Research & Planning - Digipak analysis

Digipak Analysis

What is a Digipak?

The popularity of digipaks came about in the early 200s amongst recoding artists and record labels. A digipak is used by recorded labels to promote sales on a particular artist or band similarly to a music video as it is aimed to advertise and 'sell' the artist.

The main purpose of a digipak is to give the customer/ fan something physical with a variety of features which they can keep as oppose to downloading the song or album through the internet, a digipak offers more features (bands/artists tour dates, songs within the disc and background content on the artist) than just the music itself.

Some generic features of a digipak are:

• Hard copy of the CD
• Photos and content detailing the artist/band
• Lyric book

How does a digipak benefit the artist?

The front of the digipak will have some aspect of what the artist represents and what their predominate genre is. The digipak will most likely embody the theme and a message about the artists' image. This links to emphasising the artist as a brand image which increases their popularity. 

Digipaks benefit the artist as its promotional aspect of the music industry which helps bring awareness to the artist thus selling the artist and encouraging consumers to buy and listen to their music. If anything a digipak establishes your loyalty to your artist similar to a vinyl record.

Example 1

This is an example of a standard Digipak template, a digipak is a patented style of CD or DVD packaging.


Advantage

• An advantage of this particular digipak is that its very presentable and offers a wide range of features that comes with the album; perhaps a poster or a mini booklet containing information and lyrics of the album. More packaging such as this one gives more room for the artist or band to promote themselves.
• Digipaks are made more environmentally friendly than jewel cases because they can be made of recycled paper - However, they aren't always made this way.

Disadvantage

• A disadvantage is that now a days it may be out of date as many consumers download albums online via itunes and therefore rarely purchase digipaks.
• Digipak's will show more wear and tear than a jewel case therefore isn't durable.

Example 2

Advantage

• This particular digipak is efficient for consumers who just want the basic features of an album which is the hard copy and the booklet. It uses less materials than the first one and can be made in large quantities. It is efficient in storage.
• Digipak's don't crack as easily as jewel cases do, but they will rip and eventually the paper begins to peel apart and separate.

Disadvantage

• The trays in the digipaks break much more often than in jewel cases. There's not as much protection since the outer portion is made of paper, so the teeth that hold the CD in place crack and fall out easily.

After looking at the possible digipaks available and evaluating their strength and weaknesses, I've come to the conclusion that I would be using a 6 panel digipak because unlike the 4 panel, the 6 panel allows us to insert much more features on the artist e.g. tour dates and signed song books which therefore further promotes them. However a drawback in using a 6 panel in terms of it being used by an unsigned artist is that there is only a limited amount of features we can include as they aren't as well known so it'd a waste of time trying to fill in the space left over.