Is Your Digipak Really Going to Sell?

With the internet becoming available to everyone, the music industry had to change. Before, people had to buy music physically or hear it on the radio but now people can buy and download music online and even illegally download their music through file-sharing and torrent sites. People can also legally listen to music for free and customise their experiences by selecting songs and albums they like by listening and watching videos on youtube or streaming music through Spotify, Google Play, Tidal and Apple Music.

In a 2009 study, it was found that 95% of music downloaded on the internet was downloaded illegally. This is serious as it makes artists lose money and people who help or encourage this can be punished, The Pirate Bay owners were sentenced to a year in jail and £2.5 millions in damages.

In 2009 digital sales were worth $3.7 billion. As for streaming music, in the first half of 2015, physical music sales accounted for 24% of the recording industry's revenue where as music streaming services made up 32%. A lot of people use Spotify, especially young people which is why they try to entice them more by offering a student discount.

Popular music and video store, HMV is now resorting to selling music technology such as headphones and mp3 players and (the now popular) vinyl records to keep up with the changing times. They have had a lot of store closures and had to close their webstore because they cant compete with Amazon, iTunes etc.

Digipaks need to be a commodity that isn't available through downloading online or streaming on websites, it needs to be something people would want to buy. It needs to have great iconic album art which people would want to physically have, it could come with: lyrics that people may want to read, booklets with unseen pictures, extra CDs or DVDs with exclusive music/footage and maybe even posters or physical goods.

A digipak needs to be a 6 panel CD which has:

• Front Cover
• Track Listing
• Lyrics
• A CD (or two)
• Booklet
• Images