Digipaks

A Digipak is the hardback plasticcase that all CD's come in when purchased, They are used in order to protect tye CD, as well as simontaeneusly promote the Artist and the music that they create.

In a Typical Digipak you are likely to find:

An Album Cover
Images Of the Artist(s)
Tracklist
A Personal Message
A Signature
Lyrics to some tracks
Credits (producers, Composers, Album Artist etc.)
Barcode
Links to Websites dedicated to the artist

So What research can be done on a Digipak?

What Is A Digipak?

This is the structure of how the Digipaks work, including the back, front and where to insert the CD. It also comes with three empty spaces where the CD insert may be put in.

As you can see that this Digipak of Justin's Bieber Album "Believe"" matches the structure above as it includes an insert, track list and images around the plastic case showcasing Justin's face, this is what any typical Digipak would end up looking like.

The reason why one may do Market Research on a product is to find out how we can make the product better against competitors. However, we cannot do primary market research in relation to the Digipak as, customers buy Digipaks based on the CD inside and the artist band that the customer enjoys listening to such as Justin Bieber (right), So the album cover doesn't particularly matter in terms of first hand research, when buying a CD. In terms of beating out the competition i.e. 2 competing singers, singing in the same genre of music. We would have to look into the both discography of the 2 singers/artists in order to create a Digipak that customers will buy. We can do this via the internet or looking at books associated with these singers, however, the same issue occurs with primary research, that customers are just buying the Digipak for the music inside, in spite whether the layout or the design is pretty to look at.

Another research method that we can use is that we can do some Qualitative research around Digipaks and look at the public’s opinion on what already exists. A really good source of information is too look at what can be considered to be Award Winning or prestigious. An example of this would be the Grammy Awards, who award a trophy to the "overall best recording package" which looks specifically at the visual look of the album and the contents of the Digipak, by looking at past winners, we can understand what the best Digipaks look like, using Qualitative research the company can design the album based on what the general public think looks good, without focusing on the artist/band that is representing the Digipak. Therefore, no bias/preference is involved in this method of research.

However, I can safely say that there is no point looking at Quantitive research concerning the Digipak, such as CD sales, because again, we are talking about the music inside the Digipak that the customers are buying, either to listen or support their favorite artist, These statistics have no relation to the design or the Digipak at all,

Finally, in order to create a strong, successful looking Digipak, we should do some production research, which is about the actual production of the Digipak, such as the structure, the cost, advertising, location etc...if we are making a Digipak aimed at a specific target market(in this case we'll look at teenagers), it would be helpful to look into the statistics/structure of an album of an artist (e.g. Taylor Swift) that appeals to the particular market you are trying to sell to, and spot any similarities/differences that you can take into account, for example, you can see that Taylor Swift album on the right called "red" came with free guitar p[picks for every customer that bought a Digipak, this album sold 1.2 million in its first week. However, the issue is that Taylor Swift is also popular artists, and it's likely that customers were buying her music to listen to rather than for the freebies. This is an issue when designing a Digipak for a specific target market.

However if you are just designing a Digipak in general, you might find it better to invest your time in looking at a company that compiles different songs together not specified at various groups of people and changes the Digipak regularly based n the different tracks inside. (a good example is the company "Now That's What I call" As they focus more on the Digipak, rather than the music inside, but would be beneficial to research into the Digipaks that they create as they are not specific to any audience and produce them regularly.

Some of the Digipaks that the company "Now that's what i call..." has produced, in order to produce a good digipak you should research into their history and their albums to work out costs/locations, advertising etc.

The album cover on the left, is the recipient of the award the "best recording package" at the Grammy Awards 2016 - Still the King: Celebrating the Music of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

Taylor Swift's Album "Red" - sold 1.2 million within it's first week of being released. A reason why this digipak was succesfully designed could be becuse each fan recived a guitar pick when buying a hard copyt of the digipak.