Best of 2009 CD

The past couple of years I have made a "Best of" mix CD for my friends. Here are the spreads from the booklet I did for the CD this year.

User experience: CD packaging

Today at Target, I picked up the new CD from Flight of the Conchords, titled I Told You I Was Freaky. I thought I would share the packaging because this is the kind of thing I love to discover when I purchase a CD...

First, the album art is great, and the cover is cut out to reveal the art on the next layer...

Next, you open the cover to reveal a plethora of awesome! A double sided poster, really nice packaging art, and a hilarious CD sleeve with emo pictures of Brett and Jemaine on either side. Plus, the CD itself looks really nice...but that's not all!

I open the booklet to find another surprise...there are also chords printed with the song lyrics! Why has no one done this before? I think it is a really fun touch.

I bought this CD for 9.99 at Target...pretty much the same price you would pay or an electronic download. These are the kind of experiences I was thinking about when I thought of the possiblity of tackling music packaging/user experience for my thesis. This experiece was so much more enjoyable than buying the CD online. If I were a musical artist, I would want my fans to purchase my music with this kind of experience...how can people be encouraged to buy "hard copy" music instead of digital? Is it really something that should be encouraged?