Digipak

The front cover of most music albums tends to be a close up image of the artist. I have in fact conformed to this convention as I wanted to appeal to my target audience. Having a close up image of the artist for the front cover enhance and promote the identity of the artist. I have also conformed to the convention of including the artist’s name; some album often have the artist’s name and a title of the album, however, I have decided to make the artist’s name as the title of the album, it makers her name the prominent feature of the album as well as makes her more recognisable to the buyers, they will notice it straight away. The mise-en-scene of the front cover is an image of the artist facing to the side and this gives the connotation of mysteriousness. The colour theme that I have used for the front over conforms to the pop genre convention as although bright colours was not used, the pink, white and indigo colours appeals to my target audience, which are teenagers aged from 13-18. Also, although my target audience are heavily female dominated, it still appeals to both gender due to the colour theme. It does not look very feminine, it is subtle and it also has that galaxy effect. The galaxy is filled with dark matter and and mysteries. I want my digipak to be a mystery and make my target audience keep wanting for more. As the saying goes ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ and so I want the buyers to check out what else the album has to offer.

The back of the album is where you can see the songs that are included in the album, information about the record label company, copyright information, the artist’s social networking sites. A bar code and the name of the album is also included. I have definitely conform to all of these conventions.
Breaking it down, including a track list on the album helps the audience to see if their favourite track is included and by this, it would make them purchase the album. Also, the audience can always look at the back when they want to listen to the album and select the song they want to listen to.

In my digipak, I have also included social media links of the artist’s websites. This helps the audience to keep up to date with the artist and find out what other things she does. This will make the audience create a relationship with the artist. Along with this, I have also included copyright information and this is to ensure that the album would not be sold illegally.

I have also included a barcode and the price of the album. The barcode is a very important convention for an album as it is a practical source so that the product can be sold and purchased by the target customers. Also, the price for my album is £9.99; I have used the psychological pricing method. This pricing method uses the customer’s emotional response to encourage sales. It makes the customer think that the product is cheaper than it really is. Pricing in this way is intended to attract my target audience who are looking for “value”. Doing it this way, enables me to influence the way my target audience view the product without the need to actually change the product. Pricing it £9.99 rather than £10.00 can make a difference.
I have also included the record label company which is Sony Music company. I have chosen this company because when I was doing my research, I have found that it features the greatest artists in the history, for example, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, One Direction, etc. These singers are inspirations to a lot of people and they adore their music, therefore, if I based my album on this company, my target audience would immediately purchase the product because if they notice the record label company, they would automatically know that it will be as good as those artists’ music.

The inside of a digipak contains the holder for the actual CD and with it, there are sometimes some sort of artwork or design which goes with the rest of the packaging. Also, the inside will often contains extra information of either song lyrics, personal messages or artist information. The inside of the album keep the buyers more interested. With the inside of my digipak, I have decided to add a personal message for the fans from the artist herself. This creates a relationship between the artist and the audience because by writing a personal message, it shows that the artist cares about her fans. Also, by adding in her signature makes it more effective and appealing. It makes her more of a ‘human being’, less of a pop star. With this personal message, it also creates a star persona; according to Richard Dyer, he states that star persona helps to sell the music to its intended audience and can help diversify the fan base. This helps the audience view her as someone who is approachable, down to earth and someone who is passionate and serious about what they do. This will make the audience buy more of her album in the future and support her throughout.