My initial submission of In Rotation included screenshots featuring album covers from some favorite artists of mine.

This, of course, triggered a rejection. I needed explicit, verifiable permission from rights holders. I was not surprised but I'd been hopeful, as I'd found various other apps in my category use album covers from artists as big as Beyoncé in their App Store screenshots. (And like, come on, I know that single-developer app didn't wrangle written permission from Bey's team for their niche Apple Music utility's App Store screenshots.)

Naturally, then, I settled down with a can or four of costly IPA, an image generation AI, and my best friend Pixelmator Pro and put together some fake album covers which I hoped would still allow me to show off my interface a good light. Weirdly this still triggered a rejection, and for the same stated reasoning! (I eventually ended up publishing everything under a CC0 public domain dedication license to get around this. So, hey, feel free to have your way with these jpegs!)

I present a selection of them to you here now, because I'm more proud of them than I should be and because what's more funny than explaining jokes?

I like to think of Claruus as an early-90s New Age group, the kind you've never heard of but then you find out they won eight Grammys, sold 15 millions records, and still sell out Red Rocks every summer.

This, of course, is a reference to our favorite dogcow. For those uninitiated, I refer you to the great Clarus historian Stephen Hackett.

And who could forget the seminal post-rock opus Courage by Headphone Jackson? I saw them open for Mission of Burma once and my ears are still ringing.

This is a reference to our favorite Apple Fellow and his onstage remarks about the reasoning for removing the headphone jack.

Your parents had this 70s prog rock classic in their collection when you were a kid but you didn't really get it until you got older and discovered drugs.