The Conventions of CD Advertisement.

Key to promotion of albums is their poster announcing the release.

 

 This is a good example of an album advertisement. The font and colours reflect the name of the album. The information is easy to read and clear. Having an image allows the viewer to see who the artist is and allows them to judge what style of music you think they will have.

For our advertisement we will need to stick with vintage and contemporary theme. Sticking to the font courier new, this gives our digipak a recognizable branding. We are going to have to take good images which reflect the genre and style that links to our type of music yet we will remain with a simplistic look. 

Investigation of CD Sales.

CD sales dropped dramatically in the last five years due to illegal downloading from the Internet and the widespread CD burning. The easy access to this has made it such an easy adjustment and for those that cannot afford all of the music they want. It allows those to have free music on demand.

The Universal Group, which is one of the largest record cooperation, cut the sales prices up to 25% in the last two years, in order to increase sales hoping to grab the attention of fans and to decrease the amount of illegal download.

Comparing the sales figures of 2009 and 2010 the figure dropped from 147 million to 114 million this year. 

In 2007 CD's accounted for 90% of the album sales in the United States, with digital accounting for the other 10%. In 2009 the CD sales were only 79% whereas the the digital download of music had increased up to 20%. 

Nowadays it is not so much the sales of CD's, which makes the artist earn his money but more iTunes and other online downloading sites. That change came along because it is so easy for everyone to access Internet anytime and anywhere. In addition iTunes also allows the buyer to buy only one song of a whole album, which makes it more convenient for some people.

The sales of CD's changed rapidly over five years due to the introduction online download especially illegal download. Its popularity is still on the up and increasing rapidly. Artists have resulted in making money by doing more live concerts and also headlining and playing a set at music festivals. Festivals are extremely popular and are an easy catchment area to promote the artists music. 

Existing Digipak

We have taken the album cover of Adele's new album '21' and copied it using photoshop.

Below is the edited and copied version. However, we struggled to change the thickness of the font to match exactly to the original album artwork.

Digipak Cover

Starting editing on a design for the back of our digipak.

Difference between Digipak and CD case

 A DIGIPAK

 A JEWEL CD CASE

 

A digipak is a kind of CD case. It is a six-panel product. It is made from paper and consists of a plastic disc tray that has been fitted inside on one of the panels and the other remaining panels are left for artwork, lyrics, track lists and front covers etc. It was considered the environmentally friendly version of CD cases, although they have remained less common as they suffer more from wear and tear than jewel cases. Also they have remained less common due to the fact they have higher manufacturing costs.

A jewel case/ CD case consists of 3 pieces of plastic put together. This is the more traditional package for a CD. It has the same if not similar plastic CD holder and then the casing on the front and back has paper slotted inside with information on the album and artist.

In our opinion the digipak has more value. It has 6 sides, allowing for more artwork and information of the artist to be obtained whilst also the promotional benefits are greatly increased. The more allowance of space means the artists can promote themselves with more than just their CD but with significant information about themselves adding a personal touch which people do like to see when looking at the concept of celebrities. The item is also seen as a collectable therefore meaning it needs to have that added feature to make it something others want to keep. One of the other key features is also the environmentally friendly touch, the environment is becoming extremely important to our generation and if others have a slight feeling of ‘doing good for the planet’ it adds to the purchase. 

What we need to include in our digipak:

• The artist name
• The album title
• Album artwork
• Disc holder
• The names of the songs on the album
• The copyright label
• The record company
• Album credits
• Barcode

Star Image

Star Image on Prezi

Font Testing.

We have looked on Microsoft Word to experiment with possible fonts to use for our digipak, posters and anything regarding the sale or advertisement of our album. The fonts have to be consistent throughout the advertising process, in order to create regularity and familiarity. Our favourite font is the 6^th one down, which is Courier New. We think this font compliments the style of our genre and its simplicity features relate well to our artists.