Apple mixing musical Cocktail
Apple is teaming up with the major names in music publishing to collaborate on a new product, codenamed “Cocktail,” which aims to bundle more information with music album downloads.
Also in on the deal are EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music Group. Their plan is to stimulate higher sales of digital albums by including the digital version of liner notes with the download of a complete album from iTunes. The liner notes package would include an interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other interactive features.
The sales of albums, both physical and virtual, have dropped off sharply since it became possible to buy songs one at a time on the Internet, according to a Financial Times story. Of course, in the days of physical vinyl albums and then digital CDs, there was scant choice to buying the whole album, save some pop songs sold as vinyl singles. The digital CD singles idea never really made it off the launch pad.
Liner notes have always been popular with music aficionados. In today’s market they usually include information about the musician, lyrics, a personnel list, and other credits to people the musicians want to thank and people or companies involved in the production of the music. They also can give details on the extent of each musical piece, and sometimes place them in historical or social context.
At one time, album liner notes often contained a mix of factual and anecdotal material, and occasionally a discography for the artist or the issuing record label. They were also an occasion for thoughtful signed essays on the artist by another party, often a sympathetic music journalist, a custom that has largely died out. But one of the music executives involved in the Cocktail project says, “It’s all about re-creating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork, while you listened to the music.”
It would be nice to have the return of the true liner note, which was often a very thoughtful piece written by someone in the know. If Apple and the involved music companies can get such people to participate, the return of the liner note set, even in digital form, could indeed be a great boon to the sale of albums.
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