Dad, what's an album cover?

September 30, 2011 12:03 PM

Coversmart: The first music trivia website dedicated to the art of album covers.

On each weekday, Coversmart will post a new 10-point quiz on this site. Each quiz will be "active" - that is, you can play it - for the day that it's posted. Artist names and album titles must be complete and spelled correctly. For each quiz, 5 album covers will be listed. One point is given for the correct artist and one point for the correct album title for each cover listed, meaning a perfect score is 10 total points.

In the age of MP3's, the creators of Coversmart are using the lure of trivia to rally a community of people still interested in the appreciation of cover art.

posted by mr.curmudgeon (13 comments total)

White Album. Or Waiting for Page To Load.
posted by hal9k at 12:04 PM on September 30, 2011

Heh. Weird. Works for me.
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 12:09 PM on September 30, 2011

This is awesome! And as a lifelong hip-hop fan, you couldn't have picked a more perfect day to post.

(worked for me on Firefox)
posted by stellaluna at 12:15 PM on September 30, 2011

I read the title and thought it was a joke about the disappearance of vinyl and the large album art available therein. But then I realized that Kids These Days listen to their music on their phones*, so albums are just one of a number of ways to sort music on their portable digital music player of choice.

* Yesterday I was in a local music shop, and a teenager asked about buying a physical album because his phone was broken wasn't letting him download music from Amazon. My mind boggled a bit.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:24 PM on September 30, 2011

Me on music trivia sites = awesome
Me on music trivia sites where spelling counts = not so good

Is there a voice recognition version where I could just SAY the album titles?
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 12:28 PM on September 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

Only reading "Hip Hop" as the category I was going to be amazed at myself for definitely getting 8 out of 10.

Then I re-read today's theme and realized it was "80s Hip Hop" and "Golden Age" which is probably about 85% of the hip hop albums whose cover I would recognize -- with 14% being from the 90s.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:29 PM on September 30, 2011

I like it. They should do something so it isn't so easy to get the answer via something like tineye with a simple right-click. Also, I misread it at the top of a tab as "COVERSHART", which would be a whole other site I'm guessin.
posted by cashman at 12:34 PM on September 30, 2011

In the age of MP3's, the creators of Coversmart are using the lure of trivia to rally a community of people still interested in the appreciation of cover art and spelling.

FTFY. Ugh, it disagreed with my spelling of Run-D.M.C. when the cover art in question actually spells it that way. They need to relax that spelling thing (look into something called Levenshtein distance, guys).
posted by axiom at 12:47 PM on September 30, 2011

cashman: "Also, I misread it at the top of a tab as "COVERSHART", which would be a whole other site I'm guessin."

Or maybe just an upcoming GG Allin themed quiz,
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 12:50 PM on September 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

Each quiz will be "active" - that is, you can play it - for the day that it's posted.

Even better, you can play the old ones here. Nice find.
posted by Infinite Jest at 12:57 PM on September 30, 2011

Argh, I just remembered what the last one I didn't get was too... argh, damn you [rapper who is now a tv star, but no, I don't mean that one -- I mean the one who was so hot when he was younger that you think that he probably had his picture on all of his covers and in this one he doesn't.]

axiom: " FTFY. Ugh, it disagreed with my spelling of Run-D.M.C. when the cover art in question actually spells it that way. They need to relax that spelling thing (look into something called Levenshtein distance, guys)."

I actually looked up to see how it was spelled on Amazon or Wikipedia spelled it so I wouldn't lose those points.

Yeah I'm that guy.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:59 PM on September 30, 2011

Not really the first site to do it, maybe the only site to "only" do it. I've had album cover quizzes on my site, amIwrong for a couple years now, and you don't have to wait for the next day to see the answers.
posted by inthe80s at 2:23 PM on September 30, 2011

No metal? Some of the greatest album/CD covers are in one of the most unfairly despised of genres.
posted by Renoroc at 6:37 PM on September 30, 2011