Digipak Research

Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.

Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums and the tall DVD Digipak (DVDigipak) are used as a premium package for DVDs and DVD sets. Because such packaging is less resistant than jewel cases, it tends to show signs of wear relatively quickly. Digipak-style cases grew in popularity among record labels and recording artists in the early 2000s.

Historically, Digipak was only available in large quantities. However, AGI has recently introduced a new product called digipak i-create for the consumer market. Digipak i-create is a web-supported concept that is aimed at the download, music, photo and creative markets
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Digipak covers are generally similar to normal album covers, in fact the only considerable difference between the two is that digipak’s contain a DVD along with the CD, they are similarly laid out with a main cover, usually with an image representing the band or album, a track list on the back and the discs inside contained in plastic trays.

Here are some examples of digipak style cases.

After checking out some digipaks first hand I found out that there dimensions are

13.8cm in width

12.5cm in length

and the spine is roughly 6mm wide

all digipaks tend to include several if not all of these attributes

• Record label name, with copyright symbol beside it
• Website
• Bar code
• Tracklisting

Each digipak is also slightly different to another in the way they open up. Some are the same design as a CD case, others upon up in a gatefold style, and i have seen some that work similarly to a book, as in the CD tray sits in between two outer covers.

Then to further my research I looked through the NME magazine and found various forms of advertisement for digipaks. I found that there are various sizes and pages that these advertisements could go on, there were some that were about 1/8th of a page and were put underneath articles throughout the magazine. Some adverts were took up half of the page and others are full page spreads.

After thoroughly analysing these i noted that each advert contained at least one of these things:

• Artwork
• Band Name
• Album Name
• Website
• Label Name with copyright symbol

I also noted that a lot of the adverts had the HMV logo on them. This could suggest that the advert is not merely for the band but possibly for the shop it is sold in

From these examples I found that the adverts can also come in different sizes in magazines. so I found out the basic costs of the different sizes of advertisement in NME.

Full Page: £3,920

Half Page: £1,960

Quarter Page (4 columns): £1,120

Quarter Page (3 columns): £845