The next step in the album experience?
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Today Is the Day's Steve Austin recently discussed the possibility of animated online artwork replacing physical album artwork, and I wondered why labels hadn't explored that yet. Well, the day has come. For Cradle of Filth's Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder, Roadrunner has set up a website of "virtual vinyl." It's supposed to replicate the LP experience - lyrics, artwork, something more than the typical badly tagged MP3.
The "virtual vinyl" doesn't live up to its claims, but it's an interesting start. It's a series of Flash animation pages, each with an Easter egg of text (lyrics, liner notes, etc.) and a "Buy Now" link in the corner. The artwork is great, the music is not, and the navigation is primitive. Searching for the Easter eggs is annoying, and the experience is dully linear. It reminds me of video games - again, see the New Yorker's article on Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski. The article observes that Gears of War rewards improvisation, while "[o]lder games, like Super Mario [Brothers], punish improvisation: you live or die according to their algebra alone."
Right now we're in the Super Mario stage of album artwork animation - unidirectional experiences with preset "right answers." Like video games, this will change over time. I can see bands like Blut Aus Nord, who have had wonderfully atmospheric websites, taking animated artwork to the next level. Eventually, albums will probably merge with video games and become totally immersive worlds. We already simulate that with headphones; we just need to add visuals.
Labels: black metal, clee, features, uk, videos
26 Comments:
I know this isn't a gaming blog so I won't get into it very much but the writer of the piece is wrong in his distinction between Super Mario and Gears of War. GoW is as much or even more heavily scripted and linear set-piece oriented as Super Mario. There are life-bars even if they're not bars per se, there are 'scores' even if they're not scores. There are gaps to fill, it's not a literal representation of reality (unless your reality is filled with 8 feet tall angry scowling men that wear armor that is equipped with stereos on their chests) in any case. GoW is a very traditional 'game' game and there's nothing wrong with that in particular. The problem is that Gears of War also wants to be a 'cinematic experience' which always undermines the merit of a gameplay device in being, well, interactive. That has been a common issue in the mainstream videogame industry because hey, movies are easier to market for than strange videogames! It's kinda insulting for anyone informed about the current reality in videogames to see articles on the New Yorker hyping something like Gears of War as if it's cutting edge. It isn't.
I agree that the future of gaming is in the computation of fuller and more complex reactive systems but a better alter apars to Super Mario or Gears of War is Dwarf Fortress or something. Bleszinski is just hyping his game but his design is 1990 all the way. The 'uninspired but popular' thing the writer says about Unreal Tournament? That's how I'd describe Gears of War too. Streamlined gameplay, but still completely linear in its core, conservative, childish in its aspiration and vapid in aesthetics. The only thing that it has going for it is that it's still fun to play!
About the multimedia concept on the whole: I can think of fascinating aspects of combinatorial art that the industry hasn't tried because they're not easy to pigeonhole and sell. I guess we should expect the more fringe artists to do things like this soon, what with all-digital distribution seemingly being the future.
Any Super Mario game owns GoW without even trying.
I'm just sayin'.
I was just on a podcast with Stephen O'Malley yesterday talking about this being the big question mark coming up in heavy metal design. The package could also be some kind of USB drive. He mentioned a heavy iron bar that would destroy your USB port; I'd like to see a USB drive wrapped in heating element coils that quickly roasts at 400 degrees when inserted into a port. Burn baby, burn! Or you can make a CGI fantasia, I guess.
Re: GoW, I smelled that in the New Yorker article - that the writer didn't know much about video games and was wowed by Bleszinski's publicity-speak. But regardless of whether the assertions about GoW are correct, the underlying principles are interesting to think about with regards to aesthetic experience in general.
I think a pretty big problem in any such endeavor is that it's hard enough to make a great HM record without having to make an amazing visual experience around it, you know? A lot of bands tend to be tight-knit in that they don't want outside interference on how their music is realized so since they won't easily hire out directors and designers you can't expect lots of bands to have a visual artist guy just in their lineup. Much less a programmer and such. I mean for as long as I remember the 'lead guitars, vocals also the album covers' thing has been fully in effect in the HM world and I love it, I'm just skeptical on how many people are going to go through the trouble of making the 'fluff stuff' with the same intensity and determination that they make their riffs.
Stephen O'Malley is actually a nice counter-example to that in how the effort he puts into his music making seems minimal almost like an excuse to dress it with interesting visuals and whatnot. Seems people have their focus most of the time...
funny that tom bissell's new yorker piece should come up in this forum, since bissell is also the author of the salon.com article "Freddy, Jason, Megadeth and me," about his love of slasher flicks and metal bands.
helm - Haha, yeah, sometimes the music on Southern Lord seems like merely a soundtrack to the art project that's the packaging. Not that that's a bad thing. Some people like well-crafted objects that happen to play sounds.
The logistics of animated artwork will be the same as with physical artwork. If you can't do it in-house, you outsource it. Fans are already willing to make YouTube videos for bands for free, so that type of community energy could also apply to animated artwork. Like, run a contest - make us an animation, best one wins and gets credit, etc.
Also, as the idea of animated artwork gains traction, musicians will start thinking more in those terms anyway. Conceptualizing animation will become as standard and necessary as conceptualizing an album cover.
anon - Thank you for that interesting salon.com link. It might spawn a blog entry here.
Print will always be tr00.
I'm with b&bb--definitely still prefer physical copies of records... what about using some sort of material that would allow for artwork to be animated on the gatefold itself? That would be beyond sexy.
We're not that far away from 'digital paper' and similar contraptions, they say. But the concept behind it is decidedly-against-physical-product. Like you have a roll of digital paper and you get every day's newspaper on it without having to dispose the actual paper of the last days' and so on... I don't think they'll be printing vinyil jackets in it any time soon.
There was a magazine I saw in Barnes and Noble that had an animated cover. Wish I could remember which one it was. But it has moving objects on what looked like a small computer screen on the front. It wasn't like you had to move it like a holograhic pictures, it just had some pretty cool animation on the front.
Cool times ahead I think.
onerode - at this point, the only material for that would probably be LSD. However, see helm's comment.
helm - This digital paper you speak of sounds like the greatest thing ever. The environmental impact would be enormously positive.
path - That magazine cover sounds like a dream. (Something out of Harry Potter.) I must keep an eye out for it.
Unfortunately, drugs are definitely not my thing. :P Helm's mention of the idea of reusable newspaper sounds perfect, especially if you can 'save' old issues you've received. However, I don't see gatefolds as disposable like newspapers so it isn't quite the same thing. Either way, if they find a sturdy material that would suitably protect the wax and offer beautiful animated images, I'll happily endorse it with my spending money.
I believe it was Esquire magazine and it came out a couple months ago. Must not have caught on. Here's a link that kinda talks about the technology: http://www.eink.com/
Some ideas for vinyl...
Watain's vinyl only reissue of Sworn to the Dark will have scented candlewax printed on rough parch hard parchment and it will smell burnt so that it would be so tr00.
Insect Warfare's reissue of World Extermination would have cockroaches stream out the sleeves when you open it and the booklet insert would have a 10x10 antfarm included.
Municipal Waste's reissue of The Art of Partying will have a gatefold cover that would then fold into a waterproof beerbong that glows green in the dark.
Enslaved's reissues of Vertebrae, Ruun, Isa, Merdraum and Below The Lights will have gatefold sleeves that interconnect into a boardgame complete with 6 inch figurines of the Enslaved dudes and it involves an epic story that would take you to Yggdrassil.
Oh, the possibilities with vinyl are endless!!!!
bacon - You are a marketing genius. (The Insect Warfare idea makes me shudder, though.) When I start a label, I will hire you and we will lose lots of money together.
"A lot of bands tend to be tight-knit in that they don't want outside interference on how their music is realized so since they won't easily hire out directors and designers you can't expect lots of bands to have a visual artist guy just in their lineup. Much less a programmer and such."
Yeah, for sure.
I've been debating this--how to offer a more heightened experience online with music releases. Virtual 7" 's are a cool idea, and as a label that presses up releases, it gets to be a bit difficult to justify paying for ink and physical pressings, because it's getting more difficult to get people to pay for things, but they do enjoy the music and with online technology has come a cheaper and more effective way of reaching people than ever before.
However, I think the problem still lies in the pricing, because inevitably, bands will have to charge for complicated and elaborate graphics and design, because they still have to *pay* designers if they don't do it themselves. And doing it yourself still takes a ton of time, and it's just not always feasible or effective to do it yourself.
I've often thought of releasing MP3's that have record crackle added to them....then they have that broken in sound already, like you're listening to some long lost relic. But I think that there may be some sort of interactive thing that goes along with the music, and i've often thought of making my multitrack stems available in 16 track, so that people can mix their own sounds to their liking.
I'm not sure if that may be the future of music--it certainly opens up a very sticky litigation sort of thing in that people could sample individual sounds VERY easily--but a few artists have done it in the past, and I always thought that it was pretty cool to implement.
"But I think that there may be some sort of interactive thing that goes along with the music, and i've often thought of making my multitrack stems available in 16 track, so that people can mix their own sounds to their liking."
Yeah I've considered that too. Would make for interesting experiments in artist-listener interactivity, especially when someone mails you a mix that is vastly superior to your own heh
Yeah, haha, for sure. But i'd be willing to hear some finished things that fans might do....the best ones I may even buy off them and ask if I can use them.
NIN and Lamb of God have both released remixable multitracks of entire albums. See here:
http://www.studio-central.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=64358&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Also, remix.nin.com.
I remember NIN doing that, Cosmo. That was a great idea. I'd have no idea how to implement it, myself.
Unfortunately, with virtual vinyl, i'm wondering what the rewards might be. I've often thought that a "pay per byte" thing online should have been the way that the internet companies should have set up the internet from day one, because everything's trackable with IP addresses and whatnot, so they could have just charged a fee per byte that relates to the amount of material that you're viewing or downloading, and then compensate the creators at their website or IP address. I still think that the future of the online entertainment industry needs that sort of thing to reward going above and beyond to offer top notch quality things, instead of relying on Geocities or free things that aren't as good.
I thought of that in this instance, because i'm sort of wondering what the rewards are for the average virtual vinyl provider. Art design is expensive and the more complex it is, takes more skills and time and resources--never cheap or time effective. Right now, there's no real way to compensate those bands or designers for the virtual vinyl....yes they don't have pressing fees, but they still have website maintenance, website hosting, graphic design to worry about and pay for.
I guess they could charge a certain entry fee, but people still have apprehensions and reluctance to generally pay for things online.
Bands already outsource and pay for un-animated album artwork. If animated album artwork catches on, it will become a standard fiscal/practical consideration like its un-animated predecessor.
"Pay per byte" to me immediately raises red flags of privacy issues. Then again, ISP's are starting to experiment with bandwidth caps and such, so who knows what the future will bring.
As I will surmise in a future post, perhaps the solution is not to make people pay for digital media, but to use it to attract purchases of physical items.
I certainly think that the pay per byte thing has it's drawbacks....but I think that the writing is on the wall with it, because the ISP's said that if people continue to consume bandwidth that's unchecked, the whole system will crash by 2010 (or so they say). HD video files are still insane on memory, and if you compare a WAV file to an MP3 file, WAV files are insane in size. I'd rather people be able to hear the WAV files (the true replica of a soundfile), but it's just not practical, because the systems of downloading and streaming/ buffering just can't handle it yet.
One thing that i'm thinking of offering, as well, is a one of a kind release that only one person would have. It would be expensive, though....but it would maybe have one of a kind physical artwork, like real art. You'd be paying for the painting/ drawing, as well as the release...they'd both be combined to be a real artistic statement. They'd have to be stripped down noise/ ambient tracks, because there's just no way that you could keep costs down, otherwise. But it would be an interesting ideas. Or selling demos and alternate mixes with one of a kind artwork, to one person. I always have tons of alternate mixes, and they're more cost effective to do, seeing as that the bulk of the material is already recorded, just with no drums, or no vocals, or some really interesting alternate version.
When I give my bands' album to interested people I draw a cover and I write a dedication to that specific person, so yeah, I think it's a good idea even if as of late I've ran out of things to draw about that album and therefore I've simply stopped giving it out, heh.
Heavy Metal promised a lot of things that were good and are still enduring, but it also operated on some false premises. That art is supposed to be trying to reach as wide an audience as possible for me is such a false assumption. That's where product and marketing becomes more important than people getting what will actually positively influence their life. Though most of the great HM bands we all love and who taught us what this sort of music was about in the first place were aggressively marketed and commodified, I do not think that is something newer artists should strive to imitate. It's not the only way to be successful. I think it's better to have given your record to 50 people whom you've gotten to know and where the relationship via art is interactive and enduring than to have sold 5,000 alums to abstract fans that you only see headbang for you at shows. So they like you, so what? What's the next step in artistic communication?
That's a good question, Helm, i've often asked that, myself. Though I haven't sold much in the way of releases, there's guys out there like Cosmo who have had kind things to say and have helped out in that regard. Even though the underground is being hit hard by the file sharing thing and- I think to a certain extent, oversaturation in that supply much exceeds demand-- i've always leaned closer to the 50 than the 5000 in your scenario.
I've found that if one spends more on recording and packaging and things like that and making a really full experience, there's less for promo and vice versa, so you sort of have to pick the route and stick with it. Recording expenses, in particular, really add up, especially if you're redoing things or layering things.
Yeah, true. In the end if you put everything into making the music and the packaging be singular and beautiful then you should be resting assured that in 2-5 years you will sell out of a limited print just due to word of mouth. That is, if the music itself is good too.
On the other hand a label can put everything into marketing and promotion for a mediocre record and sell 5,000 copies of it. But who will remember that record later? And if they do, it'll be in a negative light, in how they were betrayed and sold something they didn't really need. Hurts the whole scene.
We can have this discussion as relative 'small fry' but if you try to bring this up with a systematic, professional label that puts out 30 records a month they'll laugh at you. In that environment, the little precious great HM that occurs is by accident, against all odds.
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