Common material 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 is also a tradition in Japan, especially for foreign artist releases. Liner notes often include complete song lyrics for the album.
Biographies Beginning approximately in the 1960's owing to the rise of the LP record, liner notes 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 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 and
iTunes make public. 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. 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 the DDEX ERN standard, however not all services display this data to the consumer. ==Digital liner notes==