The campaign is intended to foster support for an independent database of information about the session musicians and producers who worked on a given song: Who played bass on track seven of the new Beyonc album? the campaign press release asks rhetorically.
In the old days, it was easy enough to find this information. Almost every release by a major label printed this kind of information in the liner notes, and that kind of information helped fans and musicians alike discover new heroes and follow them, developing their record collections in the process.
Today, with liner notes starting to look like a thing of the past, getting access to this information is considerably more difficult. The iTunes Music Store, for example, does not offer this information, and the few sites that do Discogs and All Music Guide, for example are filled with inaccuracies that are tough to correct.
The database that the MPG is calling for would basically add some extra metadata to all songs that are sold digitally, and it would help immeasurably in the push to get contributing musicians compensated for their work.
At the moment, the campaign is basically looking for input and feedback from people in the community, so head over to their forum and help push this initiative forward.
