@Doofy - I agree with your reservations totally in general practice. Being as how I am too often juggling stuff between the desktop already crammed with music and the hard drive I sometimes have to let the enormo-files ride until I can deal with them. I too have little faith in the practices and continued existence of eMu. On the plus side My Music does allow me to shop at work again, not that it's done me much good lately.
The odd thing about eMu and streaming is that they (a) profess to never be a streaming platform, (b) actually ARE a streaming platform (for subscribers to store and listen to their music from the cloud whenever desired, and (c) now claim they have given up on retail sales ever paying the bill and are developing a blockchain solution to allegedly assist the streaming platforms (e.g. Spotify) of the world. It's an odd and sometimes contradictory combination of stated objectives.
My use is similar to others here - I always download and separately back up purchases offline, and only occasionally stream from my account because why burn data bandwidth if you already have a local copy available? Still, I think they could do some innovative things around different streaming models given that they already store everyone's music. But they seem pretty dialed in on a kamikaze blockchain mission, so we'll have to see what the future holds...
Try to purchase, and: "Error: Sorry, this album is not available for purchase at this time (code: INVALID_PRODUCT_ID). If you have questions, please contact us at support@emusic.com" Dirty trick
Try to purchase, and: "Error: Sorry, this album is not available for purchase at this time (code: INVALID_PRODUCT_ID). If you have questions, please contact us at support@emusic.com" Dirty trick
I just tried and got the same result. I guess the clue is at the bottom where "Total Tracks" = 0. I've just read the Wire review of the Threadgill albums and fancied a listen, oh well. SNAFU as they used to say.
Yeah, I had the same initial excitement and resulting disappointment re: Pi and had posted it on the eMu Reddit forum. Hopefully someone from eMu will see it and take action - either the content is supposed to be there (e.g. Pi is back) and there is a glitch, or it's NOT supposed to be there and there's a glitch. :-) Hopefully, the former and eGlitch can fix it.
I was prepared to spend my monthly allowance on 99 albums from this label (they have a lot of excellent European stuff). Instead I went for the Mariss Jansons mega-album (surely that price won't last for long!). Both interpretation and audio quality are unbelievably good. So strange that there is no data in the composer's field though. Powell to the People also seemed like a good (albeit temporary) price.
Also, Hannibal s/t. 6 tracks, 99 cents. This unpredictable album merges several different styles. rock/funk drums, frantic jazzy guitars, dizzy sax, downbeat blues vocals. I’m not normally a fan of jazz fusion, but I thought there’s a lot of interesting musical themes here amidst the anarchy. Youtube playlist here.
Plong42 mention lots of unknown ProgRock a few weeks ago which I plan to get to. My big discovery recently was finding a 99 cent compilation by Francoise Hardy only to realize that I had downloaded another compilation by her from long ago which I had never listened to. This is really great stuff -- especially at that price.
I was prepared to spend my monthly allowance on 99 albums from this label (they have a lot of excellent European stuff). Instead I went for the Mariss Jansons mega-album
(surely that price won't last for long!). Both interpretation and audio
quality are unbelievably good. So strange that there is no data in the
composer's field though.
----
I too took the plunge and was also dismayed at the lack of tagging for composer and name of work (you only get the name of the movement). However Presto Classical has all that info. Now I just need the force of will to tackle all that tagging on top of sorting 5+ years of other downloads and re ripping all the cds I lost in the great external drive failure... how am I supposed to find time for work and wives and stuff?
For what it's worth, I rip a lot of albums and have to download many more, and do a lot of tagging correction. I've used various tools, but find that foobar2000 music player works best. If you right-click the album, select TAGGING and then GET TAGS FROM FREEDB, it can occasionally tag things correctly. (It lets you preview the output first, thank god). Another cool feature I recently learned about was select ALBUM, right click PROPERTIES --> Tools --> AUTO TRACK NUMBER. In the tools options, there's another option AUTOMATICALLY FILL VALUES which lets you re-arrange data from tags. I'm sure mp3tag does the same thing. Classical music is always hard -- when ripping, I make the last name of the composer to be the first word of the ALBUM ARTIST value. that makes it easier to sort. (I use dbpoweramp for ripping btw).
I'm not a stickler for correct tagging, but there's one or two underground sites which post music downloads which are NEVER correctly tagged. One of them posts bootleg zip files of Indonesian/Asian albums from the 60s and 70s, and almost none of them are tagged correctly (or at all for that matter). At least with Indonesian music they use the Roman alphabet...
Thanks for trying to help @idiotprogrammer, however using Foobar as you suggested (took me a minute to find out how to do what you said) only gave me the tags I already had.
Would it not be easier to retag manually from my c: drive rather than changing names within a programme only to find they haven't changed outside of Foobar (or whatever). Sorry I'm pretty much the newbie at this sort of thing. I'll slog through if I have to, what else is a Bank Holiday weekend for?
I am a Tag&Rename fan. The ability to swap fields is the main draw for me. For classical music, I often copy the Artist (Warsaw Symphony) to comment, then the composer to the artist field. I need to have composer in both the composer and artist fields.
It does a nice job getting tags from file names, or renaming the files based on tags. Both features can use any tag, very flexible. The only thing missing is the ability to strip [remastered 2017] out of a song title. I can put that in the comments section, I do not want it in the song name. I had an album from one of those cheap labels the other day that repeated that twice on every song title.
I agree that would be a neat feature. One of my pet peeves is albums that include [album version] after every song title. I put composers in artist too, for the simple reason that I am way more likely to want to find Vivaldi quickly on the iPod touch than to remember which ensemble played the album I had in mind. Pianists do make me hesitate though. So generally I put composer in album artist and the artist in artist.
There were two scripts for Windows one would find duplicate tracks the other would adjust play counts. Nothing as good as Doug's scripts (unfortunately)
All three of these are 99 cents each for a CD worth of music. The downside is the label Resurfaced Records insists on adding "(Hd Remastered Edition)" to each song title twice. The label has 47 releases on eMu, all are 99 cents for similar material.
I recently got the Muddy Waters anthologies - with most of these, I have 95% or so of the material already, but it's a good introduction to his stuff, and at less than three dollars for the 3 CD's, well worth it. Resonance Records released a new Grant Green live album (from the '70's) that's only $2.99 or so. It's not bad - newer stuff, so there's a medley with a bunch of newer soul tunes, but worth the purchase price.
Spiral is one of a series of works dating from the 1960s which Stockhausen designated as "process" compositions. These works in effect separate the "form" from the "content" by presenting the performers with a series of transformation signs which are to be applied to material that may vary considerably from one performance to the next. In Spiral and three companion works (Kurzwellen for six performers, Pole for two, and Expo for three), this material is to be drawn spontaneously during the performance from short-wave radio broadcasts (Kohl 1981, 192–93). The processes, indicated primarily by plus, minus, and equal signs, constitute the composition and, despite the unpredictability of the materials, these processes can be heard from one performance to another as being "the same" (Kohl 2010, 137).
Pauline Oliveros - Accordion & Voice $0.49 (44 mins) (This seems familiar but I can't find if it has been mentioned)
Pauline Oliveros - The Wanderer $0.99 (50 mins) (The label has lots more bargain albums, including a bunch of Merzbow and some Aun, by whom I have liked another album).
Lluís Claret-Pedro Piquero-Gerard Claret - Arvo Pärt: Piano and Chamber Music $0.99 (59 mins) (Strong customer reviews on the Spanish Amazon)
Richard Skelton - Towards a Frontier $0.99 (66 mins) (May be a misprice, GBP 6.99 on bandcamp)
Fossil Aerosol Mining Project - August 53rd $2.99 (39 mins)
"Life is Unfair", a 5 CD set from Black Box Recorder is available for $6.99. Glad I found this one, despite owning the original albums, since it comes with a Rarities and a Live disc.
Comments
On the plus side My Music does allow me to shop at work again, not that it's done me much good lately.
Personally, I have looked at streaming from both sides now, and I really don't know streaming at all, unless I guess you have an unlimited data plan.
My use is similar to others here - I always download and separately back up purchases offline, and only occasionally stream from my account because why burn data bandwidth if you already have a local copy available? Still, I think they could do some innovative things around different streaming models given that they already store everyone's music. But they seem pretty dialed in on a kamikaze blockchain mission, so we'll have to see what the future holds...
Try to purchase, and: "Error: Sorry, this album is not available for purchase at this time (code: INVALID_PRODUCT_ID). If you have questions, please contact us at support@emusic.com" Dirty trick
Also, it's 8.99 on Amazon as well.
I was prepared to spend my monthly allowance on 99 albums from this label (they have a lot of excellent European stuff). Instead I went for the Mariss Jansons mega-album (surely that price won't last for long!). Both interpretation and audio quality are unbelievably good. So strange that there is no data in the composer's field though. Powell to the People also seemed like a good (albeit temporary) price.
Also, I enjoyed Funky Rob Way (Analog Africa Limited Dance Edition Number 2). 6 tracks, 35 minutes, 99 cents. Afrobeat from Ghana -- bandcamp page here: https://analogafrica.bandcamp.com/album/funky-rob-way
Also, Hannibal s/t. 6 tracks, 99 cents. This unpredictable album merges several different styles. rock/funk drums, frantic jazzy guitars, dizzy sax, downbeat blues vocals. I’m not normally a fan of jazz fusion, but I thought there’s a lot of interesting musical themes here amidst the anarchy. Youtube playlist here.
Plong42 mention lots of unknown ProgRock a few weeks ago which I plan to get to. My big discovery recently was finding a 99 cent compilation by Francoise Hardy only to realize that I had downloaded another compilation by her from long ago which I had never listened to. This is really great stuff -- especially at that price.
With regard to cloud vs. local storage, I had to reinstall Windows twice on a machine that became unbootable. I was able to backup everything, but it was long and tedious. I notice that Google Drive is offering cloud storage of 200 gigs for 3$ per month if you buy a one year plan.
about Russian Piano Concertos .... Guess what I'm doing right now?
I'm not a stickler for correct tagging, but there's one or two underground sites which post music downloads which are NEVER correctly tagged. One of them posts bootleg zip files of Indonesian/Asian albums from the 60s and 70s, and almost none of them are tagged correctly (or at all for that matter). At least with Indonesian music they use the Roman alphabet...
It does a nice job getting tags from file names, or renaming the files based on tags. Both features can use any tag, very flexible. The only thing missing is the ability to strip [remastered 2017] out of a song title. I can put that in the comments section, I do not want it in the song name. I had an album from one of those cheap labels the other day that repeated that twice on every song title.
George Russell - six of his top albums + live sets from Music Inn/Newport all for $6.99
https://www.emusic.com/library/album/66054230/George-Russell/George-Russell-Sextet--Septet-The-Complete-1960-1962-Decca--Riverside-Album-Collection-Plus-Two-Live-Recordings-At-Music-Inn-1960-And-at-the-Newport-Jazz-Festival-1964
Muddy Waters, The Anthology, Vol. 1
Muddy Waters, The Anthology, Vol. 2
Muddy Waters, The Anthology, Vol. 3
A better value is Spiral (1968), on the hat ART CD label. $3.99 for about an hour of music. This is a composition for flute and short wave receiver. Read this before listening (or after, whatever). From Wikipedia:
Spiral is one of a series of works dating from the 1960s which Stockhausen designated as "process" compositions. These works in effect separate the "form" from the "content" by presenting the performers with a series of transformation signs which are to be applied to material that may vary considerably from one performance to the next. In Spiral and three companion works (Kurzwellen for six performers, Pole for two, and Expo for three), this material is to be drawn spontaneously during the performance from short-wave radio broadcasts (Kohl 1981, 192–93). The processes, indicated primarily by plus, minus, and equal signs, constitute the composition and, despite the unpredictability of the materials, these processes can be heard from one performance to another as being "the same" (Kohl 2010, 137).
Also on hat ART, John Cage: Fifty-Eight, $1.99 and Fontana Mix (1958) & Solo For Voice 2 (1960) for $2.99.
"Life is Unfair", a 5 CD set from Black Box Recorder is available for $6.99. Glad I found this one, despite owning the original albums, since it comes with a Rarities and a Live disc.
https://www.emusic.com/album/162583587/Black-Box-Recorder/Life-is-Unfair