but i really don't see how the whole data-only-music thing will last in its current state. There's no lifestyle or image to buy into. I'm sure people said that when cassette art was so much smaller than LPs but i just feel like there has to be a backlash. It all seems so faceless and lacking humanity.

Tool have always tried to accompany their music with good artwork, and 10000 Day's artwork is a master stroke.

And remember The Wildhearts' PHUQ album (come on, it was 1996, I was young, drunk and impressionable by radio 1's rock show): purple velvet.

Or Thriller: Jacko with a lion cub.

Spinal Tap's album cover was awesome.

Smell the Glove.

he he now that it's actually relevant. oops

where MP3s are all there is. If bands care about artwork etc they'll still release CDs. There's a similair trend with some bands and vinyl.

I don't think the legally buying Mp3s will last, people still want a physical product at the end of the day.

And the prospect of a physical product as lovely as this makes me salivate:

http://www.burnttoastvinyl.com/new/releases/btv063.html

people are buying more MP3's than CD's??

I think we'll always have people who don't use computers, so they'll want something physical they can have music on.

There is a huge gap in the quality of MP3 and CD too.

there is something in that - maybe bands were more inclined to see artwork as more important when it was definitely going to be used as a satisfyingly-sized LP cover - covers like the Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol Banana, the Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' (with working zip), 'Sgt. Pepper...', Dark Side Of The Moon' and the classic 12" gatefold sleeve of Kingmaker's 'The Killjoy Was Here EP' (featuring a big dinosaur holding a ghetto blaster) make more sense when you consider they were devised as self-importantly large works of art.

At the same time, these are exceptions - before the demise of the LP, most albums still had shit or unremarkable covers, and since downloads became more widely used there've still been really good ones - 'Up The Bracket' was a fantastic sleeve, and the last dEUS album had a satisfyingly well-constructed booklet. If you look away from the corporate indie/emo whores, the indie underground are still producing classic cover art - Bullet Union's 'Ruin's Domino' and 'Doesn't Make You Punk' by Volunteers are my two favourites of recent times. The problem is that as the corporations run riot, flying the Shockwaves-sponsored flag of "alternativeTM cool", as more and more independent record stores close, as EVERY aspect of the rock scene becomes more and more corporate, as the select few "indie" bands are elevated to the Untouchable status of ROCK STAR, packing out the Astoria literally seconds after playing their first ever gig, the designers move in with their pre-determined notions of COOL and all the big releases we're allowed to hear about have uninspired, useless covers that band clearly haven't had a say in or given a fuck about.

Things are changing, though. At the moment, we're in a strange mix of 1991 and 1996. The music World's over-run with over-styled useless corporate slags, we're all fucked off with it, but we've BEEN HERE BEFORE, a million times, and something ALWAYS HAPPENS when you least expect it. You see little things happening, even just round London - Popular Workshop tearing up a clothes shop on a Saturday afternoon, Comanechi reducing Metro to a stunned silence, Komakino tearing the Barfly a new arsehole on a rainy Thursday in Camden. Drownedinsound was founded in a bedroom in Weymouth, for fuck's sakes, and now it's the British equivalent of Sub Pop, launching incredible bands that NO-ONE in the corporate World would have given the time of day to. The fact that we're here on this website debating is a testament to the incredible power of DIY rocknroll.

I'm fucked off, you're fucked off, we're all fucked off. This is the time when better things happen, when all our fuckedoffedness consolidates and we do something about it. I feel honoured to be part of these times. O, glorious indie scene! Let's go! Let's have it! Let's fuck!

was at a pub i was at last night and someone asked if he was in son of dork and he got really embaressed and mumbled yes before talking about something completely different, cant say i blame him

Reading the Constellation mission stataement suggests that there will always be people who produce things carefully on a smaller scale. A more realistic reading of the situation might suggest that rather than kill of certain formats, the 'digital music revolution' might just further ghettoize things like vinyl, as the majority of people simply won't have a record player. Which does make things even more difficult for the smaller DIY labels - working on a minority format even further limits their potential listeners. This is a few years down the line, you can still pick up record players at Argos as far as I know... but not for long I reckon.