Artists use album covers to market themselves and construct a star image. Common conventions include showing the artist's face to promote recognition and awareness. Some female artists use sexualized images to attract audiences, while male artists may take topless photos if they have a fit body. Album covers can also be used to sell an artistic vision or idea through abstract, controversial, or thought-provoking imagery, which helps the artist stand out and be memorable. Country album covers commonly feature warm orange colors and symbols of rural life like cowboy hats to represent the genre.
3. Conventions of a CD cover
Artists face: they take a picture to sell themselves and also to make people
aware who the artist is and how they look. This is a good marketing strategy
and it also helps construct a star.
Artist body: most female artist sell their bodies, they take sexualized pictures to
tempt the audience to fall in love with an image and the star, thus they make
money. Also this is star construction. However, this is not common among male
artists but some do take provocative pictures that sell their bodies to women.
Artistic/artistic picture: Artist like to be artistic and explore their imagination.
Some albums are very colorful and abstract this may be because the album is
what the audience make of it just like abstract art.
Selling an idea: Some artists sell an idea rather then themselves. Some album
covers are controversial, funny, weird and sometimes even gross. This is so
that the audience look at it and think about what the album is trying to say.
4. Trough showing a full picture of an artists face, they can set
the latest trend i.e. what hair style is in fashion, make up
styles or even what clothes to wear etc. It also helps
construct a star image Notion of looking: Here the
Red hair and red lipstick: She
wants to sell her self to her
fans as someone who is good
looking and seductive. Red
resembles love or lust and it
stands out because it is bold.
She uses red to also stand out.
artist is looking away from the
picture. This is to make him
look stylish and like a star
because people will look at him
but he is not looking back.
5. Artists use the female
body to attract people,
mainly the male
audience.
Male artists usually take a
topless photo if they have a
“fit” body. This is to attract
the female fans
6. The use of abstract imagery helps promote and artists because the
weirder it is the more likely fans will remember it. This is a good
marketing strategy because fans will remember an artists album cover.
Sometimes an album
cover is abstract because
it allows an artists to
explore their emotions felt
by the album.
7. Some artists don't focus on their looks or desire a
star construction. They prefer to sell an idea to
challenge society. Sometimes an album cover is
really artistic and looks very weird, artists do this
because they just want to be different and want to
appeal to the mass audience.
8. A common theme throughout country albums are the colours used.
Most are yellowish orang; a symbolic colour that may represent the
warmth of the country. Also the clothes that are worn can
sometimes be symbolic of that genre, for example Tim Mcgraw
wears a cowboy hat in most of his album covers. Also, some artists
are seen holding a musical instrument, most commonly an acoustic
