Biffy Clyro Only Revolutions iTunes LP
August 29, 2010
Towards the end of June I was given a very challenging and exciting project.
My first attempt to build an iTunes LP would be for the incredible Biffy Clyro. iTunes LPs are interactive rich media digital albums. Essentially it’s the digital version of special edition packaging with extra content. LPs can include a range of content including lyrics, photos, videos and bonus features.
We initially had a 4 week deadline to deliver the project, but due to Apple’s lengthily approval process, this was reduced to only 4 days for the entire project. After much frustration with Apple’s bizarre code structure and many late nights at the office we managed to pull it off.
Warner’s in-house designer Kate Brighouse did another brilliant job on the design elements. I had to piece all the javascript and css together to make everything run smoothly. Alex Marshall at Warner International was a brilliant resource who helped me make sense of the code with numerous examples of LPs he’s worked on in the past.
As a Biffy Clyro fan, I’m really proud of the Only Revolutions iTunes LP. It is a quality package including lyrics and commentary for all the songs, 6 music videos, 3 behind the scenes videos, a video of the band discussing the album in detail, a 45 min film made during the recording of the album, 31 photographs and the band’s detailed biography.
Because awareness of the iTunes LP format is fairly low, I proposed that we should create a YouTube video highlighting the contents of the package. Dan Massie and the team at Warner Music Entertainment did an excellent job making a trailer to promote the release. You can watch the embedded video on the left.
Despite the stress around the incredibly tight deadline, this project was hugely rewarding. It’s amazing to think that so many people will buy something I created for a band I’m a massive fan of, what an honour!
The Only Revolutions iTunes LP is out now – only available from iTunes.
UPDATE:
The album went to No.2 on the iTunes chart and No.3 on the Official UK charts. This was an amazing result for an album that was released a year before.
This post is filed under:
Multimedia Development | Warner Bros Records
2 Comments
looks awesome got to do an itunes lp tester soon just wondering if you know any decent itunes lp / extras tuts. Ones that show you have to do the intro videos and playing videos from a local folder i.e. not using the xid number just videos/mpeg.m4v
thanks so much if you get back to me
Olly
Hi Olly. There aren’t many tuts out there for iTunes LPs but you can learn a lot from dissecting other LPs. They’re primarily just HTML and Javascript so you can try to reverse engineer them. You can also assign your own XIDs by upgrading your copy of iTunes to a developer edition. I can’t remember exactly how, but the iTunes LP documentation tells you how to do this. Good luck!