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.
