The Recording Academy launches "Give The Fans Credit" campaign for digital liner notes

Those of us who remember buying C.D.s understand the value of liner notes. Those who grew up fed on files may not realize what you've been missing.

Have you ever wondered who on earth is singing the background vocal of that one part of that one song? Or who, in cases of artists that do not have an official full band, is playing a certain guitar riff in a song? Do your favorite artists even write their own music? Those are just a few things you can learn from liner notes.

The Recording Academy wants to make sure that musicians are credited as much as they were in the paper tucked inside C.D. cases as they are on the files you download.

With their “Give Fans the Credit” campaign, The Recording Academy is pushing for online music services to give you more information than just the song title and artist name.

In a statement, Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy, said:

“The staggering pace of digital innovation gives consumers access to more and more information, but in this case — digitally released music without liner notes — the music fan is getting less information. We can watch movies online with the credits included, and the same should be true for digitally released recordings. 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.”

Have we been missing out without digital liner-notes? Is there something you've been itching to know about a certain digital track that having the same information as C.D. liner notes would fix?