Now, in writing this, I am fully aware that I may come off as mildly insane and that this topic may be of interest to absolutely no one else - but seeing as we're all seriously into music, i figure it would be worth a shot to see if I'm alone at all here.


The other day I was looking at pictures of the Japanese re-issues of the Oasis albums on mini-LPs in gatefold sleeves. That is, its basically a scaled down LP album package with a CD inside instead of a vinyl record. I'm sure you can find pictures of them online. Anyhow, if you've seen an LP record before, you know what I mean. And chances are, you have seen one.

Then, I was listening to Morrissey's new album and was admiring how neat and slim the gatefold sleeve was (I have the regular 12 track version), and how little space it took up with my other albums. As someone who collects a sizeable number of CDs, I notice that the standard jewel cases take up about the space of 2 or 3 of these gatefold style album sleeves. Not quite a "Digipack" (who thought of that name?), as there's no plastic tray for the disc, just to be clear.

I realized how great it would have been if CDs had adopted this more collector-friendly format right from the beginning. You can still fit the liner notes/sleeve in there and the CD and it has the cool retro factor, in that it resembles a record. Additionally, it would have been more environmentally friendly to make album sleeves out of recycled fibers rather than more and more plastic.

I just bought George Harrison's Wonderwall Music recently, and its also in this mini-LP style. Which moved me to make this post. I just find this format to be more superior to the jewel case in a number of ways (which I've explained here) that I couldn't help but lament that this wasnt' standard issue for CDs from the beginning.



Am I alone here?

/tumbleweeds/