First off, please feel free to delete or move this post if it's in the wrong category.

Secondly, I apologize if this has been covered before. I searched and didn't find any references.

Give Fans The Credit | GRAMMY.com

http://www.grammy.com/credits/press-release/133419

The Recording Academy has launched a petition effort to convince digital music services to include the credits of musicians, producers, songwriters, engineers, etc. who've been involved in a production.

In my teenage youth I was often a 'credit reader', and enjoyed knowing who was involved. I don't believe that exists currently.

Personally I would encourage you to share the link with friends, family, fans and associates. I believe including credits not only benefits creators, but fans as well.

-C

Correct credits are seriously important. They are the business card of the individuals involved. It also helps to sort out who was in the tea room and who was actually behind the board.

Wait, you mean like when I tell potential clients some of bigger albums I have worked on and no trace of my name can be found (instantly making me look like an asshole).

Yes, having a system in place that gives hardworking professional the credit they deserve would be nice. Then we just have to get the bands to designate the credit properly...

I think it's on you to get your name credited on albums. Just let the right people know (artist managers, producers)

Well, this goes beyond making sure your name shows up in the cd liner notes. It speaks to the digital delivery side of things. Amazon, iTunes, et al. I've yet to see any credits with any mp3s I've purchased. CD sales are down, download sales are up and will both continue in their respective trends. Some new credit system is due.

It seems it would have been built into the infrastructure of these online-sales mediums.

That's maybe the first really positive thing I can recall the RIAA doing in long while. (The drug treatment for musicians thing some years ago looked good -- until investigation revealed it appeared to be designed to enrich the cronies of the then-leadership.) Suffice it to say, I'm not a fan of the glad-handing, mutual-congratulations fest of the Grammies.


There is, of course, no good reason except, perhaps, minor clerical overhead, why such a system shouldn't be in place. Text information requires a tiny, tiny amount of data space. You could include a free novel encapsulated in download singles with little added bandwidth if you felt inclined. The liner notes and all music, production, and songwriting credits for our recordings should be included as a matter of course.

Long before I was ever a musician or dreamed of being a recording engineer (actually, I never dreamed of it 'til I was one, I only got into it to record my old band; joke was on me, the band broke up about the time I did my first project as a second heh ) I was reading the liner notes and credits.

I'm now a generally happy music subscriber, and mostly really like the MOG service I use -- and they do include some AllMusic Guide info for a small handful of albums, but it's really not enough. (Actually, the first subscription service I used, MusicMatch OnDemand, was really good on that, I think they had a straight hookup to AllMusic so that when you pulled up an album you got access to whatever material they had on the album, which, in some cases was a lot.

This should be a sticky!!!

I may sound hyperbolic, but I really feel this is a major major contributing factor to the decline of the recording industry and it's viability as a sustainable career.

Album liner notes and credits were our access to the who/what/where of the creation of an album.

I work with college-aged kids on a daily basis, and believe me when I say that they are oblivious to this information that we used to take for granted.

Not only do they not know that this information exists, they don't even realize why it's important to know.

How can a recording studio sustain business if no one knows who/where their favorite album was recorded?

Please sign and help.

Isn't that what AllMusic is for? I think anyone who cares about that stuff (and I think 95% of people don't) can easily look it up on there.

Sure, we all want to be recognized for our work because this art but most consumers could care less who was involved making the music and only care about the songs and artist.

The guy making my sandwich isn't going to sign his name on, it's just going to says Arby's. The car I drive doesn't have the names of the people involved in making it engraved on the parts, it just says Volkswagen

AllMusic Guide has been a good resource in the past but it was far from complete or correct even then (one of my buddies finally gave up trying to get them to remove a couple of big projects engineered by a guy with the same name off his AMG page after multiple attempts to get them to correct it) -- and it seems clear that their new owners' idea of moving forward is all about dumbing down the interface and getting more ad space (at least AllMusic is better than what they did to AllMovie which is almost a total waste now). Newer content seems slim and perfunctory.

There's NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER that song info cannot be distributed with digital downloads and that subscription services can't make that info available to their users as they are listening to the music. Most stream service players have the title, artist, and a progress bar and then a whole screen to play with -- yet they, by and large, waste it on nothing or, worse, with crap like, "If you like Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, our research tells us you'll LOVE Death Magnetic by Metallica!"

Allmusic is an infuriating joke that does not deserve any legitimate place in our industry. Don't support it.

You guys know my Grammy? She's such a sweet lady...

My page was tied in with some jazz guitarist of the same name. I emailed them and it was corrected the same day.

If something is missing for your credits, email them and they'll take care of you

Been trying to make changes for EIGHT YEARS with no response. Is this a joke??

How about we work on this after we can get more than 8 cents for a download by the writer and artist .

Yes, credits are a must along with bigger artwork. There is no excuse why these things haven't been improved since the birth of itunes. It should be a real database though, not just an included text file. Any service that is selling digital music should have a fully linked database with all of this information. If I see a particular engineer in the credits of an album I like I should be able to click on his name and see every other track that he's credited on.

This is particularly important for streaming services. Imagine if you could instantly create a playlist for a particular session player, engineer, producer, songwriter, etc.

The original release date is a big pet peeve of mine too. I hate seeing albums listed by the date of their last reissue or when they became available digitally rather than their original release date.

There was a good editorial on this issue in tapeop a while back.

If any one is interested in who produced or engineered a album or track can't they just look it up on the net . I do it all the time . Wikipedia . I hate to say it but I think 99.9% of the people don't care who produced or etc.. I say this with all due respect . Itunes is a outlet not a encyclopedia . They are in the business of making money . It would be nice but It aint going to happen . I hated when we went to cd's . I used to love studying album credits when we had records . Now I'm showing my age .

Most of the time that info isn't available. Especially for independent stuff, newer releases, and lesser known older albums.

This isn't a feature for the top-10 listening masses. It's for music fans. And as a matter of respect for the people who are credited. In fact, if I remember it correctly, the tapeop article was arguing that there is a contractual obligation to credit certain people which is being broken when the credits aren't included on digital sales.

But to me you highlight the major problem with the industry today: that lazy and greedy drive to target everything to the lowest common denominator and avoid doing things that are right but don't make an immediate buck.

I argue that properly linked up credits could help make money by helping people discover new music. In fact that information might even help recommendation algorithms. I can think of all sorts of creative ways that the interconnected web of credits could help recommend similar and related music. It's basically a hidden social network behind the music.

Same here. I've been trying to 10 years. I've even scanned and emailed them the CD booklet with my name circled, still nothing. And this is an album that made it into the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was in Heavy Rotation around the country. This wasn't some indie release nobody ever heard of. There are a bunch of albums I've worked on that still do not list me on allmusic at all. The Albums are up there, but either they credit someone else for my work even though the booklet of the CD is correct, or they don't list the engineer at all even though I'm listed in the booklet. It almost seems kind of random as to which project I do that get added correctly to their website.

Also, there is another Derek Jones on All Music who is a Gospel and Jazz bass player and he gets all of my credits. I was asking them for 9 years to split and create two separate accounts. They finally did that last year, but they have yet to move over all the credits of mine that he has!!

AllMusic is a joke. They are inaccurate, incomplete, and not accountable to anyone. Similar things can be said of Wiki.

Besides fans and recommendations and new music discovery (as a songwriter, fans might like to know OTHER songs i have done, but you lose soo much because we're in an "instant gratification" society.. if it's not right there at point of sale, it might as well not be anywhere)

It's just as, if not more- important for people within the industry. If you like how any number of facets of production were done on an album, and would like to hire those same people/facilities... not many people are going to hire a private eye to track down this information. Especially since it should be there to begin with.
ALL this info is provided to the digital outlets, but they strip it out before sale...