The importance of album artwork

Album artwork is still around today even though we have online streaming platforms with no need for physical album artwork, so why do we still have it? It is still around for various reasons. 

The first one is that people buy albums for the aesthetic look of it. For example, some people will decorate the walls in their room with album covers, even if the album itself doesn’t work/play.

A second reason is all to do with the artist that the album belongs to. The album artwork helps sell the artist and the artist image, not just the music itself. This is shown through the names of the songs, the title, the imagery on the album etc… It also helps target specific audiences as each artists image is often targeted towards a specific audience, e.g teenage girls.

It also establishes the genre in a similar way to portraying the artist’s image. We associate certain genre’s with different colours, and this is used very effectively in album artwork. Fir example black and red are usually used in rock, whereas purple and pink are usually used in pop.

Finally, album artwork is important as it can show what the artist stands for in a sense. For example, the girl band spice girls are all about girl power, and bands like Green Day are all about rebelling against the system. This is also reflected in their album artwork through imagery which is appropriate for both messages.