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.

Album covers can sometimes interest me in the music itself but generally it doesn't matter.

I like album covers. They sum up the theme of the album in a visual art sense, but you gotta listen to the album first obviously to see how it works together.

doesnt matter. I can care less:)

Album art, design and packaging can enhance an album or give the record a visual element. It's a great thing when it is done well and works but a lot of the time it doesn't make much of a difference.

I love great album covers. For the longest time, they were the starting point of any interest in a musician/band.

Usually they reflect both the mood (or the attempt at the mood) and the care that was put into the creation of the album.

Sometimes, the covers from the 50's and 60's would be hit and miss (usually made by the Marketing people), and when it got to the "Supermarket Albums" there would be those who used some classic tease-a-rama style marketing to cover up the fact that it was a throwaway that would still be worth it for the cover alone, but once it got to the 70's and the artists controlling more of their presentation, it mattered more.

They don't matter too much, but if I'm checking out a band I don't know much about, it makes it easier to approach. So maybe they do matter.

I surprised at the amount of people who hold no particular opinion about album covers.

As far as I'm concerned if your album cover doesn't look eye catching or doesn't really have an interesting concept behind it then I really don't hold out much hope that the music on the album is any better.

An album cover is a statement about the art on the record you're putting out, so yes I will judge a book by it's cover.

I want to say that I don't care about the album art... but honestly, I do. I am far less likely to check out an album if the artwork on the cover is crappy. That said, I think that few album covers are truly awful. And I enjoy some album covers for their quirkiness or sense of humor, so there's that. But I think I've ever only listened to one album that I really loved, but hated the cover. Danny Brown's The Hybrid.

http://www.ihiphop.com/content/wp-co...the-hybrid.jpg

Seriously, look at that piece of ****. It sucks. So much. I hate it so much I am almost ashamed to enjoy the music inside of it. Petty? Probably, but hey, it is how it is.

Then again, a cover is by no means an indicator that I will enjoy the music. I have heard plenty of albums with wonderful cover art that I couldn't stand in any way.

One of the things I miss most of the vinyl age are the covers .... Big, often readable, an explosion of colors and the unbeatable pleasure of holdin hard paper ...... Great old times :)

My love of album covers was one of the main things that made me want to become a designer. So, yes, they matter a lot to me. Of course there are always exceptions, but by and large if the cover looks like the artist has a shitty aesthetic sensibility then there's a pretty good chance that the music shares that awful sensibility.

I think album covers are really important. Sometimes it's all you see as a representation of the music, like if you don't already know the band, so the image should be grabbing. Make you want to click, and then also should make sense with the music and the bands image. With so much music out there bands should do everything above and beyond to separate themselves from the pack. Just my opinion :)