Music

iTunes LPs are described by Apple as “an immersive visual experience”. In fact they are a lot more than that; in these days where everyone is used to almost instant download and play, an album provides very little visual stimulation. iTunes LPs hark back to bygone days when someone would go to a music shop (remember those?), buy a CD, or even an LP, bring it home, stick it in a ‘hi-fi’ and then sit back and read the sleeve notes and booklets from cover to cover. Extra posters of the artists were a bonus, plus any other inserts that were advertised on a bright sticker on the front cover.

So iTunes LPs are extremely feature rich – not only do you get the album tracks, you can also get photo galleries, sleeve notes, bonus videos, song sheets and loads of other stuff, all packaged into a single download and organised with visually pleasing menus.

And that’s the problem – creating the menus and linking them up to all the tracks and videos and pictures and everything else takes time and a fair amount of programming skill. Not to mention that someone then has to test everything and make sure that it all works on a Mac and a PC and an Apple TV.

Happily, we can sort that for you and, even more happily, we can do it very cost effectively.

Slash the Development Costs

You have the content, you want to realize maximum value and you want to do this using an LP. How do you go about it?

You need to work with someone with a wealth of experience in the production of LPs, someone who has developed tools and procedures to cut the costs and time for delivery, someone who can help and advise you on the best way to get your albums onto iTunes – ZOO.

At ZOO we have developed our Interactive Content Editor (ICE) product so that you no longer need a clever programmer to create your LPs – our own very clever programmers have done all the hard, really complicated work. The result is an easy to use product that can be used to produce engaging, content-rich LPs extremely cost-effectively. As you do not need to pay for the LP to be coded by hand, the output is a lot more reliable and is easily tested, cutting costs even further.

We appreciate that some customers want to be able to hand over projects to vendors and others want to do it themselves, so we are happy to work with you in a way that is best suited to meet the needs of your business. We can work directly with you or ICE is available to license.

Re-Use Existing Content

iTunes LPs are a fantastic way to add extra value to your  albums by re-using additional content such as photos and videos that you may have in your archives or wherever. You already have them so why not put them to another use?

Design your menus, photo galleries and videos in industry standard applications like Adobe® Photoshop® or After Effects®, use our Media Adaptation Tool (MAT) to split the menus into the constituent parts and then import everything into ICE to create the LP. MAT and ICE take the complicated programming part out of the production process without restricting the creativity, meaning that your LPs will be world class without having to pay world class prices.

Whether you want to do all the work yourself or you want us to help you with some or all of the process, ZOO is ready to help.

Simplify Localization

Frequently, the cost of producing localized versions of LPs can be quite prohibitive due to the costs of translation plus the re-authoring costs. Because we have developed our tools with localization in mind, the costs of localization are substantially reduced – making previously uneconomic products now very cost effective.

MAT can be used in conjunction with our Translation Management System (TMS) to upload the phrases for translation, download the translated text and create the localized menus. It is then a simple matter to load the new menus into an existing ICE project, make any product specific changes and create the localized LP.

ZOO can even help you with the translation if required.

Adobe, After Effects and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.