Amazon Launches Music ‘X-Ray’ With Digital Liner Notes and More

UPDATED – Amazon Music has added Music X-Ray to provide the kind of artist and record deep-dive that used to be found within liner notes and on the back of album covers

The new Music X-Ray experience offers “a behind the scenes look at song information, artists, and albums with access to everything from fun trivia to song credits, related content, and more.” The goal is to allow listeners to immerse themselves in the stories behind the music from within the Amazon Music app.

Starting today, tens-of-millions of songs available in the Amazon Music global catalog will have X-Ray functionality, with an added “fun facts” feature limited to the US and UK. The depth of the offering will expand over time, according to Amazon.

Details via Amazon

While using the Amazon Music app, all customers, regardless of subscription tier, can expand the Now Playing screen and instantly learn more about music and the artists who make it.  Discover behind-the-scenes information and musical details ranging from artist commentary, song meaning, and chart positions, check out the unique individuals who helped to create the music, such as songwriters, drummers, guitarists, and producers, or find what Amazon Music playlist(s) feature the song.  

Facts listeners can see in the experience include:

• While listening to the 2000’s hit “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast, X-Ray customers can learn fun facts like André 3000 wrote the song as an apology to the mother of his ex-girlfriend, musician Erykah Badu.
• To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Stankonia’s release, Outkast re-issued the album containing an acappella version of this song.
• Stankonia isn’t just the name of Outkast’s fourth studio album; it is also the name of the duo’s recording studio. André 3000 says the word is a combination of “stank,” a synonym for funky, and “Plutonia,” the name of a futuristic city pictured on a poster in his bedroom.
• Big Boi shared with fans that the theme of the album Stankonia was “dreams and how your dreams can be shattered, but you can still recover and come back.”