First thing I do when I buy a CD is rip it to my hard drive, and then put it in storage. I sometimes read the sleeve notes first, but am usually in a hurry so I skim them. Then, when it is time to listen to the songs (which could be weeks later if I am trying to collect multiple CDs from an artist before lisrening chronologically), I find myself wanting to read the sleeve notes. But the CDs are in a box. Very annoying.
When I bought the Beatles box sets and Anthology CDs last year, I used coverlib to download the sleeves. I then could read the notes on the PC while I listened to the music. That was awesome! But now that site is down, probably because it was getting abused by people who pirated the music rather than buying it.
So I am wondering: for those of us who still buy CDs, but prefer to listen on the computer, what are our options as far as being able to read the liner notes on our PCs? Sure, we could scan the notes ourselves, but that is very tedious (especially for those of us who buy LOTS of CDs). What other options are there? I'd hate to havd to search a bunch of pirate sites just to find cover art. I wish there were a legit solution.
Like, why can't each CD have a serial number, like a game? You could then register it, and go to a site where you can download the scans. Of course, this would suggest there needs to be some copy protection on the scans, which would suck. Hmm... any other ideas???
It is sad that the likely main reason music companies do not make liner notes freely available to download is because of the pirates.... so those of us who actually pour significant amounts of money into the music industry are the ones that suffer.
I am hoping that one day there will be a Steam for music, because Steam has been awesome for games. And no, the music service will not be called iTunes. It won't have anything to do with Apple, and it will have seasonal sales, and let people download sleeve notes just like we can download manuals for games. Not that we ever read them.
But I would like to read liner notes, on my computer! Some day, perhaps..