Restoring Those Old Liner Notes in Music’s Digital Era<br />Working with Nigel Grainge, an influential record executive who died in June; Erik Loyer, an app developer<br />and media artist; and Jon Blaufarb, an industry lawyer, Mr. Roswell in 2007 began to design what he calls an interactive “context engine.” Stream a song on a Sonos speaker and, if TunesMap’s app is also fired up on Apple TV, images and historical information related to the artist or a song’s origins begin to float buy.<br />Much of the material that once accompanied an album has long since been stripped away — not just the lyrics and thank-you lists,<br />but also essays, artwork and even basic details like songwriting credits — leaving listeners with little more on their screens to look at but a song title and a postage-stamp-size cover image.<br />For a Bob Dylan song, the app shows vintage photographs of Greenwich Village, news clippings<br />and links to related artists (like Martin Scorsese, who directed the Bob Dylan documentary “No Direction Home”).<br />One company, TunesMap, wants to return much of that lost information,<br />and more, through an interactive display that, when cued by a song playing on a streaming service, will present a feed of videos, photographs and links to related material.<br />He bemoans the way early digital players and online music stores like iTunes removed all sense of music coming from a particular place and time.
