Gems that are to be found on MTraks

Germanprof

I think Doofy (?) suggested this. I'll get the ball rolling. While MTraks' catalog has been improving by leaps and bounds, the MTraks experience still involves a fair bit of searching for artists to see if they are there. Also, their pricing scheme makes it easy to drop in for a month and buy 75 credits for $20 that then have to be spent in a month. So this thread is for listing good stuff that is available at MTraks and might be a good investment of those credits. Here are some starters:

Lumiere by Dustin O'Halloran - this might be on my end of year top 10 - basically a piano album lightly dusted with electronics and cello in a few places. $6.99 at emusic, 9 credits at MTraks.

Vieux Farka Toure - The Secret - couple of his others here too. Saw him live last month. This is a really good album. African blues. emusic $6.99, here, 12 credits.

Shels - PLains of the Purple Buffalo - good instrumental rock/post-rock, 13 credits ($6.37 emusic)

A Winged Victory for the Sullen - if you like Stars of the Lid this involves one of their members, and I actually think it may be better. Piano-oriented classical-ish ambience, with poignant melody. One track oddly not available though - 6 credits for the available tracks. (The unavailable track is the album only one so I bought this at emusic to get the whole album - but if you want to dip, you get most of it for 6)

Nest - Retold (Nest's newer one, Body Pilots, is there too) - more classical-oriented ambience. 11 credits.

More later.

Bad Thoughts

One of BN's favorites: Alvin Curran's radio play about Kristallnacht, Crystal Psalms. 6 credits.



Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day II. 8 credits.

Bad Thoughts

Don't forget, mTraks has Clean Feed.

Germanprof

Wow, I just made myself a little spreadsheet with a bunch of albums I want and comparative prices. If I were to buy it all, it would be 117 tracks. Total cost at MTraks: $31.59. Total cost at emusic: $148.59. Hmmm. Difficult choice...

Germanprof

New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges by Colin Stetson - I know this is old news, but I don;t have it yet; 14 credits/$6.49 emusic.

Doofy

Thanks Prof...Indeed it was me who suggested this thread. I re-upped and got this one, much cheaper than eMu:



I have one or two things I want on Pi Recordings, which is not on eMu. Canada Day may happen as well...won't take me long to go through 30 credits, I suspect.

Bad Thoughts

I'm not completely sure of this, but I believe it is impossible to re-up mid-month or to complete an album after the fact.

Germanprof

That's right - once you've decided on your amount of credits for the month, that's it until the month is up. No boosters or increases in allowance.

Germanprof

Alone Alone by Hungry Ghosts - another good instrumental rock album. 15 credits.

Sort

I didn't even know this thread existed. Fiest, Beirut, and the Pains of Being Pure all have their latests, all worthwhile. Check out Girlyman if you like Indigo Girls. More recs later...

anose

My biggest takeway from this thread:

MTraks still exists?

Seriously, I figured it went the way of audiolunchbox a LONG time ago.

Thanks for the heads up. I might sign up for a month just to grab a lot of good lookin' African comps and some stuff on the Light in the Attic label.

Germanprof

Just bought Sean Smith's Huge Fluid Freedom for 6 credits (emusic: $6.49). Have been intrigued by this for a while but unwilling to pay the emusic price. Finally found a place to stream it and it's more than worth 6 credits.

(By the way, it's not all one way - I just found an album that was 50 credits on MTraks and $5.99 on emusic, so don;t just assume it's cheaper)

Bad Thoughts

My rule of thumb is that anything 15 credits or less is a better deal at mTraks than eMusic. However, it think the real savings come by being able to buy albums with long tracks (an additional credit for each 10 minutes) and not have to pay album pricing.

Katrina

"Germs to be found"

is how I read it at first

Glad to know this is an entertainment alert, not a health alert

cafreema

Some of my favorite mtraks downloads that haven't already been mentioned:

Baths - Cerulean
Candy Claws - Hidden Lands
Chelsea Wolfe - Apokalypsis
Do Make Say Think - Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn
Frank (Just Frank) - The Brutal Wave
Lou Reed - Transformer
The Raincoats - Odyshape
Sleep ? Over - Forever
Slits - Cut
T. Rex - The Slider
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
Xeno & Oaklander - Sets & Lights

Craig

Germanprof

After a fruitless to and fro with MTraks customer service about the fact the Marihiko Hara is on the site but clicking on his name give an OOPS page, I discovered that Prosa IS on the site but listed only under Tomas Phillips. One of Brighternow's recs. Sounds great!

Doofy

We are undergoing an upgrade process to give you an all new mtraks. This will take approximately 5 hours. Please check back with us a little later.

Bad Thoughts

10 hours, and counting. Maybe Sony is coming on board (as well as the ensuing alienation).

Germanprof

I'm not even getting an upgrade message right now, just a page can't be found. Fingers cross they haven't (i) committed sepukku (ii) raised prices, as I've got about 50 credits there that I decided to eke out a little rather than spending them all at once at the weekend...

ETA OK, I get the 5 hours message now. A long 5 hours...

Germanprof

It's back up. I wouldn't describe it as working exactly (at least not in Chrome in which all kinds of things are not displaying properly). But it is there. No price change. It displays better, though still not quite right, in IE.

Bad Thoughts

The system is down for maintenance as of 00:07 PHT.

It'll be back shortly.

PHT?

Germanprof

They've taken it down again. Ah, cross-post. Clearly still trying to make it work.

cafreema

PHT?

Pabst Hipster Time.

Craig

Doofy

Philippine time. No jive....hopefully that's just a mistake, but you never know in these off-shored days.

Apropos to which, as a freelance writer, I was recently approached to write a puff-piece news story for a company that outsources editorial work to India. Can't imagine why he didn't put one of his top Indian editorial staff on the job.

cafreema

I'm liking what I'm seeing so far, but it would be difficult to not have a better interface than before.

Craig

Germanprof

Well, the facelift seems to have fixed the problems with some artists. As recently as a few days ago they were telling me that they couldn't find out if they had any albums by Marihiko Hara or Tinariwen (clicking on the names of which was generating an Oops page) because they were only able to search their own database by album title. In the same response they were pretty sure they were not carrying any releases by these artists. Now there are seven. The new interface is therefore not only an aesthetic improvement but appears to actually make it possible to find the albums that they have, which has to count as an improvement. It is still not working in Chrome though.

Doofy

I can't get in at all...Almost positive I am using the right pw, as I just reupped a couple days ago. Reset link not working. Still (quite) a few bugs in the system...

Sort

Sorry no links, but here are some of the artists I highly rec from Mtraks.

Haushchka
Ilhan Ersahin
Bonobo
Curtis Fuller
Pan American
Sharon Van Etten
Luisine

Germanprof

Some artists currently on my MTraks list of things to get:

David Wenngren and Christopher Bissonnette (thanks, BN)
Si-Cut.DB
The Boats
Yui Onodera & Celer
Gurun Gurun
System
Clem Leek
Daniel Thomas Freeman
Max Richter
3epkano
Seven Saturdays
Tinariwen

Doofy

I'm still not in...they're working on it!

My goal is to get Apex by Rudresh on Pi (which is not on eMu)...then go through and see what else there is to find among the reccs here, with the credits I have left!

Germanprof

Kind of hard to find but MTraks now has a wishlist feature. You have to click "Download album" and then go to your cart and click "save for later". Then you can click "see your wishlist" in the cart view.