Hip to be Square

Recently I wrote about the hour-long drama as a form that might last beyond the technology that required it. I think square-shaped art for music recordings might do the same thing.

With physical sales of music, the cover art has the obvious purpose of labeling the product, something that can be achieved with a simple line of text in digital space. But cover art does a lot more than label a product. In physical retail it is also designed to be compelling, or attractive, or somehow represent the music it's covering. I see no reason to stop attempting that as physical music sales disappear.

And, with only a relatively brief foray into rectangular media, music has been sold on circles wrapped in squares for about a hundred years. This means that the great back catalog of cover art is square, and with no  physical limitation on shape or size in digital distribution, there is no reason not to continue using square art. The only thing the digital space will demand is consistency, and Apple, Spotify and others have already nicely integrated square image files in their music apps and products.



(Are you kidding?) The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's on cassette by Dave_McGurgan, on Flickr