By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

Once upon a time, people used to buy whole albums instead of cherry-picking singles and leaving the rest in limbo like so much musical flotsam. In those glory days, people not only brought albums for the music, but for the cool liner notes that came with it.  Whether it was cool art, bonus music, or some other effect to make the music experience that much more special. One such album was the late “King of Pop’s” Invincible which featured five different album covers.

Apple who has helped to put the music industry in a tailspin is hoping to give a much needed kick in the pants. The project, codenamed “Cocktail,” brings Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and EMI, four of the largest record labels together with Apple to create interactive bundles exclusive to full album purchases. These “booklets” will contain bonus artwork, photos, liner notes, and other content.

While this is a good look for music in general as it will encourage artists to return to a time when musicians worked to perfect their craft from the music to the liner and everything in between, the question remains can this model work for today’s music consumer. While we all love extra content, will it be enough to encourage people to invest in laying down their hard-earned cash for an entire album? For battle-tested artists like Prince, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Mariah Carey, and Beyonce that have a loyal fan base this a great model since but for flash-in-the-pan ringtone artists, where the formula has been make a hot single and run, this could be a problem (which in the grand scheme of things could be the best thing that’s happened to the music industry in a long time, but that’s another post).

Sources have “Cocktail” releasing anytime from this September to sometime in 2010. Why the big time window? It’s been rumored that the project is set to release alongside the as of yet unconfirmed Apple tablet that’s had techies atwitter with excitment for the past week. Ultimately, “Cocktail” has the potential to change the way music lovers engage their music, a simpler time when the music was the focus. But without more details, it seems a little too early to hang the weight of a sagging music industry that has systematically done everything it could to dig itself into such a deep hole.

BlackWeb20.com covers website and application launches; culturally relevant Internet industry news; and mainstream Internet industry news from an African-American perspective.  They also analyze emerging web trends and how they apply to web properties that target African-Americans or African-American culture.

TAGS: Apple, Cocktail, EMI, Internet Tablet, Invincible, iTunes, Michael Jackson, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group

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