Research: Semiotic Analysis of DigiPak

Research: Digipak Nets



The two main digipak nets used today are the 6 sided digipaks and the 4 sided digipaks, however out of the two, the 6 sided digipak has more advantages than the 4 sided one. Firstly, the designer is able to include much more information. Using 4 sided digipaks also has its benefits as they are straight to the point and much cheaper to produce, so if you have a low budget, then this is the ideal net for you.



Other Net Designs:

What is a digipak?

A digipak is a marketing tool intended to offer the buyer an incentive for purchasing the hard copy from a high street or online retailer rather than downloading/streaming the music.

From my research I have discovered:

Front cover, includes:

Name of the album
Name of the artist, usually in bigger font than the album name, making the artist's name recognisable.
One main image - either of artist, or related to artist/name of the album

Spine:

Name of artist
Name of album
Abbreviated institutional information

Backcover:

Numbered tracks
Copyrights
Record Label
Barcode


Internal Panels:
Includes space for disc


Bookelts/Postcards/posters:
Images of artist
Individual information on each track e.g., recording information/ who wrote it

DIGIPAK ANALYSIS:

Retailers:

It can be inferred with online streaming, Apple Music and Spotify, people going out to buy CDS is becoming less and less common, however this is not the case!

- Infact, digital sales only eclipsed CDs for the first time in 2014. During that year, global sales of physical music (most of which are CDs) totaled $6.82 billion, which was down about 8 percent from the year before. 

- Billboard reported in July of 2015 that in the first half of the year, CD sales were in fact down from the last half of 2014, but still totaled 56.6 million units.




HMV:


HMV is one of the most renowned CD/DVD shops in the UK. HMV turned over £325m in the year to 2 January compared with £366m in 2015, a figure that was bolstered by the inclusion of an extra week’s trading. Despite the decline, HMV chair, Paul McGowan, described the figures as “encouraging”, pointing to market-share gains made in physical music and film sales. This made headlines such as "Retailer remains positive despite £41m drop in sales, pointing out 53-week sales period in 2015 and move to reduce video game shelf space" and "HMV sales fall as decline in physical media continues", stating that Brits have moved towards digital media alternatives.