iTunes LP
by Wayne Pretl
Old stylie vinyl records
As a child of the 80s, I’m old enough to remember when buying music meant a trip to the local record shop, browsing through vinyl collections and being mesmerised by the cover art. If you were lucky enough, your chosen album would come with ‘extras’ such as snap shot photography taken during a live concert, maybe a small bio of the band members and more often than not, the lyrics to all your favourite songs.
As we approached the digital age, records became CDs, which to me, never had the same impact. Sure there was the additional CD booklet, but they lacked the tactility of records, and the brilliant photography lost some of it’s shine squashed into the smaller not-quite-square format. CDs will inevitably be replaced by downloads, if they haven’t already, (I don’t really know anybody who buys CDs any more), but what about all the cool ‘extras’ we’ve come to expect?
iTunes LP- Sample interfaceEnter, stage right, iTunes LP. If you haven’t heard of Apple’s fantastic online music store, then where have you been for the past few years?, and without sounding like a sales rep for Apple, things just got a whole lot better.
iTunes LP is Apple’s new ‘deluxe album’ format, which in their own words is “the best thing to happen to fandom”. Once you’ve purchased your bands latest album, you’re taken on an immersive digital experience into their interactive world. Some of the features include, alongside the DRM-free music, exclusive interview footage and music videos, lyrics, photos and screen saver style music visualisers. Under the hood, the technology is made up from standard HTML, the animations are created using some pretty nifty CSS and Javascript (no Flash here thanks), all wrapped into a web-kit powered site.
iTunes LP - Sample visualiser
All in all, it’s made buying music exciting again. There’s no need to visit dodgy lyric sites that contain malicious code, or look for low quality music videos on YouTube. It also shows what can be achieved without the additional Flash or Silverlight plugins. As the popularity of the new format grows, there’s potential for the right creative minds to push the technology (as happened with web design in general). Already Apple have extended the technology to their film format with iTunes Extras (think extra’s contained on a DVD, only better). Maybe it’s finally time to pack away the vinyl, after all you’re going to need somewhere to put the hardrives that contain your new music collections.
Tags: Advertising Agency, Album Design, Cover Art, Creative Design, Design Agency Manchester, Digital Agency Manchester, Digital Design, Digital Marketing, Direct Marketing Agency, DVD, HTML, Interactive Agency, Interactive Entertainment, iTunes LP, Multimedia Experience, Music
