Digital Media & Music Culture

Digital media has definitely had an impact on the music culture. Before there was graphic arts and designed album covers, people didn't purchase as much music. Records were packaged in boring brown paper with string to tie them together. Once Alex Steinweiss designed the first cover in 1948, sales of records skyrocketed. They increased 800%!This completely changed things because music culture became a huge part of the media and affected everything in it. The cover art became a representation of the artists, especially once they began to have a say in their cover art. Cover art became imperative to the music culture because it represented different genres of music, different bands, fashion, & it even went so far as to represent politics. Without digital media, the music culture would not be even close to where it is today and wouldn't be such a huge part of everyone's lives.
I definitely would say the way that I have enjoyed music has changed over the past five years. If you look back less than ten years ago, the iPod hadn't even been invented yet. People still purchased CD's to play in their portable disc players and bigger CD players at home. When the iPod was created in 2001, it turned into a music revolution. From that point on, the iPod began to become more and more technologically advanced. I went from playing CD's in a portable player to uploading music from my computer onto my iPod instead of buying the actual, tangible discs. I then upgraded to what I now have, which is an iPod touch. It's incredible how advanced technology can become in such a short time. The original iPod, although thought to be incrdibly small at the time, is now "chunky" in comparison to the newer iPods such as the mini, or the touch. I now have a touch screen device that is as thin as a pencil and can store games, music videos, movies, internet access, etc. It's really quite amazing to think how far music has changed over the past 5-10 years! I now can get on my computer and download any song that I want with just the click of a button instead of having to go out and buy the whole CD.
I think that the design aspect and how it affects the music culture today has definitely declined over the past decade. People now don't care as much about buying the CD's since they can purchase one song at a time. Therefore, the cover art isn't such a huge factor. It's not as common for people to even see the cover art of the song that they're purchasing or the artist. iTunes makes it possible to turn on your computer, and download a song without having to see anything about the artist picture-wise. Compared to the 40's when the digital media was first incorporated into the music scene, the significance of design has definitely dropped. Although it made a huge impact at the time, people aren't as appreciative of the cover art as they were before.


-Alex Steinweiss, cover art for Frankie Carle.

-Alicia Keys cover art.

I definitely think that many artists have found their inspiration from some of Steinweiss' original designs, such as Alicia Keys.