There is a new thing that’s all the rage in the music buying world. iTunes [and also Windows Media and Real]. Buy your music, get it instantly. Sounds good. You can buy singles or whole albums online, no waiting. Of course the sound quality is not exactly CD standard, more like really really great cassette, but it is more or less decent. And do not underestimate instant gratification. But there is something missing……
I have been ripping my large CD collection to iTunes for quite a while, and may be done one of these years. So I have become accustomed to just scrolling thru my iPod to listen to songs, or on the computer when I want to hear something. I still use my cds a bit if I am in my office, but for work, the car, or when walking around the house and yard, the iPod is great. But there is something missing……
I have a rather large classical collection. I have been listening to my Barber and Meyer Violin Concerto CD by Hilary Hahn on my iPod. I am using this cd as the first review on this site, so I needed to read the liner notes on the cd to help with the review. So I went to the box I keep all of CD covers in, and pulled it out. Very informative. But what if I had purchased it on iTunes? Or if my readers wanted to purchase it there? I hopped over, searched and quickly located the CD. Great. But there is something missing…….
The CD booklet with liner notes and listing of the performers. Now to be fair, there are some albums that offer booklets, but more often than not they just contain a few pictures. With classical CDs especially, you get a description of the work, maybe an essay, and notes on the performer. But for some reason these seem to be missing from a lot of downloaded albums. Would it be so hard to have a PDF file with a copy of the CD booklet included with the tracks? They are already available, and there is no additional printing costs, just the download bandwidth.
iTunes albums are around $10, and I can go to a record store and get the same on a physical CD with all the extras for just a little more. Also, there are plenty of tags available in the AAC format to place pictures of the booklets, and room for text fields that could display the contents of the booklets. But this is not happening. With the advent of CDs, we lost those large pictures and liner notes of the LP era, and now we seemed to have lost everything in the digital download arena. I would love to see all this info on my iPod. The newer iPod models show album art if you wish, but I have no access to the info inside the CD booklets. Maybe I could type all of the information in, but that is not something I would do. If I knew all of this was embedded in my files, and I could read it while listening on my iPod, the odds of me purchasing these tracks online would go up a lot. I could forgo a little sound quality for convenience and the music text included on my tracks.
I miss my liner notes. Just a thought. [I will let you know where you can get the booklets for select labels in another post]
There is a new thing that’s all the rage in the music buying world. iTunes [and also Windows Media and Real]. Buy your music, get it instantly. Sounds good. You can buy singles or whole albums online, no waiting. Of course the sound quality is not exactly CD standard, more like really really great cassette, but it is more or less decent. And do not underestimate instant gratification. But there is something missing……
I have been ripping my large CD collection to iTunes for quite a while, and may be done one of these years. So I have become accustomed to just scrolling thru my iPod to listen to songs, or on the computer when I want to hear something. I still use my cds a bit if I am in my office, but for work, the car, or when walking around the house and yard, the iPod is great. But there is something missing……
I have a rather large classical collection. I have been listening to my Barber and Meyer Violin Concerto CD by Hilary Hahn on my iPod. I am using this cd as the first review on this site, so I needed to read the liner notes on the cd to help with the review. So I went to the box I keep all of CD covers in, and pulled it out. Very informative. But what if I had purchased it on iTunes? Or if my readers wanted to purchase it there? I hopped over, searched and quickly located the CD. Great. But there is something missing…….
The CD booklet with liner notes and listing of the performers. Now to be fair, there are some albums that offer booklets, but more often than not they just contain a few pictures. With classical CDs especially, you get a description of the work, maybe an essay, and notes on the performer. But for some reason these seem to be missing from a lot of downloaded albums. Would it be so hard to have a PDF file with a copy of the CD booklet included with the tracks? They are already available, and there is no additional printing costs, just the download bandwidth.
iTunes albums are around $10, and I can go to a record store and get the same on a physical CD with all the extras for just a little more. Also, there are plenty of tags available in the AAC format to place pictures of the booklets, and room for text fields that could display the contents of the booklets. But this is not happening. With the advent of CDs, we lost those large pictures and liner notes of the LP era, and now we seemed to have lost everything in the digital download arena. I would love to see all this info on my iPod. The newer iPod models show album art if you wish, but I have no access to the info inside the CD booklets. Maybe I could type all of the information in, but that is not something I would do. If I knew all of this was embedded in my files, and I could read it while listening on my iPod, the odds of me purchasing these tracks online would go up a lot. I could forgo a little sound quality for convenience and the music text included on my tracks.
I miss my liner notes. Just a thought. [I will let you know where you can get the booklets for select labels in another post]
Posted in Commentary