According to a New York Times article, the booklets that come with our music may become a thing of the past, due to increasing sales of digital music and decreasing sales of its hard copy brethren.
And it makes sense.
Most of the music I listen to every day has come to me through some sort of digital channel, stripping it of its paper clothes. Back in the day, the first thing I did after buying a CD, probably even before listening to it, was going through the booklet it came with, seeing who they thanked, checking to make sure they wrote their own music, etc. The same goes for tapes and vinyl. Old school record fans appreciate the big, cardboard sleeves just as much as they do the grooves on the disc.
So what’s gonna happen? Hard to say. I’d propose a standardized, cross-filetype tag, sort of like ID3, that incorporated txt or a PDF of the liner notes with each track. With the convergence of phones and media players, that could even be a link. Eventually, having an album’s accompanying booklet may be as common place as having a JPG of its cover art.
Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/arts/music/27brow.html
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