Does anyone know of any archives of CD booklets? Or any other verified from source lyric sources? I’ve had a bit of a realization recently that if we haven’t been keeping scans of those, we will no longer be able to be certain that the lyrics we have are correct. Lyric sites are unreliable, to say the least, and they’ll likely be/have gotten worse due to the use of AI by users and the sites themselves.
The Internet Archive has some, but it’s mostly religious and cultural recordings, though I may just not be using the correct search terms. I’ve found some extra nerdy uploaders that included scans with discogs and direct rips, which is always exciting, but it’s rare.
I really feel like this is an important aspect of the whole project of archiving music. One that seems to have been sort of overlooked, unless I’m just not finding the right sites.
Ideas, thoughts?
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You are at that site. Musicbrainz editors do this. It always depends on the editor though. Some will scan more than others. And that artwork ends up at the Cover Art Archive on the Internet Archive.
Personally, near enough my whole CD collection is scanned and uploaded here. Every bit of the paperwork possible. I especially focus on the more unusual stuff. Lyrics are in only a fraction of booklets.
Sometimes if you are looking for lyrics for a specific release, it is worth checking other releases in a Release Group. It maybe that a UK edition is fully scanned, but the USA edition isn’t. For the lyrics in a booklet this doesn’t make much difference.
Discogs is not much use now as they reduce all scans to 600dpi making them hard to read.
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Dang, I didn’t even think to check the cover art archive for full scans. It did seem strange that this community wouldn’t already be including them, but I thought maybe it was such a huge undertaking that it would need to be it’s own project.
This community is rad, y’all have reinvigorated my love for music and archival work. Thanks for the info, I’m going to go digging through those archives now. 
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Totally agree. Just over 8 years ago I came here to download some cover art and tag some rips. I have now uploaded way more art than I ever downloaded.
Thanks to this site I opened and read booklets in my CDs I had never even touched before. Learnt so much more about my music. Entering the various names from the booklets - including all those recording engineers and background people - meant I found so many more connections to other music.
The problem is that the more I dig, the more I learn, the more I spend on EBay picking up music I discovered through my journey of being a MusicBrainz editor.
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Money gets spent, may as well spend it on the things that bring you joy. Life is too short not to.
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I’ve found a surprising number of cases where the lyrics in the booklet don’t exactly match the songs.
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But at least they are the official lyrics.
It’s not rare that, eventually, the singer changes some word here or there, during recording.
But lyrics from websites, like Genius, contain many ugly mistakes.
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Sure, but it contains the artists intent for the song, at the very least.
It’s actually funny @jesus2099 mentioned Genius, as it was the direct reason for this post. I found this on there last night:
Ska music, reggae its the same old beat
But its different clothes on a new wave beat
And i heard that rap about unity
Now only words but the beards are free
Talk to me about picking up the slack
Turned around and slapped me right in the back
This is a part of the lyrics from Talk is Cheap by The Toasters, and it’s so atrocious that I made an account to fix it. There are multiple errors here, as well as the rest of the song, but that line right in the middle is the one that set me off. It’s supposed to read “that only works when the beers are free”.
Here’s the kicker, after making the edits I went to see who the joker was who did that, and people have been submitting edits on this song for 3 years.
I’ll take a few changed words and some typos, lol.
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I don’t think Beckfield meant this as a criticism, just as an interesting observation.
FWIW I know some ‘heavier’ bands that just make up the lyrics afterwards/try to remember them when it comes time to make the booklet - some OCD nightmare material for everyone 
I quite like it when songs are surprisingly varied between different recordings, though make sure you and your band mates learn the same version if you are planning to do a cover… speaking from experience!
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First off I apologize if that came off as me being confrontational, @Beckfield. I was just clarifying why I think it’s important. I totally understand what you were saying, I just wanted to share why I was so excited about this topic. I lost brain cells reading that line lol.
And as for heavier bands, I listen to hardcore so I totally get it, but I’d still like to know what they’re saying if it’s available even if it’s bullshit. I also have an auditory processing disorder, so a lot times I can’t tell what they’re saying in the prettyist of punk songs, so it’s nice to have a reference to see if what I’m hearing is correct.
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In that case, exercise extreme caution if you ever want to cover 9 Shocks Terror 
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When it comes to hardcore, I’m usually too busy Moon-stomping to be too concerned with the lyrics, but hey if I can get them and get my feet to stop beating the floor I may read them. <O^
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I did that too but then I realised that the site, or its contributors, were using some kind of speech to text software, that would generate crap, forever and ever.
So no need to bother fixing, it’s vain.
I’m looking for a good lyrics site for French and English, to replace Genius in my mb ALL LINKS userscript.
I use an email alias service. Just went and disabled that alias and signed out of Genius. They’ll be sending their spam into the void from now on. 
I appreciate that, but no worries.
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Not sure if you saw my profile, but you just sent me down a rabbit hole of bands who are right up my alley. Don’t know about 9 Shocks themselves, but they’re on a compilation with a bunch of antifascist hardcore bands.
Edit: Nvm just saw your bandcamp. lol
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Yay! The MusicBrainz rabbit holes strike again… 
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Actually Internet Archive used to be REALLY good for high quality scans of some really obscure stuff, but thanks to the music lawsuit from last year it’s all suddenly disappeared from their indexing 
I believe there is access to it from here. Or did they have their own stash that they aren’t allowed to share with us because of the lawsuit?
What’s “from here”?
Cover Art Archive (CAA) is a joint venture between MBz and The Internet Archive to host the images you see on the website. These items are not indexed on purpose, as TIA are genuinely acting as an image host.
TIA had various “Music” projects where they would buy/take on large record collections from closing stores (like Recycled Records) and then rip them, provide 30 sec. samples and really high quality scans of everything; this was a goldmine that has now been hidden from general pop due to the lawsuits.
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