What is a Digipak?

Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums. They typically consist of a gatefold paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. Digipaks were first created by MeadWestvaco, and their product, called Digi-Pak, is trademarked. However, as the format became more popular it began to be used and made by many more manufacturers. Today, Digipaks are very popular and extremely common within CD sales.

Digipaks are used in order to promote the artist in the most beneficial way, and emphasises to the audience what their genre of music is. There is often a certain theme to the digipak, for example Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" digipak followed a candy/sweet theme which instantly suggests that her specific genre of music is pop. It is used to accentuate the artist's image and create a wider audience base through the creativity of the artist's approach. Digipaks benefit the artist and their music as its promotional aspect ofthe music industry which helps bring awareness to the artist thus selling the artist and encouraging consumers to buy and listen to their music.You could argue that buying a digipak establishes your loyalty to your artist.

The back of the Digipak includes information of the tracks included and also the order making it easier to find a certain track and also to show what is actually included. Due to the increasing use of digital streaming and downloading the demand for digipaks is falling. This is because digital downloads only show the front of an album which leaves the rest redundant. Illegal downloads also stop the sales of digipaks because a track is not purchased at all. This stops any purchase of a digipak. Social music sites such as YouTube, sound cloud and spofity also stop the sales of Digipaks because it is a digital form of music and not able to be bought in a shop.