Everything Everything - Man Alive

Manchester quartet Everything Everything obviously have design knowledge. (One of their singles was titled 'Photoshop Handsome'.) So it's perhaps because of this that the cover for the album that they're releasing through Geffen turns out to be pretty decent. I'm not sure who is responsible for the use of the interconnected broken typeface and the fox photo with the digital glitch details but it's a great combination of fairly unrelated elements.

Speaking of glitches, the band also got L.A.'s The Glitch Mob to produce a furious mash-up of the long-player that condenses it into just seven minutes. The label has been using this to promote the proper release via the downloadable/embedable [if that's a word] Soundcloud file featured below.

Everything Everything - Man Alive - The Glitch Mob Album Mash Up by EverythingEverything

Prodigy egg

From: http://englishrussia.com/


This is possibly the strangest fusion of music and physical object.

Thousands of eggs were distributed via shops in Minsk. Each one was printed with the details of an upcoming local gig by The Prodigy.

Aside from not being able to find a correlation between artist and choice of medium, I'm also dubious about whether these would hit the ideal target market. Additionally, I doubt the majority of people would actually read the text on an egg beyond checking the use by date.

Weird.

Music industry looks beyond music sales

From: The Telegraph
Date: 03/08/10

The hard-pressed music industry has been forced to look beyond CD and MP3 track sales in order to shore up sales. British record labels collected a record £193.5m in so-called "secondary revenues", which covers income from gigs and concerts to merchandise and film, TV and advertising rights, in 2009.

The BPI, the industry body which released the figures yesterday, said income from outside traditional music sales was up 6.6pc compared to 2008.

Secondary revenues accounted for almost one-fifth of record companies total sales of £1.12m last year.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, said: "UK record companies have responded to tough market conditions by innovating in the digital world and developing new revenue streams from recorded music, beyond their traditional base of CD sales and the encouraging growth in digital a la carte, subscription and streaming services.

"Music companies continue to face an enormous challenge from illegal downloading, but are responding positively by transforming themselves for the future, identifying new opportunities to generate returns from the massive investments they make - hundreds of millions of pounds per year - in UK talent."

Rupert Neate

Pop Matters by Nikolay Saveliev

Viral-Promotional Record Sleeves, 2007

Vinyl record sleeves with 2-sided insert featuring faux-academic material on pop music and the state of the record industry, seeded with promotional material for indie radio stations. Sponsored by Brown Student Radio. Snuck onto used and new record store shelves. 140 copies in total. More at www.nikolaysaveliev.com