Do box sets matter in the Spotify era?

From The Velvet Underground to Joni Mitchell, it seems everyone is rolling out a special edition box set these days. Just look at the last few months: In early November (just in time for the holidays), Paul McCartney announced The 7” Singles Box, a limited collection of 80 7” vinyl records chronicling his career alongside a 148-page book full of recording notes and essays from music journalist Rob Sheffield and McCartney himself—all stuffed into a strap-sealed redwood pine crate. Meanwhile, Wilco released in September a 20-year anniversary edition of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot containing 82 previously unreleased tracks, a hardcover book, previously unpublished photos of the band taken during the time of recording, and eight new front album covers. 

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“So, I think there are a few types of reissues,” says Stephen Kennedy, the founder and Creative Director of Studio Fury, the team behind the celebrated Led Zeppelin Deluxe Edition as well as reissues by The Rolling Stones, Elton John, and other major artists. “You get reissues where they just remaster it, just to make it sound better. But at the other end of the scale, there are reissues where the release gets celebrated, they go back into the archive, they try to find things, they try to tell a story.”

The purpose of a reissue, at least in a creative sense, is to present a guided, curated experience for the listener that is both tactile and auditory. “It’s the difference between walking through a museum alone versus walking through that same museum with a really good docent,” says Azerrad.

Ultimately, it’s design-based storytelling that involves meticulous research. “What’s critical is finding out what the story of the album is, and then timelining it,” according to Kennedy. “You have to get a bit forensic with the timeline, and then when you start working with a writer or an artist, you have to be true to that.”

But with streaming, so much of the story is lost, and it’s unclear as to whether or not it can be regained. “It’s hard to touch it, hard to feel it. The tactile element is obviously lost,” Kennedy says. “And Spotify certainly hasn’t tried to develop any sort of technology that would allow something to be experienced in that way.” To be fair, there have been a few small attempts from streaming companies—namely, the now-defunct “iTunes LP” and Spotify’s “Canvas” feature—but both leave much to be desired.

Spotify’s “Canvas” feature offers a small opportunity for exploration, but not everyone sees it that way. The feature—a looping video that plays behind the timestamp of whatever song you’re playing—is one of the only major efforts from Spotify to make their platform more visually interactive on a day-to-day basis that goes beyond their dark and minimal aesthetic. It was their first real attempt at bringing something entirely new to the table as it concerns the art that enhances the experience of music. But not all artists use it, and those who do aren’t always happy about it.

Despite being a wildly successful marketing tool according to Spotify’s internal research, artists and labels are reluctant to utilize it, often seeing it as an afterthought rather than a priority. Many artists will make a generic canvas that can be put on all of the songs from an album, or only the singles will get one, made up of footage from the song’s music video. 

There are some musicians, however, who have been able to put greater thought into their digital canvases, and the results have been interesting. On Spotify, Elton John’s The Jewel Box, a box set released in 2020 designed by Kennedy’s Studio Fury, features animated liner notes, photographs, and scraps similar to those you would find in the physical box set. But even so, it is done inconsistently, where some songs don’t have anything at all. And in talking to Kennedy and Azerrad, it’s clear that though many of the canvases come out nicely, they are in no way a priority. Ultimately, many musicians and designers are frustrated that the canvases prevent users from seeing the cover art, a thing they are far more invested in.

The iTunes LP, on the other hand, had a lot of potential. With the iTunes LP, artists could create a homepage for their album in lieu of a front cover, as well as liner notes, visualizers, behind-the-scenes videos, and more, designed to replace and enhance the missing components that come with a physical release. But the feature “never really gained traction,” says Kennedy. “Ultimately, they weren’t easy to produce, and they didn’t work commercially.” By 2018 Apple pulled the plug on the whole experiment.

But does Spotify’s “Canvas” pass the vinyl-head test? According to Bob DiBono, a friend I grew close to by comparing Led Zeppelin reissues, the answer is a resounding no. “I get so mad at those ‘Canvases’ that Spotify has, I actually turned the setting off,” he says.“They’re kind of cool, but they’re super distracting, though I guess that’s the kind of stuff that you could work with if you’re looking at it digitally.”

But Bob is a serious vinyl collector, with at least several hundred vinyl albums in his collection. And while he streams music using Spotify, for him, it’s far more than just hearing the music. When listening to a record, Bob is usually cleaning another record, looking at the liner notes, or sometimes logging them into a database—there’s a kind of ritual to his type of listening. But how could that ritual be performed without the physicality of the boxset?

“The creation of the thing you are describing doesn’t exist yet,” says Azerrad. He thinks that, “it’s not a boxset, it’s not on Spotify—something that is in the middle can exist, and I think whoever ends up creating it will be quite profitable.” And though Azerrad laughed a little when talking about the profit potential, he’s right. “People want something that creates a deeper, richer experience,” he says; “something tangible.”

Azerrad, in fact, developed an entire curriculum based on trying to resolve this mounting question currently being taught at California College of the Arts and Royal College of Art/Imperial College London. The program is an attempt to inspire an emerging generation of designers, engineers, and artists to theorize new ways of experiencing music. The hope is that through speculative design, alternative connections can be made with music virtually, adding to and deepening the plurality of ways of access that already exist, from the vinyl record to streaming.

“Art is a key doorway into the music,” says Azerrad, “but that is not exclusive to the album cover only—it includes web experiences, concert experiences, fashion, the whole constellation surrounding the music.” And, hopefully, whatever version of these things is developed next includes a type of digital physicality or connection.