Talk:Album cover

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[edit] Vinyl

This is a placeholder to cover the discussion of album covers and how they were a special feature of vinyl albums in the 70's.

I added a note under vinyl records. Note a search on album cover brings up Gramaphone awards but no main topic.

Vinyl albums had a large 12" cover, which became an important part of the culture of music at the time. As a marketing tool and an expression of artisic intent, gatefold covers, (a folded double cover), and inserts, often with lyric sheets made the album cover to be a desirable artifact in its own right. Notable examples are Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon which had gatefold, lyrics, no title on the sleeve and poster inserts. The move to the small CD format lost the impact of the cover.

[edit] Cover Art

See merge discussion at Talk:Cover art#Merge proposal.

I was looking for the Cover art article and found that Album cover art redirects to the Album cover article. Think these two could be merged? Gram 12:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Personally I think they are better as two separate articles. This article can go into more detail about the role of album covers, classic covers, etc. Cover art is a broader article. There's easily enough material for both articles to be decent. I'll remove the merge tag in the next few days unless someone objects. Soo 16:17, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• I have no objection now that the two articles refer to one another and the cover art article has been expanded to mention books etc, though perhaps these links could be made more obvious with a See Also.

Additional questions to take into account:

1. Should Album cover art redirect to Album cover (as it does now), or should it redirect to Cover art?
2. When linking the personnel credits on any album article, should the sleeve artists' credits link to Album cover or Cover art? (I will also ask this question on Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums).

Gram 12:13, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• • I think album cover art should redirect here, because this article is more specific. Ultimately the articles link to each other anyway so no big deal. As for the other one, I really don't know. Hopefully the wikiproject can decide for themselves. Soo 16:10, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Merge content is very similar, with significant overlap between ideas. Cover art (being more general) can include specifics about the different types of media. --Maelgwn 07:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright?

I have reinstated the example pictures - as displayed on this page they appear appropriate. If they are not valid here, then they should also be removed from the whole of wikipedia - these images are typically from original articles. I defer to the fair use claims on the pictures themselves. Spenny 17:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Using an album cover pic in an article about that album is valid under fair use, but I guess the rationale for removing them from this article may have been that they were being used as example illustrations of "Album covers". Specific album cover pics are not generic, so the fair use argument may not be appropriate. I'll ask on User:SoothingR's talk page (who removed the section) to provide further info. Gram 23:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Alright then, I'll give a quick explanation to you guys. I removed the pictures from the articles, because I thought that they were not compliant with the Wikipedia policy on fair use. There was no discussion on the specific images, they were just thrown into a gallery.SoothingR 14:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that in the context, using the low res. picture to illustrate the album in question is appropriate. The principle of fair use certainly can apply to a generic article. As a general point, where the album cover links do have a problem is that wiki has a high res. picture readily accessible and stored. The near thumb-nail on this page is fine - I think there is a problem with the high res. images stored on the source pages which is not fair use.

In terms of discussion, then the link is there to the main album in each case. For example, behind the Sgt. Pepper cover is a whole story, but it would not be appropriate to replicate the cover story again, though some expansion in the text of why each cover was notable would help the article and would assist the argument of "critical comentary" which I see is used elsewhere (and would show up the fan addition vs. the other notable covers). I agree further expansion is appropriate, though that is why originally I had picked out DSotM and Sgt. Pepper as notable in the text. Spenny 23:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a fair compromis. Keep the fair use images, but provide a little content as to why these album covers are notable.SoothingR 14:34, 31 January 2006 (UTC)