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 jewel case or cassette j-cards .
54-452: 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., long playing or gramophone record album . 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
108-401: A Mozart concerto without having to flip over multiple, four-minute-per-side 78s, and that pop music fans, who were used to listening to one song at a time, would find the shorter time of the 10-inch LP sufficient. As a result, the 12-inch format was reserved solely for higher-priced classical recordings and Broadway shows . Popular music continued to appear only on 10-inch records. However, by
162-491: A 30 cm diameter flexible plastic disc, with a duration of about ten minutes playing time per side. Victor's early introduction of a long-playing record was a commercial failure for several reasons including the lack of affordable, consumer playback equipment and consumer rejection during the Great Depression . These "Program Transcription" discs, as Victor called them, played at 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm and used
216-520: A CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the lookup. Then, in March 2001, only licensed applications were provided access to the Gracenote database. New licenses for CDDB1 (the original version of CDDB) were no longer available, so programmers using Gracenote services were required to switch to CDDB2 (a new version incompatible with CDDB1). This has been controversial, as the original CDDB database
270-530: 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 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
324-407: A media audience measurement and analytics firm including Gracenote. In October 2022, Nielsen and its subsidiaries (including Gracenote) were purchased by a private equity consortium led by affiliates of Elliott Investment Management and Brookfield Business Partners in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $ 16 billion, including the assumption of debt. Gracenote is known for MusicID,
378-604: A much quieter playing surface. These records could hold up to 15 minutes per side. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony , performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski , was the first 12-inch recording issued. Compton Pakensham, reviewing the event in The New York Times , wrote, "What we were not prepared for was the quality of reproduction ... incomparably fuller." CBS Laboratories head research scientist Peter Goldmark led Columbia's team to develop
432-630: A music recognition software which identifies compact discs and delivers artist metadata and cover art to the desktop. The Gracenote database includes music genre and mood information, TV show descriptions, episode information, and channel line-ups, movie cast and crew information, and sports statistics and results. Companies including music services, TV providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and automakers use Gracenote data to power their content, universal search, navigation, linking, discovery and personalized recommendations abilities. Gracenote's music recognition technologies compare digital music files to
486-465: A number of other services including online services like Yahoo! Music Jukebox , AOL, AmazonMP3 , Spotify , Winamp , MetroLyrics , Pandora , Google Music ; , home and automotive products such as those from Alpine , Bose , or Panasonic ; mobile music applications from Samsung and others, Sony Mobile Communication (TrackID, Sony Movies/Video & TV SideView App for Xperia Through Gracenote Video Explore and Sony Music Walkman App for Xperia), and
540-445: A pair of 2-LP sets, Puccini 's La Bohème (SL-1) and Humperdinck 's Hansel and Gretel (SL-2). All 12-inch pressings were of 220 grams vinyl. Columbia may have planned for the Bach album ML 4002 to be the first since the releases came in alphabetical order by composer (the first 54 LPS, ML 4002 thru ML 4055, are in order from Bach to Tchaikovsky ) Nathan Milstein was very popular in
594-458: A phonograph record that would hold at least 20 minutes per side. Although Goldmark was the chief scientist who selected the team, he delegated most of the experimental work to William S. Bachman, whom Goldmark had lured from General Electric, and Howard H. Scott . Research began in 1939, was suspended during World War II , and resumed in 1945. Columbia Records unveiled the LP at a press conference in
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#1732885084458648-457: A somewhat finer and more closely spaced groove than typical 78 rpm records. They were to be played with a special "Chromium Orange" chrome-plated steel needle. The 10-inch discs, mostly used for popular and light classical music, were normally pressed in shellac, but the 12-inch discs, mostly used for "serious" classical music, were pressed in Victor's new vinyl-based "Victrolac" compound, which provided
702-489: A technology that identifies and looks up CDs based on TOC information stored at the beginning of each disc. A TOC, or Table of Contents, is a list of offsets corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. Its original database was created from and continues to receive voluntary contributions from users. This led to a licensing controversy when Gracenote became commercialized. On April 22, 2008, Sony announced that it would acquire Gracenote for $ 260 million. The acquisition
756-541: A worldwide database of music information, enabling digital audio devices to identify songs. The company licenses its technologies to developers of consumer electronics devices and online media players, who integrate the technologies into media players, home and car stereos, and digital music devices. It provides software and metadata to businesses which enables their customers to manage and search digital media. Gracenote provides its media management technology and global media database of digital entertainment information to
810-623: Is also a tradition in Japan, especially for foreign artist releases. Liner notes often include complete song lyrics for the album. Liner notes now usually include information about the musician , lyrics , a personnel list, and other credits to people the musicians want to thank and people or companies involved in the production of the music . 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
864-519: Is supported by standardized TMS IDs for TV shows, movies, and celebrities. These IDs enable universal search across linear TV, OTT and VOD libraries and make possible "season pass" DVR recordings. Gracenote Sports provides live scores, play-by-play data, historical results and records, schedules, player profiles, and athlete biographies for 4,500 leagues and competitions such as the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, Premier League, F1, Bundesliga, Tour de France, Wimbledon, and
918-484: The Waldorf Astoria on June 21, 1948, in two formats: 10 inches (25 centimetres) in diameter, matching that of 78 rpm singles, and 12 inches (30 centimetres) in diameter. The initial release of 133 recordings were: 85 12-inch classical LPs (ML 4001 to 4085), 26 10-inch classics (ML 2001 to 2026), eighteen 10-inch popular numbers (CL 6001 to 6018), and four 10-inch juvenile records (JL 8001 to 8004). According to
972-750: The mobile , automobile, portable , home, and PC markets. Several software applications which were capable of playing CDs (e.g. Media Go and iTunes ,) used Gracenote's CDDB technology. Winamp , once a major licensee, no longer has access to Gracenote; the legacy media player program lost access to Gracenote when SHOUTcast and Winamp were sold by AOL in 2014. Redevelopment of Winamp continues by its new owner Radionomy who have said future Winamp versions will have access to an online music database. In 2014 Tribune Media Company bought Gracenote from Sony Corporation of America . In December 2016, Tribune announced that it had reached an agreement to sell Gracenote to Nielsen Holdings for $ 560 million. The purchase
1026-407: The vinyl revival era, a large majority of records are based on the LP format and hence the LP name continues to be in use today to refer to new records. At the time the LP was introduced, nearly all phonograph records for home use were made of an abrasive (and therefore noisy ) shellac compound, employed a much larger groove, and played at approximately 78 revolutions per minute (rpm), limiting
1080-675: The 1940s, however, so his performance of the Mendelssohn concerto was moved to ML 4001. When the LP was introduced in 1948, the 78 was the conventional format for phonograph records. By 1952, 78s still accounted for slightly more than half of the units sold in the United States, and just under half of the dollar sales. The 45 , oriented toward the single song, accounted for just over 30% of unit sales and just over 25% of dollar sales. The LP represented not quite 17% of unit sales and just over 26% of dollar sales. Ten years after their introduction,
1134-579: The 1949 Columbia catalog, issued September 1948, the first twelve-inch LP was Mendelssohn 's Concerto in E Minor by Nathan Milstein on the violin with the New York Philharmonic , conducted by Bruno Walter (ML 4001). Three ten-inch series were released: 'popular', starting with the reissue of The Voice of Frank Sinatra (CL 6001); 'classical', numbering from Beethoven's 8th symphony (ML 2001), and 'juvenile', commencing with Nursery Songs by Gene Kelly (JL 8001). Also released at this time were
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#17328850844581188-447: The 1990s. The King Biscuit Flower Hour is a late example, as are Westwood One 's The Beatle Years and Doctor Demento programs, which were sent to stations on LP at least through 1992. In September 1931, RCA Victor launched the first commercially available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as "Program-Transcription" records. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm and pressed on
1242-458: The 2010s and US vinyl sales in 2017 reached 15.6 million and 27 million for 2020. In 2022, US vinyl sales reached 41 million units, surpassing sales of the Compact Disc for the first time since 1987, once again making the LP the highest selling physical format there. Reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders posed a new challenge to the LP in the 1950s, but the higher cost of pre-recorded tapes
1296-462: The 6th Annual Grammy Awards, May 12, 1964. Long playing The LP (from long playing or long play) is an analog sound storage medium , specifically a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm ; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and a vinyl (a copolymer of vinyl chloride acetate) composition disk. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it
1350-557: The ACR technology into the car audio systems for Tesla, BMW, Nissan and several other car makers. In 1998, CDDB was purchased by Escient , a consumer electronics manufacturer, and operated as a business unit within the American company. CDDB was then spun out of Escient and in July 2000 was renamed Gracenote. The CDDB database license was later changed to include new terms. For instance, any programs using
1404-555: The DDEX ERN standard, however not all services display this data to the consumer. Increasingly and due to the rise of digital downloads, a digital booklet is being introduced to compensate for the lack of a physical booklet. Apple Inc. also introduced iTunes LP which features interactive menus instead of simple pages. Spotify also has songwriter and producer credits available for individual tracks. Lyrics are also available on certain tracks, in collaboration with Genius . As of 2020, it
1458-457: The Global Media business), including the Gracenote subsidiary was acquired by a private equity consortium. Gracenote began in 1993 as an open-source project involving a CD player program named xmcd and an associated database named CDDB . xmcd and CDDB were created by Ti Kan and Steve Scherf. Because CDs do not contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents, Kan and Scherf devised
1512-614: The Gracenote name. On July 9, 2014, Tribune Media Company purchased What's-ON, a provider of TV data and advanced search offerings covering India and the Middle East for $ 27 million. On September 3, 2014, Gracenote acquired Baseline , a Los Angeles–based provider of film and TV data and information. Baseline had previously been owned by the NY Times from 2006–2011 after which it was sold back to its original owners. This $ 50 million purchase deepened Gracenote's existing video datasets and added
1566-541: The LP as a form—as an artistic entity, as they used to say—has complicated how we perceive and remember what was once the most evanescent of the arts", Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). "The album may prove a '70s totem—briefer configurations were making a comeback by decade's end. But for the '70s it will remain the basic musical unit, and that's OK with me. I've found over
1620-592: The Long Play format did not begin to enjoy commercial popularity until the early 1950s. Starting in 1926, the Edison Records company experimented with issuing Edison Disc Records in long play format of 24 minutes per side. The system and playback system (still mostly wind-up phonographs ) proved unreliable and was a commercial failure. By mid-1931 all motion picture studios were recording on optical soundtracks , but sets of soundtrack discs, mastered by dubbing from
1674-695: The Olympics. Gracenote's Podium product tracks all Olympic competition results and rankings at elite and junior levels as well as historical Olympic data going back to the very first modern games in 1896. In September 2015, the company announced DVR Extend which enables TV providers to dynamically adjust DVR settings to ensure live sports game recordings do not get cut off in the event they go past scheduled broadcast times. iTunes , Media Go , Sonicstage , Groove Music and Windows Media Player all use or have used Gracenote's CD track identification services. In addition, Gracenote provides or provided its products to
Liner notes - Misplaced Pages Continue
1728-637: The Studio System database, a subscription-based resource for the Hollywood content creation and distribution communities, to its line-up of offerings. On October 2, 2014, Gracenote purchased Australia-based TV and movie data company HWW for $ 19 million US to expand its Asia Pacific presence and international offerings. On May 28, 2015, Gracenote acquired Amsterdam-based Infostrada Sports and Halifax-based SportsDirect, providers of music, video and sports data. On December 20, 2016, Tribune Media announced that it
1782-472: The advent of sound film or "talkies", the need for greater storage space made 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm records more appealing. Soundtracks – played on records synchronized to movie projectors in theatres – could not fit onto the five minutes per side that 78s offered. They were not an immediate success, however, as they were released during the height of the Great Depression, and seemed frivolous to
1836-697: The car's audio system to identify music playing from various sources including AM/FM and satellite radio, CDs or streaming services and deliver relevant metadata and cover art. In December 2015, Gracenote launched its first audio technology, Gracenote Dynamic EQ, designed to help automakers and OEMs automatically tune connected car audio systems to the optimal equalizer settings for individual songs based on genre, mood and release date. Gracenote's video platform called On Entertainment consists of TV listings and schedules for approximately 85 countries and 35 languages as well as TV and Movie data and related-imagery information for six million TV shows and movies. On Entertainment
1890-425: The contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records. From 2008 to 2014, it was owned by Sony , later sold to Tribune Media , and has been owned since 2017 by Nielsen Holdings . In 2019, Nielsen Holdings announced plans to split into two separate publicly traded companies, Nielsen Global Connect (later known as NielsenIQ and sold) and Nielsen Global Media. In October 2022, Nielsen Holdings (by then consisting of
1944-503: The contents of the recording as well as broader cultural topics. Such notes often contained a mix of factual and anecdotal material, and occasionally a discography 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 , a custom that has largely died out. However, the liner note essay has survived in reissues and retrospective compilations, particularly in box sets. It
1998-756: The first legal lyrics offering in the U.S. that was sold to LyricFind in 2013. Gracenote's current Music offerings fall into three major categories: Music Recognition, Music Data, and Music Discovery. Its music recognition product called MusicID was originally developed as a CD track-identification system. Gracenote also operates a digital file identification service that uses audio fingerprinting technology to identify digital music files such as MP3s and deliver track-level metadata, album art, and links to complementary content and services. Its music data offering provides information describing Genre, Mood, Era, Origin and Tempo for tens of millions of songs. Gracenote Auto puts Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology into
2052-588: The label copy is contained within what's known as 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 and iTunes make public. In 2018, Tidal launched official music credits supplied by distributors across their database of 90 million recordings. In 2019 Australian company Jaxsta launched
2106-411: The many impoverished of the time. It was not until "microgroove" was developed by Columbia Records in 1948 that Long Players (LPs) reached their maximum playtime, which has continued to modern times. Economics and tastes initially determined which kind of music was available on each format. Recording company executives believed upscale classical music fans would be eager to hear a Beethoven symphony or
2160-405: The mid-1950s, the 10-inch LP, like its similarly sized 78 rpm cousin, lost the format war and was discontinued. The close spacing of the spiral groove that allowed more playing time on a 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm microgroove LP also allowed a faint pre-echo of upcoming loud sounds. The cutting stylus unavoidably transferred some of the subsequent groove's signal to the previous groove. It
2214-439: The optical tracks and scaled down to 12 inches to cut costs, were made as late as 1936 for distribution to theaters still equipped with disc-only sound projectors. Unless the quantity required was very small, pressed discs were a more economical medium for distributing high-quality audio than tape, and CD mastering was, in the early years of that technology, very expensive, so the use of LP-format transcription discs continued into
Liner notes - Misplaced Pages Continue
2268-604: The piece includes vocal parts, they will often include a libretto , possibly also translated into several languages. 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,
2322-473: The playing time of a 12-inch diameter record to less than five minutes per side. The new product was a 12- or 10-inch (30 or 25 cm) fine-grooved disc made of PVC ("vinyl") and played with a smaller-tipped "microgroove" stylus at a speed of 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm. Each side of a 12-inch LP could play for about 25 minutes, allowing for a total runtime of approximately 50 minutes. Despite some earlier experiments and attempts at commercial marketing,
2376-472: The share of unit sales for LPs in the US was almost 25%, and of dollar sales 58%. Most of the remainder was taken up by the 45; 78s accounted for only 2% of unit sales and 1% of dollar sales. The popularity of the LP ushered in the " album era " of English-language popular music, beginning in the late 1950s, as performers took advantage of the longer playing time to create coherent themes or concept albums. "The rise of
2430-493: The top-selling format, over cassettes, in 1992. Along with phonograph records in other formats, some of which were made of other materials, LPs are now widely referred to simply as "vinyl". Since the late 1990s there has been a vinyl revival . Demand has increased in niche markets, particularly among audiophiles, DJs, and fans of indie music, but most music sales as of 2018 came from online downloads and online streaming because of their availability, convenience, and price. With
2484-432: The years that the long-playing record, with its twenty-minute sides and four-to-six compositions/performances per side, suits my habits of concentration perfectly." Although the popularity of LPs (as well as 45s) began to decline in the late 1970s with the advent of Compact Cassettes , and later compact discs , the LP survives as a format to the present day. Vinyl LP records enjoyed a resurgence in popularity throughout
2538-468: Was completed on February 1, 2017. With the acquisition by Tribune Media in 2014 and subsequent acquisitions of What's-ON, HWW, Baseline, SportsDirect, and Infostrada Sports, Gracenote has expanded its core data product beyond music into video and sports. Gracenote's early product line-up consisted of MusicID, Mobile MusicID, Music Enrichment, Discover, Playlist, Playlist Plus, Media VOCS, Classical Music Initiative, and Link. In April 2007, Gracenote launched
2592-785: Was completed on June 2, 2008. On September 9, 2010, Gracenote received its one-billionth piece of data, with a submission about the Compact Disc release of Swans ' My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky . On December 23, 2013, Sony announced it would sell Gracenote to Tribune Media for $ 170 million. The acquisition closed in February 2014: Gracenote was aligned with the Tribune Media Services division which focused on TV and Movie metadata and IDs. On June 12, 2014, Tribune Media Services merged with Gracenote to form one company under
2646-623: Was discernible by some listeners throughout certain recordings, and a quiet passage followed by a loud sound would allow anyone to hear a faint pre-echo of the loud sound 1.8 seconds ahead of time. The following are some significant advances in the format: Gracenote Gracenote, Inc. is a company and service that provides music, video, and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies worldwide. Formerly CDDB (" Compact Disc Data Base "), Gracenote maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about
2700-412: 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 Spotify , Amazon , Google , Tidal , Pandora , Qobuz and more, as well as databases such as Gracenote , but not all services are displaying the data they are sent at this stage. A Grammy Award for Best Album Notes has been given annually since
2754-515: Was greatly improved by better tape formulations and noise-reduction systems. By 1983, cassettes were outselling LPs in the US. The Compact Disc (CD) was introduced in 1982. It offered a recording that was, theoretically, almost noiseless and not audibly degraded by repeated playing or slight scuffs and scratches. At first, the much higher prices of CDs and CD players limited their target market to affluent early adopters and audiophiles ; but prices came down, and by 1988, CDs outsold LPs. The CD became
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#17328850844582808-400: Was one of several factors that confined tape to a niche market. Cartridge and cassette tapes were more convenient and less expensive than reel-to-reel tapes, and they became popular for use in automobiles beginning in the mid-1960s. The LP was not seriously challenged as the primary medium for listening to recorded music at home until the 1970s, however, when the audio quality of the cassette
2862-512: Was selling Gracenote to Nielsen Holdings for $ 540 million in cash. The deal officially closed on February 1, 2017. In September 2017, Gracenote partnered with Connekt and Ensequence to deliver real-time offers on smart TVs. On November 7, 2019, Nielsen announced that it was splitting into two separate publicly traded companies. Gracenote fell under the company's Global Media business. After divestiture of NielsenIQ (the former ACNielsen consumer research business) in 2021, Nielsen became solely
2916-468: Was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire US record industry and, apart from a few relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound in 1957, it remained the standard format for record albums during a period in popular music known as the album era . LP was originally a trademark of Columbia and competed against the smaller 7-inch sized "45" or "single" format by RCA Victor , eventually ending up on top. Today in
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