RESEARCH: Semiotic analysis of digipak

What is a digipak?

A digipak offers the audience a lot more content than a disk with a regular cd cover. It is used as a marketing tool to provide an incentive for purchasing a hard copy from a high street or online rather than the seemingly more popular avenue of downloading/ streaming the music. It is now essential as sales of albums have dwindled as buyers now prefer to download their favorite track or tracks rather than having to pay out for a full album.

 They usually have a gate fold , similarly to a book and are often made of paper or card and inside plastic. especially used for special editions and albums, and became popular in the early 2000's with artists and record labels.

The incentive to buy is the added extras to the cd/dvd , as well as the actual disk and its case with front and back covers.

Including:

•  front
• back spine
• at least four additional panels.

The Additional panels include:

• Membership postcard/flier
• lyric section
• disk impression
• Band information section and booklet
• free image , poster and set of postcards

Elements of Digipaks:

Front Cover:

• name of the album
• name of the artist
• an image (often related to the name of the album)

Spine:

• album name
• artist name

                                                                                                                                                                  

        Back cover:

• list of songs
• name of the record label
• barcode
• distribution

                              

Internal panel

• booklet
• name of band
• name of band members
• instruments played
• list of the featured songs

Booklets:

• information on the artist
• lyrics
• pictures
• insider information on the song

Retailers:

Retailers such as HMV are renound for selling Dvd's, CD'S and Digipak's and their primary basis being offering such products. However in such a digital age it is quite surprising that such a store is  still up and running. its not without struggle, due to big contending music apps such as iTunes, Spotify and apple music. 



In 2012, HMV had to close down 40 stores in a bid to save millions in cost, with 15 shut in the first half of the year.

These include Woolworths, once the nation’s biggest seller of DVDs, Zavvi (formerly Virgin Music),

All of these were trapped by the squeeze on household incomes (the biggest since the 1920s) and by the advance of technology and competition from supermarkets and internet giants.

As for the march of technology, too many managements of retail businesses were slow to recognise the threat of online sales and of MP3 players and iPads.

But a more sinister factor has also been in play. Digital giants Google and Amazon were initially welcomed by the Government .Yet by allowing consumers access to pirate download sites at no cost, Google has essentially deprived musicians and recording studios of their intellectual property rights

Digital music revenues have surpassed the takings from traditional music formats , Worldwide, digital revenues ; from  subscriptions, downloads, and advertising revenue on sites such as YouTube – accounted for 45% of the total in 2015, compared with 39% for physical formats such as CDs and vinyl records.

The popularity of streaming, which has altered the way many people listen to music. The subscription value of streaming services like Spotify reached $68m (£47.7m) last year, a growth of 66% from 2014.

The problem is exacerbated by free websites like YouTube , which paid an estimated 70p per user to music rights holders in 2015.

Digipak nets: