to physical media.

Andy Day at Gigwise.com interviewed Peter Saville, who is questioning if the result of the digital age is the demise of the album cover. Saville is an artist know for creating the iconic artwork of New Order and Joy Division. He has also designed album covers for Pulp, Suede and Roxy Music.

In the interview, Saville states:

“We have a social disaster on our hands,” he said, speaking from his studio this weekend, “The things that pop music was there to do for us have all been done... there's nothing to rail against now.

“When I was 15, in the North-west of England ... the record cover was like a picture window to another world. Seeing an Andy Warhol illustration on a Velvet Underground album was a revelation ... It was the art of our generation ... true pop art.”

I have to strongly disagree with the statement. I've been making sure that my digital music collection of over 10,000 legally obtained MP3s includes all of the original artwork for the past 5 years.
I love to see album artwork displayed on my iPhone or Apple TV, and I can't stand to see a track that is missing the cover. It helps me sort the music, and also helps set the tone for the whole album for me. Album covers are iconic, and help define a place in time that goes with the music.

If anything, I think in the long run services like HD Radio and Satellite radio will be streaming album covers right to your dashboard in the car, just as Pandora streams the album cover to your computer.

So I belive the album cover isn't dead, and it is only the beginning of a generation tuned into the entirely digital album cover. This new frontier will eventually offer more interactivity to album covers and provide a totally immersive experience. More of an album cover movie or game even.

Oh, but how I do miss those giant album covers from my old vinyl records. Those really were true works of art.

Well, except for some of the ones you find over at the CoverBrowser.com collection of worst album covers. Take a look at a few examples from the collection below.

Maybe some album covers deserve to die?