One of my favorite things about the era of music on vinyl records was the big album covers, and all the information that was included on the sleeve. Content varied, but most had a fair amount of information — producers, guest musicians, songwriters, often lyrics, sometimes dedications.
It was an important part of the hobby — enjoying 12″ x 12″ artwork, looking for familiar musicians and producers across the records you owned. Sorting records by the spine – for some alphabetizing the records by artist. My preference, which annoyed my friends to no end, was to sort the records by the color of the spine. I had a neat little spectrum going on my record shelf.
The transition to CDs gave us way less skipping and mostly better sound, but at the cost of big, beautiful cover art. Of course there are exceptions, like boxed sets, but packaging is an afterthought now.
This is something I really miss in the digital download/streaming era. Now the cover art is a little thumbnail onscreen, only some services provide lyrics, and inconsistently at that. There is a way to look at credits on Apple Music, but it’s kind of buried, is only on the mobile app, and also suffers from inconsistent reporting.
It would be a huge win for a streaming service to stop thinking about music as content with metadata and re-think it as music with lyrics and creators. Create a relationship between listeners and the art, make memories. People remember where they were the first time they heard a song, or what was ‘on the radio’ during key periods in their life. Commodifying music as ‘content’ really cheapens that experience.