In the Digital Age, How Much Do You Miss Artwork, Liner Notes, etc.?

A lot. That's why I still buy physical copies whenever possible.

I should also add that while this debate kicked up when the industry went from LPs to CDs in the 1980s. Most people forget that there were cassettes in the interim, but they didn't "replace" LPs the way the compact disc did -- and regardless, the scale wasn't even close to what you have going to downloads, where you're lucky to even get any artwork at all. In some ways, I'm surprised iPods aren't a little more accommodating by offering more than just front cover artwork.

i still buy cds. I like liner notes when the artist actually displays some of their personality within them. i also read them on the crapper

I don't miss them at all because i still buy everything on CD.

i d/l stuff too but only in circumstances where I can't get a physical copy or for mixtapes

I d/l a lot and now I have that strange moment of "virtue" that washes over me when I buy a physical copy of a new release. Last one bought: Emeralds "Does It Look Like I'm Here?" which is fucking awesome.

I figure I consume many times more visual/textual media related to music than damn near anyone 15 years ago. In the Supermarket Age, do you miss hunting mammoth with spears, rocks, etc?

i miss liner notes and physical details like crazy, to me they are really essential- I want to know what people used to make the music, where and when they recorded it, who their friends are, what weird quote they picked to have scratched into the run-out groove on each side of the vinyl LP, etc. The physical stuff matters. The way a new record can have that static field that attaches it to the clear plastic inner sleeve, the pop of the first needle drop . . .

I don't miss them at all because i still buy everything on CD.

why? stubbornness or another reason?

if i limited myself to just buying CDs i'd miss out on so much music...

i miss liner notes and physical details like crazy, to me they are really essential- I want to know what people used to make the music, where and when they recorded it, who their friends are, what weird quote they picked to have scratched into the run-out groove on each side of the vinyl LP, etc

i feel like i know so much more about this (and similar) context these days, through the internet, even if i only have a few mp3s by an artist, than when all i had to go on was the physical product (and the vast majority of artists never used to put anything worthwhile in their liner notes anyway! i always hated it when you opened the cd case up and all there was in the inlay was, like, some stupid abstract painting. LAZY).

I used to read liner notes omnivorously. It was the best place to get ideas for whatever I was going to buy next - "Oh, Anthrax thanks Nuclear Assault. Better check them out." Sometimes there were jokes and weird inside shit that I didn't understand at the time. I can still remember that Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil album was brought to me by "Budweiser, Jack Daniels, Kahlua, Quackers, and Wild Women!"

I don't have any use for them (or time for them) anymore and think it's pretty weird if somebody brings up liner notes for anything made in the last 10 years. The only thing that would bum me out would be if I missed out on like a secret picture of a naked chick or something.

A lot. But like ^ above says, some CD's have totally dissapointed me after having bought them for sole reason of just *having* a physical copy. MBV's Loveless, favorite album as it is, has an utterly fucking boring insert that shouldn't even exist in the first place. It's the cover, only tinted blue. Great.

Having a "digital book" to accompany a digital purchase still doesn't do it either. You really feel a sense of (materialistic, yes) attachment when you have something physical of the band. That it's an object in your room, and it is there by your choice. It's not some magic electric spark hidden in your computer.

Pavement's latest offerings, like the deluxe edition of Slanted & Enchanted, are A fucking PLUS. I went and bought physical copies of all their major albums for that sole reason. Materialistic, yes, but I have the money.

always hated it when you opened the cd case up and all there was in the inlay was, like, some stupid abstract painting. LAZY

^^^ this is the reason I voted "a little", because 9 times out of 10 the inlay is some lame waste of paper like a picture of the band leaning against a wall, and when there are actual words, it's usually something like "thanks to our dealer for all the mountains of fine white powder". The rest of the time liner notes can be interesting/entertaining, but usually no more informative than a quick Google search these days.

i voted "not too much" because as i've accumulated more and more physical objects over the years, the less i've wanted to accumulate any more. unless the packaging is really extra-special, which it RARELY IS, i'd rather just have the mp3s than have more horrible cds cluttering up my room and toppling over and threatening to bury me.

For me, the damage was done in the CD era, after my formative decade LP collecting. CDs felt like long, flat cassettes, artwork the size of magazine advertisements, coaxed to work around the odd mechanical requirements of the jewel case. Notes and lyrics were crammed into small type, and the layouts themselves were usually over-Quarked, as computers closed the gap between major graphic design houses and DIY scrawl. I like how LPs decay as you slide them in and out of the stacks. The 90s fashion for distressed type might have something to do with making those 100% glossy little mass-produced widgets feel more earthy. Then the CD-R came along, and they went from being clean room specimens to kipple overnight.

That's not to say there aren't great CD packages- I'm reviewing this Savage Republic anthology right now, and the notes are fantastic and add a lot to the listening experience. But they also spend about 2 pages talking about the band's letterpress LP jackets and posters, which created an aura of mystery around the project. The booklet's reproduction of a 7" cover, printing out the speckle of the chipboard, is a pallid echo of the original object. CDs are great for archival projects like that, especially when they go the extra mile with the packaging.

I would miss them a lot if I was forced to consume only digital media. I buy CDs because I love reading liner notes or just production credits and the artwork helps place the record in a period of time. They're so cheap now anyway and I avoid the physical overload factor by binning old discs as I buy new ones. I just like THINGS.

...also, what lex just said.

a lot. i used to consider an album -- music, artwork, liner notes -- as a whole. i think many of the artists intended it that way. i miss that experience. OTOH, inexpensive mp3s have exposed me to far more music than i'd been able to experience and/or consume in the album (or even cd) era.

I definitely don't miss the extra warehouse needed to store the things. And yes, most liner notes aren't exactly a treatise on modern society (unless you're Bill Laswell, then you have Hakim Bey write that for you).

But even just a drawing or the font of the thing used to leave such an impression on me. When I first seriously started buying records, I would not only pour over all the drawings and pictures -- the whole package--the song credits, everything--leaving me w a distinct impression of what the band members were like as individuals which would color how I heard the music. I remember my friend and I jamming on drums and keyboards at the age of, like, 9 or 10 -- we were, for some reason, obsessed with AC/DC's Highway to Hell and both fought over who got to "be" the bassist Cliff (Young? I honestly don't remember) bc he looked like he was trying the least hard to be cool on the gatefold. Or David Gilmour's first solo record w him standing in the cold outside somewhere -- that cover kind of affirmed for me that the record wasn't a major statement so much as some opportunity for him to lay down some stuff that Roger had rejected. Or the fact that Seth Justman had produced and written most of J Geils' Freeze Frame himself -- that told me at 14 a lot about why it was such a departure from Geils' 70s records and why Peter Wolf might have split after what had clearly been their biggest success.

All that stuff, some of it totally juvenile, was hugely important to how I heard the music -- and you don't get that opportunity w downloads or websites.

I don't miss them at all. I started buying music a bit in the cassette age, but mostly got into it in the CD age. I've never bought an LP, so that's not part of my history; my parents had a few but they weren't anything I ever got into (movie soundtracks). I read a fair bit about music but liner notes are generally so short that it's not informative enough for me. Box sets are an exception. And the art in the CD age was pretty minor: I could never really get into teeny little pictures, as has been said by others on this thread.

Back when I had a steady income, I used to buy 50% of my CDs on the basis of what the cover looked like, even if I'd never heard of the band/artist. Resulted in some interesting purchases. But downloads serve the purpose of being exposed to new/different music far better.

everything that used to be in liner notes (and much, much more) is one or two mouse clicks away now. i mean, in most cases the ACTUAL ARTIST is only a mouse click away, it blows my mind how kids (and adults!) can interact directly w/their favourite pop stars on twitter and such now.

I don't miss them at all because i still buy everything on CD.

^^^

In the midst of selling off my entire CD collection. They're worth more to me sold than collecting dust on a shelf.

This is the #2 reason I don't do any serious listening on digital formats.

Reason #1 is that there is too much digital music and I use physical media as a filter. If it isn't on vinyl I am not going to listen to it. I already have more vinyl than I can possibly listen to, I don't know what I would do with a 1TB drive of MP3s.

i mostly stopped fucking w/ cds after all of mine were stolen. certainly wasn't going to (couldn't, really, but wouldn't if i could) pay to have access all the music i'd lost. miss liner notes a bit.

Voted "a little". When I was selling off CDs, I had a grand plan to scan the booklets that had interesting essays/credits and then run them through an OCR program. I have a bunch of scans, but haven't OCR'd them yet.

I'd say a little. Most CDs are worthless for artwork and liners anyway.

The problem is that like 1/10 albums actually had good or worthy liner notes & artwork. When they did the CD felt like a sacred object though.

Some of the loss may have as much to do with just not being a teenager anymore, obv.

I voted "not too much" because "not at all" wasn't an option. I occasionally read jazz liner notes, especially on, say, Blue Note reissues, but are they a huge part of my listening/art-receiving experience? No. I have a bunch of jazz boxes with thick-ass booklets I've never opened after the first day I got the box in question. The only time I look at them is to check personnel if I hear a particularly hot solo in the middle of Disc Four, or something like that. Booklets and liner notes on rock albums? Couldn't possibly be convinced to give a fuck. Sometimes they're momentarily diverting - Mike Edison's liner notes for the recent Jon Spencer Blues Explosion reissues are fun - but are they necessary? No. I've actually written liner notes in the past - well, not exactly; I wrote an essay about a Borbetomagus cassette for The Wire which the bandmembers spotted and it gave them the impetus to reissue the material on disc, whereupon they asked permission to use the essay as notes. Flattering, but I had no illusions about any of the two or three dozen people who bought the thing reading my piece.

You really feel a sense of (materialistic, yes) attachment when you have something physical of the band. That it's an object in your room, and it is there by your choice. It's not some magic electric spark hidden in your computer.

This is really the key thing for me. I don't feel a need to hear EVERY SONG BY EVERY PERSON EVER MADE IN THE YEAR 2000; I'd rather buy 50 albums that I've carefully selected based on my current tastes and obsessions, then hear some other stuff on YouTube, from ILM tips and raves, through the Singles Jukebox, irl friends' recommendations, etc. Maybe it's because I'm not a critic or writer that I don't need to hear all I can hear; I like being selective, and I like having to make choices within a limited budget, choose wisely, enjoy what I pick and make some mistakes along the way. It's mainly a curatorial thing, then; I like having a physical library of sound, objects in my room, by choice, that are each important enough to me, for one reason or another, to be chosen, featured, as part of my library. And it helps that I have no problem selling off stuff I don't care for anymore, or that I just never play these days. Buy some, sell some.

i do kind of appreciate my friends coming over and going WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW YOU HAVE A LOT OF CDS, too. granted that's not WHY i collect, but still ya know

It's not even a "need to impress friends" thing, it is also personally satisfying to have a discerning/curatorial aspect to what I purchase and spin. I'd much rather hear 50 albums, and maybe 1,000 songs altogether, in a given year, than download 10,000 free mp3s and not really think about what I'm hearing, make snap critical judgments, not give it time to process over repeated listens. Having a physical representation of each piece of music forces me (for better or for worse) to really engage with what I'm listening to.

well I buy specifically to my tastes too, usually off of Amazon.

I voted 'not too much'. Being a non-native english speaker, most of the time I miss the booklets for the lyrics. But you can find those easily on the internet. Either way most of my current musical diet revolves around electronic, jazz or classical so I don't really get that interested in lyrics anymore.

I do miss the artwork too, if I love the album and the artwork is spectacular chances are I'll buy the vinyl version if only to look at it in a larger scale... but I dunno... digital is way simpler and tidy and less harsh on the environment.

Want to use the opportunity to rep for Hard format ( http://www.hardformat.org/ ) - it's a website on music design. Some really impressive collectables.

not too much. I don't get nostalgic for most things, and was never a vinyl/cassette/cd fetishist. Music was something I started out obtaining any way I could, usually from taping off the radio or from other peoples' albums, and I am basically only interested in the music itself, regardless of its packaging.

that said, it's nice to walk over to my cd shelf, and just *look* at the stuff I have, browsing thru it to find something I want to hear, a little like going to the store w/knowing exactly what I will buy :)

A lot. The original post really nails it, for me at least. I too can only hear that Ultramarine album as a travelogue of some fictional trip through the American southwest, simply because of the story in the liner notes. I download the things I can't find physical copies of, but seem to have a more superficial relationship with the music when I do. I think in addition to the "context" (artwork, liner notes, fonts, etc.), there's just something personally rewarding about actually making some sort of effort to obtain something, even if it's just going to the local record shop and plopping down a few bucks. I just feel a little more vested in the music if I track down the object itself, like somehow my meager act makes me complicit in it's making. And, like Dominique mentions, it's cool to see records and CDs out and about; same with books. It's a way of expressing something about yourself to visitors, the same way you are tempted to parse somebody else's collections in an attempt to better understand what makes them tick.

I voted "a little," and I arrived at this answer by averaging "not too much" for most types of music and "a lot" for contemporary classical music. With respect to the latter, the information you'd find in liner notes is typically unavailable online or elsewhere, and it can be important for fully appreciating the music.

On a similar note, most contemporary indie, pop, hip-hop, electronica, etc. has pretty minimal content as far as liner notes, lyrics, etc. I'm finding it harder and harder to get inspired to pay for CDs of new releases. However, metal and some heavy rock/prog releases usually do a great with giving more attention to unique packaging, artwork and full lyrics. So I'm more likely to buy those, along with reissues of older stuff that actually have interesting liner notes. I'm slowly weeding out my collection, selling CDs that don't give me much reason to hold onto them, and keeping special editions, catalogs of all-time favorite artists. The one section of my collection that remains fully intact is my pre-punk/punk/post-punk section. Probably because I featured it on my old radio show, and spent the most effort hunting down rarities.

it's not even truly the liner notes that appeal to me, but just the album artwork in general. i'll admit that even if a like a record bunches, i'll never buy the lp unless it has a cool jacket design. i prop them in a shelf, but like to have one or two records look like "they were just used", but it's all shallow, materialistic-look-at-my-collectin aesthetics.... mbv's isn't anything, with the back of bilinda's washed out head, has always been a mainstay.

ill continue downloading music but i love lp's for the decor. to me it's like buying artwork, but with a plus - you get a free record that offers the purest quality sound you can get from current technology from a band i like enough to buy an lp of that i don't even truly need to listen to the band.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I don't miss it at all. What would have been liner notes material now gets posted to artist's blog/website/Twitter

i must imagine that i would miss such stuff hugely, cuz i still buy mostly LPs, and the stuff i download or burn from discs doesn't seem real to me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

+++

http://www.google.com/images?q=Tapes+n+Tapes+The+Loon

artwork's still out there, d00ds -- no worries

You're totally underrating their follow-up album, Walk It Off.

I'm not sure where I stand on this, I think I voted "a little". Obviously I do care about physical product because I still buy CDs (and occasionally vinyl even though I don't have a turntable at the moment). I enjoy going to record shops and browsing for half an hour before picking out a couple of albums to check out when I get home. Sometimes I buy things just for the cool cover. A fair chunk of my collection is shelved, organised by spine colour, in our living room. I'm always happy when guests comment on what I have or ask questions, and I check out other people's collection (if they have one) when I visit them.

But: >90% of my listening these days is digital (ripped CDs, Spotify, downloads). The CDs in the living room stay on their shelves for the most part, until once or month or so I decide to have a "CD day", reading through the liner notes while I listen. So though I do get many minor pleasures from physically packaged music, I'm not sure how much I'd really miss it if it disappeared.

I can't think of any new-new release I've bought this year that had essential artwork and notes. The really indispensable packaging is created by archival labels such as Analog Africa and Numero Group, who produce the finest CD-age justifications I'm aware of for the traditional art+notes+music marriage.

I missed this poll but would have voted 'a lot,' for reasons that would only echo what's already been eloquently stated upthread.

I will say, though, that I recently decided to buy one of my favorite band's entire back catalog on vinyl. A little context: I'm unemployed, and this band has nine albums, all within the $23-$32 range for vinyl versions. I bought them impulsively, because the vinyl is all 180gram, because the gatefolds are beautiful, and because I know my CDs will be boxed up in storage in a few years but my vinyl will always remain within arm's reach.

I thought I'd regret this impulse buy, but seeing all the spines back to back, with the sort of consistent album-to-album artwork, etc, made this a purchase I definitely do not regret.

I'm also counting the minutes till Tuesday morning when I can drop into the local shop here and buy the new Neil Young album (on vinyl if they have it) on release day, as has my tradition since Freedom.

Liner notes rule.

Who's the band, then?

the iPad is saving album art!!!

the iPad is killing album art!!!