Liner notes

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Liner notes

For a bibliographic format for citing liner notes see Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style

Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc

Compact Disc

A Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store Data , originally developed for storing digital audio. The CD, available on the market since October 1982, remains the standard physical medium for sale of commercial Sound recording and reproduction to the present day....
jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes. They are descended from the notes of text that were printed on the rear side of the cardboard record jacket used to protect a traditional 12-inch vinyl record, i.e., long playing or gramophone record

Gramophone record

A gramophone record is an analog signal sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove usually starting near the periphery and ending near the centre of the disc....
album

Album

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For a bibliographic format for citing liner notes see Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style

Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc

Compact Disc

Gramophone record

Album

An album or record album is a collection of related Sound recording and reproduction or music tracks distributed to the public. The most common way is through commercial distribution, although smaller artists will often distribute directly to the public by selling their albums at live concerts or on their websites....
. The term descends from the name "record liner" or "album liner". On vinyl recordings, the most common placement of these notes would be the paper sleeve inside of an album jacket that served to protect the record from dust (dust sleeve or dust liner, etc.). As the rear covering of an album jacket was applied in early days in a fashion that resembled the tailored lining of garments (overlapping and protecting the edges of the front cover), it's also likely that "liner" could have been a printer's terminology for this back cover area as well.

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

Discography

Discography is the study and listing of sound recordings.This portmanteau word stems from:# the gramophone record, often called a "disc", the dominant commercial medium of sound recording for most of the 20th century...
for the artist or the issuing record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label can be a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of recorded sound and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the Record producer, manufacturing, distribution , marketing and promotion, and enforcement of copyright protec...
. They were also an occasion for thoughtful signed essays on the artist by another party, often a sympathetic music journalist, a custom that has largely died out. However, the liner note essay has survived in retrospective compilations, particularly in box sets.

Liner notes now usually include information

Information

Information as a Conveyed concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control system, data, form, instruction, knowledge, Meaning , stimulation, pattern, perception, and knowledge representation....
about the musician

Musician

A musician is a person who plays or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument....
, lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song, either by speaking or singing. The word 'lyric' comes from the Greek word ,lyricos, meaning "singing to the lyre"....
, a personnel list, and other credit

Credit (creative arts)

In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgement of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense....
s to people the musicians want to thank and people or companies

Record label

Record producer

In the music industry, a record producer has many roles, among them controlling the recording sessions, coaching and guiding the musicians, organizing and scheduling production budget and resources, and supervising the recording, Audio mixing and audio mastering processes....
of the music

Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
. 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

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, sacred or secular oratorio and cantata, Musical theater, and ballet....
, possibly also translated into several languages.

Liner notes sometimes provide metadata

Metadata

Metadata is "data about other data", of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe an individual datum, or content item, or a collection of data including multiple content items and hierarchical levels, for example a database schema....
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.

Increasingly and due to the rise of digital downloads, a digital booklet

Digital booklet

Digital booklets are the digital equivalent of liner notes that often accompany music download. They are most commonly distributed in the .pdf format....
is being introduced to compensate for the lack of a physical booklet.

Liner notes

See also