Liner notes
Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the
Origin
Liner notes are descended from the program notes for musical concerts, and developed into notes that were printed on the outer album jacket or the inner sleeve used to protect a traditional 12-inch vinyl record, i.e.,
Contents
Common material
Such notes often contained a mix of factual and anecdotal material, and occasionally a
Biographies
Liner notes now usually include information about the
Label Copy
The factual information in liner notes comes from the Label Copy. Label Copy is the record label's official info sheet for the published release.[6][7] It contains information that accompanies a musical work, including artist name, song title, song length, ISRC code, catalogue number, composer, publisher, rights holder, technical and artistic credits, A&R and producer credits, recording dates and locations. In digital music, the label copy is contained within what’s known as metadata.[8]
Metadata
Liner notes sometimes provide metadata that can help when cataloguing private or public collections of sound recordings.[4][9] However, the information provided on liner notes varies considerably depending on the studio or label which produced the record. It also varies how much of the metadata digital media services such as Spotify and iTunes make public.[5] In 2018, Tidal launched official music credits supplied by distributors across their database of 90 million recordings.[10] In 2019 Australian company Jaxsta launched a database of official music credits and liner notes. The database is made up of content-owner supplied metadata rather than crowd-sourced data, making previous hidden metadata more widely available to the music industry as well as the public domain.[11][12] In 2019, French company Qobuz launched official music credits and digital liner notes booklets appearing in the player.[13] Pandora also launched full credits within their player in 2019.[14] Metadata credits are sent from official sources to all databases and streaming services using the DDEX ERN standard, however not all services display this data to the consumer.[15][16]
Digital liner notes
Increasingly and due to the rise of digital downloads, a
Awards
A Grammy Award for Best Album Notes has been given annually since the 6th Annual Grammy Awards, May 12, 1964.[22]
See also
References
- ISBN 9780203484272.
- ^ Dean Biron, Writing and Music: Album Liner Notes, Portal: International Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies (Vol 8, No 1), 2011.
- ISBN 978-0262036238.
- ^ a b Reneé, Tonia (2020-04-30). "Music Industry Innovation: Meta Data". Medium. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
- ^ a b "The sad death of liner note credits [op-ed]". The Music Network. 2020-02-03. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
- ISBN 978-1-4950-6359-6.
- ISBN 978-1-4548-8155-1.
- ^ "Credit Where Credit's Due". Mixonline. 2006-05-01. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
- ISBN 978-0-520-28794-5.
- ^ "Tidal Credits".
- ^ Mayfield, Geoff (2020-05-19). "Jaxsta Aims to Bring Back Liner Notes, and Create an IMDB for Music". Variety. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
- ^ "Jaxsta has launched the public beta of its massive music credits database". The Industry Observer. 2019-06-13. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
- ^ "Forbes". Forbes.
- ^ "Pandora introduces full song credits".
- ^ "Send Your Credits & Liner Notes To Streaming Services — Only With DistroKid". 20 February 2018.
- ^ "Artist Roles and Display Credits".
- ^ Bruno, Antony (2009-08-01). "Apple, labels stir up deluxe digital Cocktail". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
- ^ "Spotify Now Displays Songwriter Credits". Spotify. 1 February 2018. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ "View lyrics". Spotify. 28 January 2021. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ "DDEX Current Members".
- ^ "Syncblog".
- ^ "6th Annual GRAMMY Awards". GRAMMY.com. 2017-11-28. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
External links
- Liner Notes in From Bach to Xenakis
- AlbumLinerNotes.com