I should probably say that over the past seven years, I personally have lost a job, a house, a marriage (plus a girlfriend or two after that), and a loved one (my dad). It isn't so much that I find the loss of eMusic to be worse than those things; the problem is that the old eMusic was one of the few things (at least on the internet) that actually helped me deal with them, or at least forget about them temporarily.
I realize that sounds a bit pathetic, and that it's really just a website, but there it is. The old eMu was one of the few things that money could easily buy that combined music, fun, and some degree of mental diversion. I guess there are similar websites that might provide the same sort of thing, too, but there was just something about the eMu setup that made it interesting, something to look forward to doing every couple of days or so, in a way that pay-as-you-go currency-priced e-tailing operations really aren't.
That's hardly pathetic. Music can be both a hobby or profession with deep emotional and cultural significance. I'd feel the same way if my favorite bookstore or music instrument shop closed suddenly. My wife would feel the same way if her favorite yarn store closed.
I love how Wandy complains that nobody on the boards talks about music anymore... do you think he'll ever realise that a lot of the people who were talking about music were the ones who've left since the "greatest day in the history of eMusic"?
I suppose "be careful what you wish for" comes to mind...
I realize that sounds a bit pathetic, and that it's really just a website, but there it is. The old eMu was one of the few things that money could easily buy that combined music, fun, and some degree of mental diversion. I guess there are similar websites that might provide the same sort of thing, too, but there was just something about the eMu setup that made it interesting, something to look forward to doing every couple of days or so, in a way that pay-as-you-go currency-priced e-tailing operations really aren't.
I agree with a lot of what you said there. The entire place, the whole subscription experience became significantly less fun for me, which made it much easier choice to make it a budget cut. I love waxing nostalgic about the days of my youth flipping through the stacks at Jerry's Record Exchange and taking chances on all kinds of jazz (well, mostly from 1950-1969). The anticipation of new great music was something to look forward to, and this was true whether life was good or bad going for me at any particular time. Jerry's was a constant, an emotional landmark in a world of perpetually changing variable. Emusic had become the online version of that, in some ways. It's not that way for everyone at emu, and that's okay, but it's definitely nothing to be ashamed about or have to justify for those of us who did have that connection.
I love how Wandy complains that nobody on the boards talks about music anymore.
That guy is so full of shit. When I called him out on exactly that point, instead of stopping, all he does is own up to the behavior with a banal response of "we are who we are" (meaning the gossipy bickering forum). He's a major contributor to the ugliness and unpleasantness of that forum, and he has less right than anybody to complain about the tenor of the forum.
Guh, forget it. I'm done about that. Last ever post about the forum.
Oh, I hope not! There always seems to be something good in those posts.
Perhaps, but every time I make a post about the forums, I feel sorta asinine, like I just got cajoled into shouting "I am rubber, you are glue!" at a disrespectful five year old. Which, now that I think about it, that sounds kinda funny, so perhaps that wasn't the best analogy, but you get the idea.
ScissorMan - I'm with you totally on that. It's just one of those little things that makes the big things so much easier to deal with. And for a while it was the best little thing going.
And what we really must remember is that emusic boards are actually worse off because we are here and not there! When I first started reading the emusic boards, before even contributing, a number of the opinions I valued were from people now here. Emusic forces people away from their board, partly through their changes over the last few years, but also by the fact that the message board is so desperately in need of an update. I do wonder how much emusic actually values its message board. Even the message board at the university that I work part-time is technically far superior to that of emusic. Besides moving to emusers, other former contributors to emusic must have moved off elsewhere. Maybe the new emusic clientelle will eventaully develop into a better music board community - it does take time.
Well, someone should at least tell Eireboy that CRC's in ID3 Comment tags are what you get when you have "Insert CRC Checksum" checked while ripping CD's in Exact Audio Copy.
I gotta echo too about eMu's therapeutic ways back in the day. When I was having a rough patch in grad school, I would just keep adding stuff to my SFL. Hmm maybe that's why I had such a rough patch. I also used to race straight to eMu when I found any music I wanted to check out to see if it's not there. I still do that but through a big pile of salt first. I hardly save much for later on there anymore, but still pick things off of it. Still glad for the discussion board here though!
Yes, it's funny how adding stuff the the SFL has its own satisfaction, somewhat independent of whether you actually buy it. Until it began to feel more like adding things I can't afford to my shopping cart, that is.
And what we really must remember is that emusic boards are actually worse off because we are here and not there!
yeah, i think that's right (tho i realize you're not talking about me). i've noticed that the tone there has calmed down a bit very recently. i've begun -- tenatively -- posting there again.
@ScissorMan - I believe EAC uses CRC-32 for checksums and by default displays it in hex which only requires one of those 8 character strings. I'm somewhat surprised that with all of the iTunes users in these forums no one seems to have encountered those long strings before. I find them frequently when I d/l freebie songs from a band, label, or website that obviously uses iTunes. I got no clue what the numbers mean, but they come from Apple.
FWIW, there is some hilarity in the way certain members familiar to you all have been combating the verbal excesses of certain other persons with an avalanche of what he derided as spam, over at the Mordac MB.
One post was humorous. Several is not funny. Makes it hard to read what I want to read. I just skip over Wandy's posts, but it's damned hard to get by these.
I'd say it was funny precisely because it was several posts - plus it provoked a typical "I am so much better than you" response from the resident self-righteous jackass.
There will always be the "I am so much better than you" post, and I suspect he gets great pleasure out of seeing others insult him or try to stop him because it feeds his ego. He really does think he's better than anyone else over there. I'm thinking he craves the attention, and he will keep doing what it takes to get it.
I'm with thom on this one (of course I would be, having contributed on a minor level). I like the idea of pomposity being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of pointlessness.
At this stage, a lot of what's being posted over there could easily be categorised as spam. A random Wikipedia article in a random alphabet is often more interesting and enlightening than what passes for post-worthy these days.
I wished he had been drawn out a little more. I would love to know what to call an economic perspective in which the consumer chooses to pay the higher price (because choosing to minimize cost is "communist").
cue Wanderer: blah blah blah clubhouse blah blah blah gang blah blah blah talk about the music blah blah blah wank wank wank listen to me listen to me listen to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
- Back in the good old days you could post texts in Greek or Russian and get the most wonderful gibberish to turn up and each time you edited it it would change and grow bigger to the point where even the page format would go beserk.
- Now it handles any language perfectly.
- As I wrote somewhere:
There's just no fun on this board anymore. - Sigh !
Seriously, can you imagine giving the most visible sectors of the current population of those boards picture capability? With moderation every two weeks? I would have thought the mere idea would give Tyrannical eMusic boss the shivers.
well, i guess i'll be pilloried for saying this, but i mostly agree with what "wanderer" has been saying on the boards recently (at least what i've read). i didn't like his attitude before, and i guess i still don't, but nevertheless . . .
Ah, but Daniel, you don't have a two-year history of being an obnoxious prick.
I agree with the general gist - "all right, we get it, you're upset, now let's talk about something else" - but when that basic argument is repeated almost as ad nauseam as the original complaint, and in an overbearing and hyperbolic manner that ranges from laughable to contemptible, that's where I part company.
Comments
I realize that sounds a bit pathetic, and that it's really just a website, but there it is. The old eMu was one of the few things that money could easily buy that combined music, fun, and some degree of mental diversion. I guess there are similar websites that might provide the same sort of thing, too, but there was just something about the eMu setup that made it interesting, something to look forward to doing every couple of days or so, in a way that pay-as-you-go currency-priced e-tailing operations really aren't.
Oh well.
I suppose "be careful what you wish for" comes to mind...
I agree with a lot of what you said there. The entire place, the whole subscription experience became significantly less fun for me, which made it much easier choice to make it a budget cut. I love waxing nostalgic about the days of my youth flipping through the stacks at Jerry's Record Exchange and taking chances on all kinds of jazz (well, mostly from 1950-1969). The anticipation of new great music was something to look forward to, and this was true whether life was good or bad going for me at any particular time. Jerry's was a constant, an emotional landmark in a world of perpetually changing variable. Emusic had become the online version of that, in some ways. It's not that way for everyone at emu, and that's okay, but it's definitely nothing to be ashamed about or have to justify for those of us who did have that connection.
That guy is so full of shit. When I called him out on exactly that point, instead of stopping, all he does is own up to the behavior with a banal response of "we are who we are" (meaning the gossipy bickering forum). He's a major contributor to the ugliness and unpleasantness of that forum, and he has less right than anybody to complain about the tenor of the forum.
Guh, forget it. I'm done about that. Last ever post about the forum.
Perhaps, but every time I make a post about the forums, I feel sorta asinine, like I just got cajoled into shouting "I am rubber, you are glue!" at a disrespectful five year old. Which, now that I think about it, that sounds kinda funny, so perhaps that wasn't the best analogy, but you get the idea.
Yeah, I did grin at your analogy.
yeah, i think that's right (tho i realize you're not talking about me). i've noticed that the tone there has calmed down a bit very recently. i've begun -- tenatively -- posting there again.
At this stage, a lot of what's being posted over there could easily be categorised as spam. A random Wikipedia article in a random alphabet is often more interesting and enlightening than what passes for post-worthy these days.
- Now it handles any language perfectly.
- As I wrote somewhere:
There's just no fun on this board anymore. - Sigh !
Programming minion (meekly): "It can do Cyrillic script?"
Tyrannical eMusic boss: "Oh, that's OK then. Take a break for another decade".
The only thing funnier was your "You know what else is invisible? Mommy's privacy" line.
I agree with the general gist - "all right, we get it, you're upset, now let's talk about something else" - but when that basic argument is repeated almost as ad nauseam as the original complaint, and in an overbearing and hyperbolic manner that ranges from laughable to contemptible, that's where I part company.