About.com has issued the following report from Justin M. Norton:

I recently finished transferring more than 10,000 metal songs from compact discs onto a computer hard drive. I then drove with a carton full of CDs to a record store and sold almost all of the CDs for roughly $700. I needed more space; even after the sale I have three towers crammed with compact discs in my garage.

It was tough to let some of the albums go, in particular a copy of MAYHEM's Mediolanum Capta Est I bought in Rome. But the reality is that a significant portion of my metal collection now exists as digital files on a hard drive.

What is missing, however, is one of the most important parts of the albums: the cover art, the inside artwork and the liner notes. As I selected CDs for sale, I was struck by how much effort went into even the smallest underground releases. Sure, it's nice to have the music where it's easily accessible, but it seems like part of my collection is gone.

The ongoing transition from CDs to an entirely digital format raises larger questions about what the move to digital means for metal – a genre inextricably linked to images and artwork. What will the digital age mean for the aesthetics of heavy metal?

Imagine the first BLACK SABBATH album without the billfold foldout featuring the upside-down cross and creepy poem that opens: “Still falls the rain, the veils of darkness shroud the blackened trees…” Could NAPALM DEATH's Scum artwork – an image of starving people surrounded by craven businessmen and corporate logos - ever look the same as a small digital file? Could any of these albums pack the same visceral punch in this new format?

KING DIAMOND thinks something could be permanently lost with the transition to digital. Diamond set the standard for metal concept albums during the past two decades: Abigail told the story of a couple that inherited an 18th century home with dark secrets. In all of Diamond's albums, the liner notes and artwork are an integral part of the story. When I first purchased Diamond's music I was drawn to the image of demon pointing from behind a wall of flames on MERCYFUL FATE's Don't Break The Oath.

“If I got a new album, especially in the old days, I would study that thing before I even put it on,” Diamond says. “It just created the atmosphere of the music to come. You could get into a certain mood before the album. It was created with the lyrics and the artwork. That's still what we're trying to do with CDs.”

Read the full report at About.com.