Cover art - gone forever or about to change?
In this past weekend’s NY Times Men’s Fashion Spring 2006 Magazine Alice Rawsthorn penned, Record Losses and article about the changing nature of album cover art:
Those same nostalgics are even angrier about digital downloading, claiming that it has destroyed the visual side of music. And while it’s true that an album cover will never mean as much to the generation of kids for whom buying music is just a virtual trip to iTunes, luckily for them, the visual aspect of music is about to be reinvented.
In Media Center we place a lot of emphasis on album cover art. For instance the default view for my music is (Dec CTP screenshot):
Are we correct to put so much emphasis on cover art? Can users really identify an album solely based on it’s cover? I know for me that album covers have lost a lot of meaning in recent years as I listen to music solely through my Media Center or my iPod. Sure the album art comes up while the song is playing on either device, but there is no longer an emotional connection to it.
No, cover arts do not have that much of an importance for me, they are maybe even a bit confusing on the screen (they do not have the same effect on screen as in the CD box cover, at all). Playlists do, and I wish they’d work correctly in MCE.
Agreed, you need more than just the cover art. Actually I like the MCE 2005 view.
Interesting…. at the weekend I brought my Media Center to the brother in-laws house as he was seeking the Wife Acceptance Factor before entering the world of Media Center.
I took the opportunity of doing a blind test of Vista vs MCE. First a demo of MCE2005 and then VistaMCE, the first comment my sister made was about navigating music my album, she preferred MCE as she could see the album title, and said that she didn’t recognise albums by cover art these days, which made VistaMCE more difficult.
Perversely, I am not a huge fan of many of the VistaMCE interface changes, but do like the cover art navigation!! You poor MS sods you just cant win ;)
zoran, how do playlists not work correctly?
I think cover art is still very important, it is the album icon.
I buy music online, but still buy a lot of CDs, and i know my albuns by their cover.
Why did we move from command line O.S. to graphic based O.S.
Why icons in vista are bigger than those of XP?
A picture still means a thousand words.
Im my opinion you shoud have some kind of interface like
your Netflix Avalon demo in windows Vista, probably it is useless to browse the whole collection, but if I could use it to browse artist first (using a picture of any album or a box with the artist name) or genre fist (using a picture or icon representing that genre) and then browse in the artist or genre colecction, it will work for sure.
I bet you will sell a lot more Vistas for MCE just for that wow factor.
During the napster era when we shared( actually stole) music, I could careless for album art, cause in most cases there were none( go figure why). However with MedieCenter’s large screen, I think album art plays a key role and could help bring back the nostalgia. For me, it helps me connect to the music, particularly if it as a classic album. In fact we are conceptualizing a plug-in for mce that deals with Cover Art!!!
I personally enjoy seeing coverart, but maybe I am at the age (33), where I remember going to the music store and finding unknown artist based on the inventive coverart. I also think that VISTA will make it a more pleasing way to view who is currently playing in MY Music, but I still won’t search by album.
UYou all seemm to be avid fans of MCE (Like me) and I wondered if any of you can help…
I am running Windows XP MCE in my bedroom and have just got hold of a 300 gig Buffalo Link Station…
I have transferred my music files from my computer to the external storage device and linked windows Media Centre “My Music†folder to the External Hard drive… due to the fact the folders were called “My Music†on the external drive and I also wanted to link the “MY Music†folder on my computers hard drive. I had to change the name of the External folders to “Server Music†for MCE to accept both folders for streaming music.
The problem is, I now go into the media centre and it still shows the old folders for the music files on the external storage device, even though I have removed them from the Media Centre “add/Remove Folders†they are still showing in media centre (when you click to play the music it comes up with an Error, file missing, corrupt or the computer you are trying to connect to is not switched on.
Is there anyway of refreshing the folders in media Centre?
Or starting from Scratch (removing all folders and starting again)?
I may be a bit late, but just wanted to say, that I believe, that Cover Art has to be given a chance to take its place back in the media team.
I just put quite an effort in tagging my mp3s with covers just to have a nice view, a point of remembrance and my room for association with cover art back on the screen. It is definitly worth it. But I have to admit, that one has to have an interface that features the album art properly.
At best it works for me with XBMC (http://xbmc.sf.net). CoverArt could be bigger some times, but all in all I never found an interface more pleasing - and i don’t think it’s just a matter of taste ;)
Low Hardware requirements, perfect utilization of remote, great navigation and database-features, extendable and nice design. And I think the return of the AlbumArt is not just a matter of interface-design.
Please excuse my Enlgish