The preservation of jazz history and the iTunes Music Store
The preservation of jazz history and the iTunes Music Store. What we’re losing in the mp3ing of all music.
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Reader comments
Thane PlambeckJul 30, 2004 at 6:21PM
Although liner notes are interesting, detailed information on jazz recordings is readily available in books, contemporary periodical literature, and on the web, and it is often better, more accurate, and more extensive than what appeared in long-ago first issue LPs. Perhaps this article is just hand wringing in the same general category as Nicholson Baker's worrying over pencil scratches on library card catalogues.
I do agree that it would be nice to get this kind of session and players info packaged into digital formats somehow. The problem is the expense of getting copyrights to the images on liner notes, different versions of albums, etc. I don't share the author's fear that this stuff is going to be lost. Round about the year 2075 everything published or recorded in the twentieth century will be stored in a ring people wear on their finger that costs 2 cents to manufacture.
In the near term, I think we can expect an IMDb-style resource for Jazz at some point. (anyone, anyone?)
Wayne BremserJul 31, 2004 at 12:57PM
Hi, I'm the author. First, knowing the name/identity of a person who plays trumpet solos on an hour long record that you listen to a dozen times a year may not be important to you. And most music consumers may agree - they don't want to know who played bass or programmed drums on a Britney or Jay Z song. But there are still a group of people who do think it is more important than notes some anonymous library patron put on a card catalog card.
Maybe the article is confusing. I'm not saying information on original vinyl records are better than the books, web sites, etc. But many major label CD reissues over the past 20 years include the original liner notes, then update the session information and include newly written liner notes which are always more extensive than an entry in one of the jazz'o'pedias. Most of the books are -reviews- of the albums, as they are buying guides. Liner notes are often written by the producers or musicians and have a different view.
For my MP3 collection, I own most of the CDs. I'll admit that it is a hassle to go back to the CD and read the booklet, so yes, sometimes I go online to find out who played drums on what song. But then allmusic.com (the nearest thing to IMDB for jazz) does a redesign that makes it unusable or the site I go to for a Dizzy discopgraphy doesn't pay their hosting fees and I have to go back to the original CD.
The Miles Ahead site is perhaps the best example of an online discography for jazz, in terms for completeness and design. But it is one site for one artist. Luckily, a fan spent hundreds of hours on it. Without going into detail, the label and estate of MD have not exactly been "supportive" of this fan's project. It has been a decade since the rise of the web and still the best sites for this type of jazz information are created by individuals. At what point do you think that will change?
You are obviously optimistic that technology will solve all these problems at some distant point in the future. I don't see it as a given, especially considering how the music industry has adapted to digital music. My argument is: If the first generation of digital music stores cut out all sorts of important information and consumers do not protest, if they keep buying and don't see it as lost value, why in a capitalist system would the second generation add those features back in?
Steven MarshallAug 02, 2004 at 9:47PM
For me its really important to have the year an album was originaly released and the list of side players.
It's important for me to know what year to put the album in context of a movement or an artists particular period.
And I can't tell you the amount of albums that I have bought simply because a perticular artists was a sideplayer
It's a Jazz thing I guess...
This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.