In today's class we have been researching the purpose and convention of a digipak. We are officially moving on to the next part of our coursework, creating the more physical aspects to promote the artist (something frightful to me; photoshop and I don't get on).
The first question we tackled of course was 'what is a digipak'? We discussed that a digipak is a modern cd packaging due to it's availability to allow more information of the artist/band to be included in the final product. "It's all about 'adding value'", this is trying to convince us that the digipak offers more than what you would get by illegally downloading, because it provides something 'extra' with special features. This 'plays on our love of music' as it provokes fans to become more enthusiastic and supportive of the artist by making us 'part with our money'. The function of digipak is purely the promotion, it is generally used as a marketing tool. Sometimes it let's the artist 'grow' when a pile of the digipaks build up, it may make the core fans feel like they have something particularly special from the artist, something different, this explains the higher price but with that price you get a deeper understanding of the background knowledge about the artist and album.
Looking at the current market in the music industry we've also asked ourselves 'Why are digipacks still used despite the sales dropping?' Valeza and I discussed this and concluded with the fact the never the less the real fans of the artist will still spend the money on the digipak because they like to have a hard copy therefore there is still some sort of profit made. Another good point was that a lot of albums compete in the charts, like 'the best selling albums' for this it is also to keep producing ancillary products. Of course iTunes sells whole albums and there can be no need for hard copies, but getting a digipak, people feel like they are getting more for their money. Digipacs as I've mentioned briefly before can also just be a collectors item and with that on the shelf, if it looks interesting enough can attract new audiences.
We also addressed the question of 'How important are the ancillary products to the artist and industry?' This is mainly targeted at the physical aspect of the digipak. It is purely to advertise, to create a unique interesting style for the artist, and again I am repeating myself but I cannot stress that the main reason is people believe it to be more value for money.
I've tried something new in fact, I've created a video, of myself, talking about the difference between a plastic cover CD and my digipak that I have at home. In advance I would like to send my virtual apologies for the 'errs' and 'erms', that was very annoying even for me to listen to, but I'm afraid when I tried to do it again, it got worse. Also I'm sorry for the clear display that my tripod was a pile of dvds and books, this is because I was using my dslr and have not yet purchased a tripod for it. I hope you enjoy it...
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