Musician art prints, and what most of them leave out
Musician art prints are dominated by three formats: concert and portrait photography, pop art treatments, and album sleeve reproductions. All three are good at what they do. All three show one moment.
My music maps do something else. Each one plots an artist's studio albums in chronological order as stations, and draws every credited musician as a named line running through the records they played on. One-off contributors become short branch lines. It is a reference piece as much as it is wall art.
How a music map differs from traditional music wall art
Photography captures a moment. Pop art exaggerates an image. Album art reproduces a sleeve. A discography map records structure, personnel and change over time.
Each map shows:
- Studio albums in chronological order, as stations
- Line-up changes, drawn as lines starting and stopping
- Session players and guest musicians alongside band members
- One-off contributors as branch lines
- Gaps, returns and handovers between players in the same role
The formats compared
Black and white music photography
Portrait photography of Bob Dylan, Freddie Mercury or The Beatles works because of drama and nostalgia. It tells one visual story, from one day.
Pop art and illustration
Graphic treatments of David Bowie, Prince or Bob Marley prioritise colour and cultural symbolism. The musical detail is not the point of them.
Album sleeve prints
Reproductions of famous sleeves celebrate the original design, which is often excellent. What they cannot do is say what came before or after that record.
Discography maps
Mine are built from album credits, liner notes, session archives and historical sources, one artist at a time. No templates, no automation, and no AI at any stage.
What the research turns up
The reason this format is worth the work is that the data has shapes in it that a list of album titles does not.
On The Fall map, Mark E. Smith is the only line running across all 31 studio albums from Live at the Witch Trials in 1979 to New Facts Emerge in 2017, with Steve Hanley and Craig Scanlon both running 17 albums as the longest supporting lines. On The Cure map, the 1979 debut carries four credited musicians and Wild Mood Swings in 1996 carries 19. On The Smiths map, four albums carry seven credited musicians in total, and four of those seven are the band.
Those are three completely different pictures, drawn in exactly the same visual language. That is the whole idea.
What is not on a music map
Live albums, compilations, EPs and soundtracks are excluded by editorial rule. The maps chart studio albums. Producers do not get a line unless they are also credited for playing something, and anything released after a map was drawn is not on it.
Sizes, paper and framing
Every map is a Giclée on 230gsm premium fine art paper with a textured matte finish, archival and acid-free, in A2 and A1, plus US inch equivalents. Unframed from £42, or ready to hang in a black wood frame. Full detail is on the print specifications page.
Where to start
The music map collection covers around 70 artists, and the film plot map collection applies the same logic to films, with characters in place of musicians. If you are buying for someone whose band you are not certain of, there is an art print gift card.
