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Comment by lux | Hacker News Reader

I can see if this is poorly done it will become annoying like a repeating DVD intro for sure. But as an artist, this also gives an opportunity to be not just musical but visual and even interactive. If it's based on webkit, sky's the limit for what you can embed. A listener chatter box? Why not? These could totally hook up to a server for interactive elements and ongoing content updates. You could tell a whole story in one of these.

I love vinyl LPs because the larger visual format is more immersive and I take the time out to enjoy the experience. On the computer, I find all music becomes background music, which is a shame. So I'm really looking forward to what artists (myself included, hopefully :) will do with this. I hope it lives up to that experience and becomes the new standard "LP" that other players adopt too.

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I miss liner notes. I still rarely buy individual tracks, being much more partial to the album and musicians/bands who can record albums. I've heard enough people think this is backward. Me, I might actually buy some music on iTunes finally (currently either rip CDs or use Amazon MP3)

... but if you want to do that, why not just have a website so everyone can look at it? You don't need to tie it to people who bought the album on iTunes.

I understand your point about music moving into the background when you're at a computer, and agree to some extent, but I think that's more to do with the fact you are sitting in front of an entertaining multi-function device rather than on a couch in front of a dedicated stereo system. It is possible to set up the latter even with a computer, and you'll still be distracted by all the possible activities with your computer even if you have a bundled web site to look at.

I agree that it's good to have something album-related to look at, to allow you to concentrate on the music more. Personally I think computers are the worst possible device to fulfil this role but don't have any other solutions.

Very true about computers. I find even with CDs I don't get the same thing as with vinyl though. It's just not as compelling an artistic medium.

As to putting it on a website, that could work and some people have done exactly that, but this is cool because it turns that novelty into a product you can sell (access to a restricted area of a band's website on the promise it'll be there in a year's time is a hard sell by comparison) and this is where people know to go to buy music now so the expectation that it will cost something is already in their minds. So this just works better as a saleable product.

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