I want a web site where I can look up the sleeve notes for all LP's and CD's

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Request for Question Clarification by pelican-ga on 18 Jan 2003 13:47 PST

What do you exactly mean by "sleeve note".  For example:

Acid Mothers Temple
41st Century Splendid Man
LP, Japan picture disc, new tracks from the cool Japan psychedelic masters, $19.99 

I found a directory with 7000+ entries like this.  Interested?

pelican-ga

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Clarification of Question by killy-ga on 23 Jan 2003 05:51 PST

Hi

Whenever I buy a Cd, the sleeve notes, whether a singe card or a 12
page booklet are (virtually) unreadable due to the type size and or
design etc. If I buy a LP, the sleeve notes are very readable due to
the bigger area...but I buy mostly Cds..

I am interested when I buy a cd to read all about, who has produced
it, who the engineers are and if there are lyrics to read them, look
through them.

So I was wondering if there was a web site, wher I could vist, type in
the name of artist, then Cd or LP title and it would present the
sleeve note and all other information that was readable, and perhaps
could be printed out or perhaps in & PDF file.

There is a small %, (say 10%)  of music buyers who are interested in
the copy on sleeve notes. I such a site does not exist I may launch
one with my producer relative.

Any further thoughts?

Hello killy-ga,

Thanks, now your question is clear.  After exhaustive searching (using several 
search, meta-search, and music-specialty search engines) I was not able to find 
any website that offers a comprehensive catalog of *readable* sleeve notes. 

I found a comprehensive repository of information, but it is not a website:

British Library National Sound Archive
-- International Association of Music Libraries (IAML), UK Branch
http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/cat.html

It has a searchable catalog, but the sleeve notes are not retrievable:
http://cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/1BhujhFKQy/262780005/60/58

This is a very informative report:  
http://www.music.ox.ac.uk/IAML/musiclip.doc

Note item (d), page 8:
"The British Library National Sound Archive in London holds over 800,000 LPs 
and CDs, 55,000 hours of tapes and the largest publicly-accessible collection 
of popular music recordings in the United Kingdom, with listening outposts at 
BLDSC Boston Spa and at Barnstaple Library."

However, it is not clear how much they have in machine readable form:
"Locating copies of known items is often a time-consuming process. Many 
academic libraries have access to the Joint Academic Network (JANET) and can 
search each others' catalogues and other databases, but data is inconsistent 
and search techniques cumbersome. Public libraries and others without access to 
JANET have no such tool and are reliant their own expertise and knowledge of 
others' collections.  None of the Regional union catalogues of music or BLDSC's 
Union Catalogue of Music is yet available in machine readable form and so 
cannot be searched through remote access, necessitating inefficient speculative
approaches and educated guesswork in tracking down items." (page 20)

Some websites offer scanned/reprinted sleeve notes for selected items: 

Ghetto Rock mail order
http://www.ghetto-rock.com/
They have reissued some special CDs with the original artwork (and sleeve 

notes?) recovered or even improved.  See, for example:
http://www.ghetto-rock.com/label.htm

Johnny Kidd and The Pirates
http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/frontrow/4888/kidds/credits.htm
Reports on CD sleeves being scanned, presumably to be enlarged for readability.

Folkmonster's Vinyls
http://www.requiem.net/folkmonster/main.htm
Has a list of 222 albums with covers scanned -- many from old and rare LP's 

with interesting sleeve notes -- and posted here:
http://www.requiem.net/folkmonster/artists.htm
(click on the scanned image to get a magnified, readable image)

Some other similar websites:

Repeat Performance - Van der Graaf Generator
They have a nice, very readable cover for this particular album.
http://www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk/repeatperformance.htm

Music Man Murray
http://www.musicmanmurray.com/
Huge collection, all forms of media, and they offer to search and find 
anything, but I couldn't find any readable sleeve notes.
musicmanmurray@earthlink.net

BEANOS 
Some LPs and CDs with original artwork and sleeve notes restored to a readable 
size 12. 
http://www.beanos.co.uk/bnews/027/feedback.php 
bnews@beanos.co.uk

UNESCO-WebWorld-Memory of the World
Some LPs and tapes in machine-readable format, including cover photograph and 
the text of the sleeve notes. 
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/administ/en/MOW_finD.html 

ReR Complete Catalog 
The "complete" catalog includes, for example:
BARRET, RICHARD:  Vanity - NMC D041S - £4.75 -- readable cover.
http://www.rermegacorp.com/misca-c.shtml 

Of course, there are hundreds of websites like these, but there is no "amazon" 
or "ebay" for LP/CD sleeve notes.

My search strategy was to run two queries, 

[1] <readable LPs OR CDc "sleeve notes">

[2] <"readable sleeve notes" LPs OR CDs>

and variations thereof, using Google, FAST (HotBot), Inktomi, Teoma, AltaVista, 
Ithaki, CNET Search, Vivísimo, Datavor, Kartoo, Kazaa, and AMG (All Music 
Guide).  In all cases, query [1] returned a large number of sites (none of them 
comprehensive), while query [2] returned a few sites (but none of them 
comprehensive either).  

In summary:

1. There is no website where you can "type in the name of artist, then CD or LP 
title and it would present the sleeve note and all other information that was
readable, and perhaps could be printed out or perhaps in & PDF file."

2. You may wish to investigate the searchable catalog of the British Library 
National Sound Archive.  It includes 25,000+ recordings for which the record 
retrieved includes reference to sleeve notes.  So you don't get the sleeve 
notes, but you can isolate the recordings for which such notes were published. 
For example:

1CD0211030
   Legends of Calypso
   ARC MUSIC EUCD 1774 
   ....
   Documentation: Sleeve notes in English and Deutsch included
   ....

1CD0211003
   Quality time
   SEPIA RECORDS RSCD 2016
   ....
   Documentation: Sleeve notes by Renault Williams included
   ....

1CD0210967
   Funky breaks & sampled soul
   MUSIC CLUB MCCD 504
   ....
   Documentation: Sleeve notes by Lois Wilson included
   ...

3. In terms of partnering, you may wish to discuss your project with the AMG 
website owners (AEC One Stop Group, Inc. -- http://www.allmediaguide.com).  If 
you provide readable sleeve notes, it would be a matter of adding a "sleeve 
notes" option to their search tool.

4. Keep in mind the issue of copyrights.  It would be wise to get counsel on 
this issue at the earliest possible time.

Hope things will work out for you.

Kind regards,
pelican-ga

Obviously important to get the question or briefing as clear as possible.

Killy --

Given the copyright battles over lyrics.com, it's doubtful that anyone
will be able to assemble a website to meet your needs.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

killy,

I was about to point you in the direction of http://www.cdcovers.cc/
but unfortunately, due to copyright issues, all of the audio CD covers
have been recently removed.

I would agree with omnivorous-ga in the suggestion that few, if any,
online sources are available any more.  Maybe as an alternative you
could view the packaging in e-shops such as http://www.amazon.co.uk/

Good luck in your search

mcfly-ga

you said sleeve notes, not cd/lp covers or artwork, no?  for general
album info, including comprehensive lists of personnel, i'd recommend
www.allmusic.com