How much do album covers matter to you?
 

what the title says^
for me it matters a little, because it helps me get into the album :p
besides,whan I discover new music, I will usually try an album with awesome cover before an album with a crappy cover...

*its also fun, looking at a beautiful album cover while listening to the music ^.^

Usually doesn't matter much to me especially since i download almost all of my music now.

Not a whole lot, though often you can tell something about the genre based on the artwork. Some genres tend to rely on uniformity of imagery, so I think you can identify many emo-pop or power metal albums by their covers.

Generally speaking though, the artwork alone may enhance, but not inhibit my interest in a piece of music. I'm still going to listen to NO LOVE DEEP WEB at some point.

^Hahaha you like the cover, admit it!

It's not a very pretty thing, but but it makes a statement.

I know that's not what you meant. Haha.

Doesn't really matter to me. Its the quality of the music that counts.

I like album art as it sometimes help give me imagey to think about as I listen to an album but other times I feel like album art is misleading and doesn't help too much. So really, if it helps give me a better feeling of the albums personality and so on, I quite like it. Might even consider it important.

Quite a lot, even now. Back when I were knee-high to a Strat, I would quite often browse the record shops and would certainly be attracted to an interesting sleeve, though in fairness that would NOT be the only reason I would buy the album (OOOH! Shiny thing! Shiny thing!) --- but if it had a boring cover AND I DIDN'T KNOW THE ALBUM OR ARTISTE I might not be as ready to buy it.

Case in point: I went through a phase of collecting all of Van Der Graaf Generator's albums. One of them, "Godbluff", is nothing more than a black sleeve with the title stamped on it in red. Didn't stop me buying it though. If Marillion had released an album with a sleeve that was similarly undecorated, or Genesis, or Supertramp, Springsteen, whoever, I'd still have bought it, as a pretty sleeve does not rank at the top of the reasons for buying albums, not for me.

However...

If I didn't know the artiste, I would be more likely to try out their album if the cover was interesting. Another case in point: "Bat out of Hell". I used to look in the window of a record store every night on the way home from my part-time job after school and think "what a cool cover! I'd never listen to the MUSIC, but cool cover!" When I bought the album (again, not ONLY on the basis of the cover; I had heard a few tracks but then in this case the cover played a pretty large part, as I had been admiring it for months) I found I loved the music, but I also love the sleeve, one of my alltime favourites.

Nowadays, this plays a much larger part in my decisions. Again, this is when I don't know the artiste. Either a cool cover or an interesting title will often draw me to an album. Of course, if I discover then that it's a genre I don't like I go no further, but it can be the starting point to move me towards something I may eventually decide to buy.

Wipe clean covers are always the best oh balls. I think I misread this.

I try not to pre-judge the quality of the music on an album based on the cover art, but of course it gives some sort of hint as to what sort of music you should expect from the album, like whether it's country or hip hop.

I have some friends who just released their fifth album. This time, as they were released on a new label with a new deal, they had no creative control over their cover art at. The label gave that job to some sort of cover designer that they were using. So sometimes the musicians themselves have very little direct influence on how the finished product ends up looking.