I’ve a growing collection of compact cassettes and I would like to add covert art for several of them, but I’m facing difficulties. I’ll take that cover as an example.
Should I uploaded it as a single file since it’s a continuous image? Or should I break it into pieces, one for each part? For CD, I usually keep pages from a booklet together if it’s a single continuous image. But for cassettes, I don’t know what’s the best course of action.
What should be the type of the fourth part of that cardboard piece, the one with the liner notes on it? The first, second and third ones are the back, the spine, and the front respectively, but what about that last one? Somebody on IRC suggested it might be the tray.
Lastly, what’s the best way to go with uploading a picture of a cassette itself? For CD, it’s simple enough, I just scan them. Should I take a picture of the cassette directly from above? Should I include a white sheet of paper behind it?
in general, you can leave it as one file, that way the full layout is clear. however I would personally add a seperate front cover scan and pull it to the front, like I did with Tsuyu here. that way you end up with a nice looking front cover that’s cassette-shaped
I’d set that as Booklet. Tray is for the inside of the back of a CD, and I think that’s the only official use for that, and liner is for the inner sleeve you’d find on a typical vinyl release
I’d likely do a picture of the cassette. you could either do it on a white something, but you could probably find something that contrasts with the color of the cassette?
I don’t deal with cassettes too much, at least not in hand, but I hope this helps~
Agree that these are generally “booklet” types for the extra bits.
I usually do a bit of both. I’ll scan a whole image and upload it in full, but often also crop an image to use as a cover. This may be only the “cover” or I may leave the spine and rear flap attached to make it more square.
Cassette’s I have just chucked on my scanner glass and it seems to work okay. Bit out of focus, but good enough for details. Here’s one of mine. Originally I had left this one as the complete image as it looked okay like that. But have now had second thoughts and trimmed a better cover.
Updated image now to have a true hard cropped “front” as the first image. But also kept the front\spine\back image as these have the title and artist on show. It also give a more square type image for a narrow single cassette. Nicer for digital use, and quicker for identification of the cassette in hand. Options in the choice of artwork seem sensible. ( Updated my notes thanks to what @jesus2099 will say in reply to this post…)
This cassette is a little more unusual as it is a band made one. Before record deals, catalogue numbers, barcodes and all that official stuff was added. Its why I used to display the artwork as a whole.
And here’s one of The Goons with artwork from elsewhere. This time a double cassette case works best as only the front cover cropped as “front”:
My thought is the more art you leave, the more someone else can trim to what they want to use. Good to get something fairly square as the main image.
In my defence, I did still tick that one as “front, spine, back”. Other occasions I have put up only the single thin front. I would not label a “front, spine, back” as front.
- made me feel guilty now so I cropped it hard to what is really shown as the cassette front. So now there is a true front in place.
I’ve uploaded very few cassettes from my own scanning. Still working through my CD collection
Thanks everyone for your answers! They were really helpful.
I’m going to upload a cropped version of the front cover as “Front” and full version as “Front/Spine/Back/Booklet”. As for the cassette itself, I’ll try scanning it and if it doesn’t work, I’ll try photography.
I upload everything as a continuous image, and then also upload crops of ‘front’, ‘front + spine’, ‘front + spine + back’. It doesn’t take much longer and all wishes are catered for.
I leave the types blank for the complete scans - I would not use booklet. It doesn’t meet any definition of booklet, which is a multi-page item. If you’re allergic to leaving cover types blank tray would be closer imo.
Your scanner should already have a white surface to scan against, so you should be good to go. If you have transparent tapes you might get weird lines through the scans - rotate the tapes 90°, so they’re not in line with the scan bulb, and the lines will disappear on the next scan.
Tapes are great to scan, much quicker than CD’s. And you can do two at once on the scanbed!
Re. what to set as the cover, just doing the front makes semantic sense (e.g. meets the definition mb uses), but isn’t helpful for a lot of tapes, where the spine is the identifier. I do front + spine, sometimes people do front + spine + back, most mb users (usually not tape collectors tbh) just do front. But there’s never been a consensus and no guideline so you do you. If someone complains ask them to draft a guideline, I wasn’t able to find interest in it last time I tried.
I select “booklet” type as this is the booklet in the tape case. It is the words, credits, lyrics that appear in the booklets that you find in a CD or LP. I see the same idea used with slimline CD singles which follow the same kind of shape. The folded out pages are the same as book pages.
Leaving nothing as a type at all is going to be skipped by many editors downloading images. I’d at least tick “other” if you dislike booklet.
Liner seems very misleading to me as a liner is the paper sleeve an LP slips into. I guess it is all just language.
I agree with @aerozol, the rest are useful shapes for other people to use. Totally agree with this idea of multiple crops on a tape. Just like the most common CD rear crop includes the spines, I find it a polite option to include a front\spine\rear for a cassette.
If I upload a fatbox CD case I’ll upload the front both with and without the spines attached.
I guess the main point for @Sylvhem: A lot of what’s discussed here doesn’t have consensus or guidelines.
The discussion here probably covers most of the uncertainties around cassette scans, and those are areas where you can make your own call based on what’s been provided.
If you take the time to scan your cassettes, and attach them to the right release, you can’t really go wrong, and your work will be appreciated (even if different opinions on details get raised)
- made me feel guilty now so I cropped it hard to what is really shown as the cassette front. So now there is a true front in place.
(even if different opinions on details get raised)