Album Covers

Our next task is to create an album cover for our artist. Before I start to work on our album cover I will be looking at other artists in my genre and see how they display their album covers. Since dance music is not popular for albums it is hard to compare album covers. The dance music genre artists mainly produce singles rather than albums but I have come across a few albums I can take inspiration off.

One of the first things I have come across is that dance music albums dont tend to sell well as a hardback copy as the main source of selling is on Beatport and iTunes, this is for different reasons. Firstly the online downloadable versions are cheaper and easier to get than going out and buying a hardback copy. Another reason is the fact the genre does not have many artists producing albums but rather singles. 


The first album cover I have looked at is our songs original artist Hardwell. This is the album cover for his album that is due to be released on the 23rd of January 2015, it is titled 'United we are'. 

This album cover is very nice on the eye, it contains a mix of of colours in the background which work very well with the image of the artist. The album cover seems very basic but I think because Hardwell is the biggest artist in his genre he does not have to produce an exciting album cover since its going to sell no matter what the cover looks like. 

The thing I would take from this album is the simplicity of having the artist in the centre of the cover and a background to compliment what he is wearing (Colours matching). The artists picture has clearly been edited for him to look better and a bit cartoonish, I would take this into account when creating my own and maybe edit our artists picture with some sort of effect.   

The second album I am going to look at is Calvin Harris's 'Motion'. Calvin Harris is the most popular DJ and producer in the UK. This album debuted on the UK charts at number 2 and sold over 35,000 copies in its first week. This is what the album cover looks like - 

This is one of the most basic album covers i have come across, it is a basic background that supports the title name of 'Motion' as it is some sort of object moving. Then just the title of the artist and album in white bold text. I would want to avoid an album cover like this as its to basic in my opinion. I believe he has choose a basic cover for the same reason as Hardwell. 

Calvin Harris does not need an amazing album cover to sell it as he is well known and will sell his album based on his name and not the cover. I think I would have to create a eye catching album cover since my artist is not well known and would not sell his album based off his 'name'. 

The purpose of an album cover is to entertain the audience member visually and then draw them into buying the album. The Users and gratifications theory asks how and why media audiences will consistently seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. The idea behind the theory asks “Why do people use the media and what do they use them for?”, and it discusses as to how the users choose media to satisfy specific needs on a social basis, relaxation basis, or even a basis to escape from reality itself. This theory can be applied to album covers as it covers all of the users and gratification's, for example people may see this album and begin using it as a social talk point. This theory says the audience is active and intercepts media in there own way and questioning it rather than being passive and accepting the forced ideology behind it.