Thus starts the justification of some recording artists in either their sincere environmental interest of saving paper, or more likely, their budget cutting or time saving measures that deny future generations of listeners the important historical facts about who performed on their recording and other production details.
If wire recordings, Edison cylinders and 78 rpm records are any indication of the future, today's CD's will still be around and playable 75 years from today. It is extremely! unlikely that the exact Web site address printed in liner notes today will have an identical shelf life. Therefore, saving money today translates into the permanent loss of valuable information to future music fans and historians.
As for .pdf files, they also are ephemeral. The current version of the PDF Reader, as well as Flash, either crash when they attempt to start, or hang the entire Windows 98 operating system entirely. Using an old version of the PDF Reader, a message already appears that some details may not display properly unless the current version is used. So, even right at this moment, .pdf files have built-in obsolescence. Even if the music on a current CD is playable 50 years from now, which is not guaranteed at this time, the likelihood that today's .pdf file on it will be fully readable in 50 years is slim at best.
It is the personal policy of this Webmaster that any such information that exists only on an ephemeral Web site, or in an included .pdf file, and is left out of the permanently printed long term liner notes, will be considered as UNDOCUMENTED. I could copy the missing liner note information from the artist's Web site into my Discographies here, or install the .pdf file on my site, but what would be the point? I am 82 , so my Web site probably won't be around 30 years from now, and for sure it won't exist 75 years from now. The artist has made a deliberate decision as to what they consider personally important to them to include in printed liner notes, and what is NOT important, and I will abide by their decision, no matter how strongly I disagree with it.