Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Oc ...

jewel case Optical disc packaging is the packaging that accompanies CDs, DVDs, and other formats of optical discs. Most packaging is rigid or semi-rigid and designed to protect the media from scratches and other types of exposure damage. Jewel case ...

or the equivalent packaging for cassettes.

Origin

Liner notes are descended from the program notes for musical concerts, and developed into notes that were printed on the inner sleeve used to protect a traditional 12-inch vinyl record, i.e.,

long playing The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and a ...

gramophone record A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts ne ...

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records co ...

. The term descends from the name "record liner" or "album liner". Album liner notes survived format changes from vinyl LP to cassette to CD. These notes can be sources of information about the contents of the recording as well as broader cultural topics.

Common material

Such notes often contained a mix of factual and anecdotal material, and occasionally a

discography Discography is the study and cataloging of published sound recordings, often by specified artists or within identified music genres. The exact information included varies depending on the type and scope of the discography, but a discography entry ...

for the artist or the issuing record label. Liner notes were also an occasion for thoughtful signed essays on the artist by another party, often a sympathetic

music journalist Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

, a custom that has largely died out. However, the liner note ''essay'' has survived in retrospective compilations, particularly in box sets. It is also a tradition in Japan, especially for foreign artist releases. Liner notes often include complete song lyrics for the album.

Biographies

Liner notes now usually include information about the musician,

lyrics Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a " libretto" and their writer, ...

, a personnel list, and other credits to people the musicians want to thank and people or

companies A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared go ...

involved in the

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

of the

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

. They also can give details on the extent of each musical piece, and sometimes place them in historical or social context. Liner notes for classical music recordings often provide information in several languages; if the piece includes vocal parts, they will often include a libretto, possibly also translated into several languages.

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. 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.

Metadata

Liner notes sometimes provide metadata that can help when cataloguing private or public collections of sound recordings. 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 Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...

and iTunes make public. In 2018,

Tidal Tidal is the adjectival form of tide. Tidal may also refer to: * ''Tidal'' (album), a 1996 album by Fiona Apple * Tidal (king), a king involved in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim * TidalCycles, a live coding environment for music * Tidal (servic ...

launched official music credits supplied by distributors across their database of 90 million recordings. In 2019 Australian company

Jaxsta Jaxsta is an Australia-based database of music credits. According to a 2018 report in ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', "it wants to be a cross between Bloomberg and LinkedIn, a trusted source for the music industry when it comes to finding out who ...

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. In 2019, French company

Qobuz Qobuz (, commonly mispronounced: ) is a French commercial music streaming and downloading service. It was founded in 2007 by Yves Riesel, expanded to a limited range of overseas markets, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, It ...

launched official music credits and digital liner notes booklets appearing in the player. Pandora also launched full credits within their player in 2019. 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.

Digital liner notes

Increasingly and due to the rise of digital downloads, a

digital booklet Digital booklet is the digital equivalent of booklet attached to physical release that often accompany digital music purchases. They are most commonly distributed in PDF. One well-known distributor of digital booklets with digital purchases is the ...

is being introduced to compensate for the lack of a physical booklet.

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

also introduced

iTunes LP iTunes LP (referred to in pre-launch press by the code name Cocktail) is a format for interactive album artwork introduced by Apple Inc. on September 9, 2009. It is similar to the CMX format being developed by the three major record labels, a ...

which features interactive menus instead of simple pages.

also has songwriter and producer credits available for individual tracks. Lyrics are also available on certain tracks, in collaboration with

Genius Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabili ...

. As of 2020, it was estimated that up to 94% of recordings are now supplying the official music credits feed direct from the owners of the data to streaming services such as

, Amazon,

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, Pandora,

and more, as well as databases such as

Gracenote Gracenote, Inc. is a company owned by Nielsen Holdings that provides music, video and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies, worldwide. Formerly CDDB ("Compact Disc Data Ba ...

, but not all services are displaying the data they are sent at this stage.

Awards

A Grammy Award for Best Album Notes has been given annually since the 6th Annual Grammy Awards, May 12, 1964.

References

External links

* Liner Notes i
''From Bach to Xenakis''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Liner Notes Albums Recorded music Writing