[jordanpg]

Maybe album cover art is just less meaningful in the year 2021. I couldn't care less what the album art looks like when listening to music on Spotify or YouTube.

What I do care about is a current "About" tab in Spotify, a WikiPedia page, or maybe a well-maintained webpage for/by the artist.

Not meant to be an indictment of visual art of this type, just suggesting that perhaps the "vector" needs to shift elsewhere.

Good example is the backgrounds created by Cryo Chamber for their YT postings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbKDlzQgIwc

[barrowclift]

I think this all ties back to listening habits. I find individuals who share this opinion are typically stream-primary listeners who mostly listen to playlists, singles, and generated "radio" stations (which is entirely valid! Not to mention that's the way most people listen to music, nowadays.)

However, there are nonetheless lots of people like myself that primarily listen to albums, maintain their own digital libraries, and use streaming platforms as a glorified "trial" platform for new music. I find those who tend to listen to music like I do really care about high resolution album art (and by extension the quality and accuracy of track metadata).

Frankly, since both needs are so widely different, I'm not sure there's any one solution for both. Goodness knows Apple Music tries, but to OP's point, it's clearly not succeeding in this effort.

[fastball]

I primarily listen to albums and don't care about album artwork.

[sleepless]

Give it a try. You will find there is a lot to discover and close connection to the music. Then try looking at the booklet of an album. Pro level: read the liner notes.

It will be amazing how much information there is and to learn about the thought process of the artist while creating the album.

[photojosh]

Like this comment [0] elsewhere on this post so very well points out, everything digital is skeuomorphic....

> use streaming platforms as a glorified "trial" platform for new music

... and it seems like the skeumorphism has changed from being a digital analog of a personal record library, to being of a record store. The "library" aspect of it has become more like just the featured section of the store.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652389

[mmglr]

> Maybe album cover art is just less meaningful in the year 2021.

Maybe cover art is less meaningful *to you*. FTFY. To the author it is meaningful.

Today UX/UI teams are making decisions for everyone and not allowing anyone to deviate from those decisions. Less and less apps offer users a choice via a settings UI. To me the fix is simple allow users to customize their UI.

[coldtea]

>Maybe cover art is less meaningful to you. FTFY. To the author it is meaningful.

That's not really relevant. The author might find any random thing meaningful, including keeping an ant farm at home.

The point is whether it's meaningful enough to many people, justifying the claim that Apple should have given it some special prominence.

[vmception]

The author mainly has an observation. To me, it looked like they were writing for emphasis and not as an indictment about Apple's view of artists or anything.

Cover art is no longer useful for music discovery or intriguing fans when an album "drops". Those were UX/UI things last ... century. Now they aren't. They're vestigial embellishments at best.

[AlexandrB]

But then why isn't Apple Music a big list of songs, like iTunes from 2004? I'd actually prefer that. The Apple Music streaming interface instead has headshots of artists I don't care about or abstract images for each "category". Like a lot of modern UX, it's the worst of all worlds: wasting a ton of space for the purpose of aesthetics while being less useful than earlier iterations - at least to me.

[vmception]

Spotify has what you are looking for.

But on the topic of Apple, I would say its just not that deep. Their UI/UX is factoring in the relevance of certain things, while also using some of the image metadata that all their audio files have associated with them. The graphics team factored in an ongoing music collector culture and their own preference and the medium its being played on (the phone and app system). It wouldn't be surprising if a future update did have basically a simple list, with a drilled-in view of what's playing, similar to most other music discovery apps.

[mmglr]

> Cover art is no longer useful for music discovery or intriguing fans when an album "drops". Those were UX/UI things last ... century. Now they aren't. They're vestigial embellishments at best.

Unless you have proof this is moot.

[vmception]

What level of quantitative evidence would you like to see?

Would you prefer if replaced "no longer useful" with "has diminished significance such that it is ultimately vestigial"?

In my world it is plainly obvious that music discovery occurs from algorithmic introductions, which are counted, and the song being played which is also captured by audio listening apps which is also counted.

In the past, cover art would have been an advertisement for an album that contained songs which weren't out yet, and also useful when browsing physical albums in a store. Both of which is pretty much not happening at all, I mean feel free to correct me if your world still has that. I remember people used to complain about all the other songs on albums not being as interesting as the one song they wanted, the people are the market and the market chose something else which evolved to a completely different form of music discovery.

I don't have a paper on that. Is it really moot if this is a shared experience? I think there are a lot of people that are just uncomfortable that the world changed and they never stopped to notice, and without a counterpoint thats how you sound to me. But if that's not the case, I'm totally open to a conversation as I don't have strong opinions on the matter and am also totally content with music discovery today, which doesn't emphasize cover art for easily understandable reasons, to me.

[chrisseaton]

> Maybe cover art is less meaningful to you. FTFY. To the author it is meaningful.

The author admits they're in a niche:

> The fact of the matter is that nobody cares about cover art.

So they're aware that really most people don't really care any more. Like most people these days I listen to music for the music, not the physical media artwork.

[mmglr]

> So they're aware that really most people don't really care any more.

Unless you are on the Apple Music team and have access to some study how would you know that?

[chrisseaton]

> how would you know that?

Common sense? Even the author who's passionate about album art has to admit it's a dead art and people don't care.

Most people care about the music nowadays, not how it's packaged. I think that's a good thing.

[fireattack]

Your point makes no sense. Yesterday's UX teams were making decisions for you too.

It's not like he can customize the UI in the 2012 version of Music app. He just by chance liked it like that.

[mmglr]

In the 2012 version of iTunes for iOS a user can flip the iPod Touch/iPhone horizontally to view cover flow. So I would I consider that a user choice. For everyone else, where album art did not matter, one could keep the device in vertical orientation.

[fireattack]

Fair point

[rsa25519]

> Maybe album cover art is just less meaningful in the year 2021

This might be too broad of a generalization. I find a lot of cover art quite interesting, and I hope it remains prominent. I think a (dis)like for cover art might just be a personal preference.

[ljm]

Covert art is also... art. It's a shame that we've pretty much lost the concept of video-game cover art these days, it'd be a bigger shame to lose album art for the same reason.

When I listen to music on Spotify or whatever, I do still pay attention to the cover art and spend a moment to just admire it if it catches my eye.

[rchaud]

The Bandcamp website renders a nice 1500px image of the album art when you click the thumbmnail. It's a nice touch that I hope they keep.

[novium]

Definitely! I like the fact that for example Spotify's desktop client (optionally) gives the album art a significant chunk of screen real-estate.

[jordanpg]

Fair enough -- I was really trying to say that I think album art needs a reconceptualization, starting with the manner in which it's delivered to the listener.

In an abstract sense, the association of visual art with music, is, of course, a good thing that I'm sure is here to stay.

UPDATED TO ADD: Perhaps the abstract concept of "album" is what needs to go the way of the dodo.

[rchaud]

Taylor Swift and the Weeknd are two of the biggest artists out there and they put out albums. I don't think the concept is as abstract as you put it.

Whether artists have enough material to justify an album-length release is a different topic.

[rchaud]

We only began thinking of it as 'album art' in the iPod age, 20 years ago. That's because digital products could only show the front cover, and not the liner notes that accompanied it.

I think the last CD I bought was in 2005, and there was a 7 year gap before I bought my first vinyl. I had completely forgotten that albums used to come with lyrics, trivia and pictures of the band.

[coldpie]

Yeah my first though on reading the article title was "neither do I." I'd find a little information about the album (date; what number album it is from that artist; collaborators) way more useful than the art.

[d1zzy]

> Maybe album cover art is just less meaningful in the year 2021. I couldn't care less what the album art looks like when listening to music on Spotify or YouTube.

Do you listen to full albums or just mixes/random?

I see it much less important for the latter but significant for the former. For a lot of the albums I listen the cover art complements the music/message of the album. I really like it and it enhances my music listening experience.

[amanaplanacanal]

I grew up in the 70s, and spent most of my life listening to music as albums, but that time is pretty much passed. What percent of new music is even released as albums any more?

[ghaff]

My impression is most music is still released as albums although I don't have numbers. I assume there are various reasons why it makes sense for a band to produce and release a batch of music at the same time (especially given that vinyl and CDs are still a thing, even if a much reduced thing).