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The history of album art || Matthew Ström, designer-leader

matthewstrom.com · 443 words · saved by 2 readers

In the early 1900s, recorded music was still a novelty, overshadowed by sales of sheet music. Early vinyl records were vastly different from what we think of today: discs were sold individually and could only hold up to four minutes of music per side. Sometimes, only one side of the record was used. One of the most popular records of 1910, for example, was “Come, Josephine, in My Flying Machine”: it clocked in at two minutes and 39 seconds. The packaging of these records was strictly utilitarian: a brown paper sleeve to protect the record from dust, printed with the name of the record label or the retailer. Rarely did the packaging include any information on the disc inside; the label on the center of the disc was all there was to differentiate one record from another. But as record sales started to show signs of life, music publishers took note. Columbia Records, one of the first companies to sell music on discs, was especially successful. They pioneered the sale of songs in bundles:

Album art didn’t always exist. In the early 1900s, recorded music was still a novelty, overshadowed by sales of sheet music. Early vinyl records were vastly different from what we think of today: discs were sold individually and could only hold up to four minutes of music per side. Sometimes, only one side of the record was used. One of the most popular records of 1910, for example, was “Come, Josephine, in My Flying Machine”: it clocked in at two minutes and 39 seconds. An example of early album art via Wikipedia The packaging of these records was strictly utilitarian: a brown paper sleeve to

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