Why would a record company want to pay for an artist's gatefold cover?

I agree. The music is the bottom line

Though, some artwork was worth framing. For example, some Yes LP's.

 

The band fought for and actually actually convinced the label that London Calling would be a single album with a "bonus 12 inch single", so a gatefold was out of the question. Once negotiations were completed and the album went to press, the bonus 12" single ended up having 9 songs on it. Sly boys.

 

And once they broke that taboo, along came...

Well, actually, they wanted to release a single a month, and when CBS UK vetoed that, along came Sandinista! as a kind of self-sabotaging payback.

Which put them even further in debt, and eventually set the stage for Bernie Rhodes' comeback as manager.

 

It was the artwork that first attracted me to YES; addicted ever since

 

As someone in the print industry, I can assure you that adding
a gatefold to a record sleeve only costs pennies.

PENNIES!

As long as the artist did something cool with it, word would get
out and folks would buy more. I am sure we all have examples
in our collections of gatefold artwork that we found to be so
killer when we got the album home and opened it up!

Also not expensive at all was the School's Out pop-up desk,
the paper panties, or the super-sized Billion Dollar Bill!!!

 

I think that's right but also because a gatefold wouldn't be seen as very 'punk' - at the time they were the embodiment of boring program and rock music and its excess, the obligatory Roger Dean sleeve. It would be seen as a bit naff at the time.

 

Sometimes the answer can be found by asking the opposite - why are some albums that are intended to be gatefolds not?

After his first album for Mercury didn't do very well (which had a gatefold), the record company declined to spend money on another gatefold for David Bowie's next album.

This album :


was meant to be a gatefold with a crop of the following pic inside. Didn't happen, and the inner gatefold became the front cover of the UK edition.




Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells A Story also comes to mind. The expensive-to-produce original US double gatefold sleeve with the attached tear-off poster and album credits was released in a few countries, but when it came to release it in his home country, it became a single sleeve.

 

It helps sell more records. This is truer today than ever before. In the days of internet piracy, the main selling point of physical media is something that cannot be easily pirated. That would be artwork, interesting packaging, a gimmick of some sort, unusual formats, the collector's value etc.

 

Then explain "The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out", a debut album, and a double to boot..

 

To tempt you more to buy.

 

I dunno but this seems to explain things.

 

There are a lot of 70's prog bands with fantastic artworks (Pink Floyd, Genesis, Rush, Yes, King Crimson just to name a few). That's one of the highlights. Because while the music's the most important artworks are important too.

 

Given that the record company recoups the real question is why there are LPs that are not gatefold. In the bad old days the whole idea of artist management by labels was surely to make the recording, marketing and manufacture process as expensive as possible so as to put chains of debt on its more successful artists. "Hey guys, I think this one should be recorded at AIR Montserrat & Abbey Road ... and we could really use some Fairlight on tracks 1, 3, 4, 5 & 8."

 

Frank Zappa agreed to take a huge cut in royalties in order to get the album released as a double.
He took the hit, not the record company.

 

Further compensating by raising the list price a buck! Captive audience.
More money for half the music on the British release. Thanks, Capitol.

 

The Beatles "Help" album was unsaleable??

The #1 single, the #1 album, the #1 group, the biggest youth oriented film of 1965 unsaleable?

 

It always dictated my method of opening an album.
Non-gatefold cover: slit opening on right, leave cellophane on.
Gatefold cover: entire cellophane removed.

 

I guess I have to be the one to point out that there was another practical use for gatefolds, which did not apply to unipaks. For instance, Goats Head Soup was more useful than Exile On Main St.

 

Elton John and Rod Stewart had a nice run of deluxe gatefolds. Whoever was behind those, artist or record co., did a good thing

 

The most succinct explanation of record co's standard operating procedure. I certainly don't begrudge a record co. making a profit, just not completely at the expense of an artist.

 

Last week I finally found what I believe to be some old pot crumbs in a gatefold crease of an LP I'd purchased 2nd hand...

Jimi Hendrix Rainbow Bridge. Shocker.

 

How novel: creating a product that the public might want and enjoy as a means of selling it.

 

CSNY Deja Vu's cover also .... why was it made that way? A textured material with the photo pasted on and the gold lettering as well, that had to be more than pennies.
George Harrison's All Things Myst Pass also, the box, was this the first box record?

 

CSNY wanted the cover to look that way, they were very specific about it.
I guess after the success of the first CSN record, the label had no issue with spending a bit more on the packaging.

Box sets existed before "All things must pass", especially in Classical music.
George's may have been the first Rock record to be housed that way, but not the first overall.

 

Or, carefully slit the seal on the gatefold album, carefully slide off the unripped wrapper, look at what's inside, carefully slide wrapper back on album, repeat frequently for 50 years