Today’s Rant: Liner Notes
I’ve written about the possibility of providing digital liner notes with music purchased from the iTunes Music Store, but today I’m going to talk about analog liner notes – the ones printed on paper.I buy music through iTunes, because of its price and the simplicity of purchasing music online, but not everything I want is avaliable. I recently wanted to buy an album by Brad Mehldau, Elegiac Cycle, and saw that it was only available on iTunes as a “partial album”, that is, only a few tracks were available. (Why this is the case, I don’t know…) So, I ordered it online with a couple of books. I still buy CDs in addition to digital music, often for box sets, operas or other recordings where I want booklets and liner notes. But in this case, I was more interested in the music.
After I opened the CD, as I was ripping the music into iTunes, I pulled out the liner notes – Mehldau has extensive notes about the album and the different pieces it contains. However, these liner notes are written in 3-point sans serif type, totally unreadable for my 45-year old eyes (and probably for many younger eyes as well). I literally needed a magnifying glass to read them.
So, rant mode on… Who the hell are they kidding! What goes through the mind of a designer who tries to put text on the head of a pin? Is he/she proud of creating liner notes that are unreadable? I was actually tempted to return the disc for this reason alone. As record companies are trying to prove to users that they should buy CDs rather than simply download music illegally, they need to provide added value, but these unreadable liner notes are a way of saying that the record company doesn’t really care about the consumer.
I have ranted about tiny liner notes in other fora; unfortunately, with classical recordings, this is common, since there is a lot of information to be provided on very small pages. But for jazz, rock or popular music, there is no excuse. Sure, you can say that the demographic for such music has better eyesight, but it’s still a lack of respect for the consumer.
Now none of this detracts from the music; while this is not my favorite Brad Mehldau album, I don’t regret having bought it. If I had been able to buy it from the iTunes Music Store I wouldn’t have even known about the liner notes. But record companies should make a greater effort to differentiate their CDs if they want to keep people buying their product.
Read more articles in this category: Music
