RIAA Makes Digital Liner Notes Push

[Thomas.Dennehy]

[As reported everywhere except the RIAA website.]

NEW YORK (AP) -- As liner notes get scarce in the digital age, the Recording Academy wants fans to still be able to find out who the people are behind their favorite hit.

So the Academy announced Thursday that it will launch the "Gives the Fans Credit" campaign, which plans to give music listeners more information on the people behind the creation of a song, aside from the song's main performer.

Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said in a statement that music fans are getting less information on songs today because of digital platforms, which tend to only offer a song's title and performer. But the Academy wants be sure fans are getting liner notes for albums, and that songwriters, non-featured performers, producers and engineers are highlighted for their work.

"We can watch movies online with the credits included, and the same should be true for digitally released recordings," Portnow's statement reads. "If music devices can access millions of tracks in the cloud, we're confident we can find a way to acknowledge those who created the tracks here on earth."

The initiative will feature "honorary ambassadors" who will help facilitate the discussion, including T Bone Burnett, music producer RedOne, Jimmy Jam, Sheila E, songwriter Lamont Dozier and producer Don Was. The Academy's news release said the ambassadors plan to meet with digital music outlets "to brainstorm ways to deliver more robust crediting information on digital music platforms."

[End of press release.]

Thoughts? "Honorary Ambassador" to "help facilitate discussion" sounds like one of the cushiest gigs ever.

 

[amirm]

First thing they need to do is standardize on a method of delivery of content and its meta-data to online retailers of music. If they had done that they they could have then included such data in them easily. As it is, it is a big mess with every label using its own scheme. Imagine how embarrassing it is that if you want to build an app that rips music, you cannot go to the music labels to give you the data for the CDs they have published! You have to go to third-parties for this and pay $$$. And up to now, folks always thought about "monetizing" every bit of metadata they could.

With no consumer demand, I think they have an uphill battle to try to get the infrastructure to gear up to include metadata on some 12 million tracks of music. Likely they are not willing to fund this and are hoping that the services volunteer to do this work for something that has no consumer demand. Anyone who wants this info can get it today by searching the title online/Amazon.

I say they have been sleep at the helm too long and this is too little, too late.

 

[FrantzM]

[As reported everywhere except the RIAA website.]

They have been asleep at the wheel for too long at the wheel. Amir is absolutely right. They were so afraid of pirating that they neglected the paying customers. The relatively monolithic RIAA demise is not too far. The industry will become more and more fragmented and artists will find ways to bypass the old distribution and retail structure. It is a matter of time. Their relevance will only continue to diminish.

 

[Bruce B]

When a song/file is released, it's the mastering engineer that is responsible for the metadata attached to the file. I didn't see a single 'mastering engineer' in that list of 'honorary ambassadors'.....

 

[Bill Hart]

FWIW, i think this initiative is from NARAS, the Grammy folks, not the RIAA.