We review some classical differentiation theorems for measures, showing how they can be turned into an integral representation of a Borel measure with respect to a fixed Carathéodory measure. We focus our attention on the case when this measure is the spherical Hausdorff measure, giving a metric measure area formula. Our aim is to use certain covering derivatives as ‘generalized densities’. Some consequences for the sub-Riemannian Heisenberg group are also pointed out.