The music industry has been in a transitional phase for a handful of years. Digital sales continue to grow at a steady pace while CD sales continue to decline. Artists continue to fight the transition because buying digital albums means consumers are paying less and less attention to the artwork and digital mp3s do not sound as good as CDs. Thus the compromise of art and quality.
Packaging has come to the forefront in the music industry as many artists and record labels are trying to find innovative ways to convince consumers that they’re missing out when buying digital.
The example of Katy Perry’s recently released album “Teenage Dream” takes music and media packaging to the next level. After removing the shrink wrap from the album, the sweet scent of cotton candy is exuded from the packaging. After weeks and weeks of testing, the pressing plant was able to apply the scent into the printing varnish of the CD booklet. Not sure how consumers benefit from something like this unless maybe you’d like it to act as an air freshener in your car?
Regardless, this is a unique way of enticing your fans to pick up a physical copy of your disc rather than a digital copy from iTunes. It will be interesting to see what other ideas surface in an attempt to salvage the ultimate fate of CDs…..time is running out.
