Chapter 8billion in my I hate NME these days saga. I promise I will stop obsessing over their inability to run a website properly from now on.  But c'mon. Beyond. A goddamn. Joke.


Now I realise that NME will, like the last link I posted, eventually notice and correct their cock-up. But I like to keep my grudges, and so here it is for you all to see for all eternity. Silly silly people.


Right then. Lets send my nit-picking attention elsewhere, shall we? The new artwork for Britney's new album has been released. I realise it's not important in the grand scheme of... well. Anything.  But it riles me -admittedly, more than it should - that someone is being paid bloody good money to produce this monstrosity:

Perhaps I'm alone in my snobbery towards bad album art. Actually, who am I kidding. I don't have snobbery towards bad CD booklet design-I have it towards bad design in general. I must be a nightmare to work with at university...


Both this year and last, group work has revolved heavily around design, and apparently I can't just sit back and let people make something pretty by themselves. Oh no. I have to try and interfere. It's a compulsion. But I try not to criticise other students' design work too  much....


Up in the newsrooms at  the University of Lincoln, we're all learning. None of us know how the hell to use Quark to it's full potential, and ditto for Photoshop. And yet students in the MHAC building churn out better stuff in an hour than they've produced for Blackout. And at a drop of the price.


Advertising is big business these days, in the music industry as much as any other. Mega-bucks will have been spent working out just how to pitch Britney's comeback given the sorry state her life seems to be in right now. And that is what "professionals" come up with.


It's not just Britters' album though. I mean, there's been a wiiiide selection of awful album covers of late. Lets see:


   


No one is going to spend a tenner on Britney's new album when they can just download the important stuff [so... umm... Gimme More & Get Naked (I got a Plan) then, in the case of Ms. Spears/Federline...] for 79p a track. Or for free, depending on just how loose their morals are. 


Once upon a time, albums were released with complex booklets, with unique photography, lyrics, stories, posters, artwork. Pick up the likes of Michael Jackson's HIStory, Oasis' Be Here Now, or even the Spice Girls' Spice and you can see right off that you got more for your money back in - dare I say it - the good ol' days.


The media insists on telling us why people download albums these days... s because the public want to steal, it's because it's quicker, it's cheaper... Maybe it's just because record companies aren't putting in the effort anymore. If toddling down to HMV in the pissing-rain and  handing over your £12.95 is only getting you a box and bit of paper more than what you could have swiped from iTunes for £7.90 then... what's the point?


And in all of that, I've not blamed Britters once. Although if it turns out they let her design this while she was off her face on crack, then my face will be very red indeed...

 And yet again. Why is it always NME that get my journalistic/designsnob on her soapbox these days. First it was dull layouts with excessive white-space.


I forgave them, thinking that at least the website was updated daily with decent content, and a fairly solid design. But no. 


People are being paid good money to update this site and can't even manage basic formatting that our lecturer Bernie would stab us for forgetting. It's ridiculous.


A one-off cock up could maybe be excused. But every time I seem to check a news story beyond the first page, there's a mistake much the same. Which makes me think there's either someone being very lazy with a mistake-ridden template. 


Or. They're creating the code from scratch each time and making the same mistake every time.


I don't know which is worse.



I'm done procrastinating now. Hurrah. Back to work. Expect a proper piece up soon - there's a new Jimmy Eat World album that's just screaming for my attention...




 

Anyone care to share why the supposed New Look NME appears to just be poor efforts by the work experience kids?


They seem to have forgotten what is they're meant to be doing. First off, £2.10 for a weekly music rag is obscene. Especially since this last few issues have filled a good six or eight pages with full page photographs depicting the weeks supposed greatest musical moments. Like the Enemy with a storm trooper. And then a weekly archive photo celebrating a great NME hero.


Don't get me wrong. I'm a photographer myself, I admire and appreciate a good quality photograph. But expectig the great British Public to fork out almost a tenner a month is ridiculous.


Or perhaps there's just an open market for tat for twelve year olds now that Smash Hits has ceased publication and there's a good few million kids in the country with nothing to blu-tac to their walls anymore....


Or maybe, with the website being updated with hourly news, there's just no need for music news that's a week old anymore and so it's pictures and features galore.....


If that's the case.... where are the features?