Quite a few Vandermark 5 albums available, all pretty much solid, maybe a bit on the interchangeable side. But I doubt anyone liking his music wouldn't fully enjoy a few of these.
Plenty of other good releases on that label: Atavistic
Over the last couple of days I've been reading about Lester Young and Billie Holiday in Ted Gioia's History of Jazz. I've been looking at eMusic to see what I could download. But it is too confusing, especially Lester Young, with so many copyright free albums there. Then I found one with both playing/singing together. The problem is that it is a lot of tracks, and therefore quite expensive with eMusic's European model, so it is considerably cheaper at Amazon. I think I'll stick to Spotify (and that is part of eMusic's problem)
Speaking of Atavistic, there are a couple of nice things from the late great Fred Anderson. These are from 1979-80, with a very young Hamid Drake on board.
Good lord, these fake jazz comps...They're not even trying anymore
I suspect these come from the 7Digital side of the house, as 7DIG gets most of their (paltry) revenue from Muzak-like B2B services. So there is some department store elevator operator out there who is subscribing to services to deliver schmaltzy "built to purpose" soft jazz playlists, and some sleazy nightclub snatching up all those soft-core faux jazz titles with the R-rated album art. As for the rest of us seeking actual jazz, to quote the famous Judge Elhew Smails in Caddyshack, "You'll get nothing - and like it!" ;-)
Hi Peter, thanks for reaching out for an update. Sorry for the delay! As others have mentioned our token sale continues, and we continue to pursue the right mechanisms that will allow us to restore our catalog and our partnerships, old and new. Our head of content continues to update the recommended portion of the app/site within the catalog that remains - we hope you've been able to see some content there of interest to you. On the artist side, we've been working with a number of artists who are interested in being a part of the early stages of the blockchain platform with enabled features such as tipping, album exclusives and digital collectibles. We were proud to be part of a panel related to blockchain initiatives along with Ujo, Choon and others at SXSW discussing how this new technology can affect meaningful change - we'll post a synopsis of our experience soon on our Medium blog.
I notice the play counts for those "artists" are next to nothing in most cases. So, yeah, the content gets dumped in Spotify, too (who probably like the padding of statistics for how many titles they have in their race to the bottom with Apple) but a certain tree in a certain forest comes to mind.
Well, I didn't say 100% crap, just 98%. :-) And I agree that this site (and particularly the "Still on eMusic" forum you started) have been very helpful. It's just tough to even ponder what "back to normal" could mean going forward for eMusic. I think it's been pretty much a flat spin fall from the sky from the moment TriPlay bought them (and it's not like past management was always stellar, so to say the decline accelerated is particularly a bad look for TriPlay). But, until the altimeter hits zero, I agree that digging through the rubble for some gems is helpful!
See my downloads for April on the "What I bought from eMusic last month" discussion.
P.S. Sorry about the big text but I copied it across and couldn't reduce the size!
My special picks are the Lizard albums ("Single Omen" and "Half-Live"), "Poco Live", "Hunting the Snake" by the Schlippenbach Quartet, "Elephant Ball" by Crystal Sypho, the Marion Brown albums ("Why Not?" and "Marion Brown") and the Coil albums. The JPT Scare Band albums "Acid Acetate Excursion" and "Acid Blues is the White Man's Burden" are pretty good too.
"Normal" meaning a catalogue full of 98% vapid crap and very little meaningful content? ;-)
I have to admit, I stopped checking eMusic regularly after they got rid of the daily free track, and I stopped checking it altogether about two years ago. But I checked just now, and there are still a few indie-rock labels there, like Merge, Fire, Sarah, Carpark, Shelflife... Does anyone know if these labels went away for a while and then came back, or have they always been there? (Please forgive me if that's a stupid question...)
At this point there might be enough on Emu for me to use up the $50 sign-up bonus, assuming I'd qualify for it. They're still not great at things like album categorization and general sorting, and lots of internal links still lead basically nowhere, but aside from that most of the really serious bugs seem to have been worked out, more or less.
I'd say if you're off eMusic, then stay off - who knows if the labels still on there get paid. I'm on annual, so have to wait for a few months, but then sayonara. What little is left is enough to fill my allotment, sure, but I wouldn't think you'd be doing anyone a favor by returning to cherrypick.
I see your point ScissorMan about getting the $50 sign-up bonus - are they still giving it? But I agree with Kargatron for the reasons he's given. Much (most?) of what is there is stuff that is out of copyright. When I come here, I wonder of I'll see that they have closed overnight. The end cannot be far away, surely?
@ScissorMan, the points raised by @kargatron and @greg are well made. However if you want to get a feel for what's still worthwhile on eMusic have a look at earlier posts on this discussion and on the "What I bought from eMusic last month" discussion.
Top 1970 album from one of Australia's top progressive/psychedelic bands and what a great album name! Rated by The Guardian as one of the 101 strangest records on Spotify! Still on eMusic.
Comments
Plenty of other good releases on that label: Atavistic
The Peter, Paul and Mary album "Deep Water" actually contains all the songs from their first two (and close to their best) albums - "Peter, Paul and Mary" and "In the Wind".
https://www.emusic.com/album/197550623/Peter-Paul--Mary/Deep-Water
"Poco Live" contains almost all their best songs in an excellent and well recorded live performance.
https://www.emusic.com/album/816526/Poco/Poco---Live
Hi Peter, thanks for reaching out for an update. Sorry for the delay! As others have mentioned our token sale continues, and we continue to pursue the right mechanisms that will allow us to restore our catalog and our partnerships, old and new. Our head of content continues to update the recommended portion of the app/site within the catalog that remains - we hope you've been able to see some content there of interest to you. On the artist side, we've been working with a number of artists who are interested in being a part of the early stages of the blockchain platform with enabled features such as tipping, album exclusives and digital collectibles. We were proud to be part of a panel related to blockchain initiatives along with Ujo, Choon and others at SXSW discussing how this new technology can affect meaningful change - we'll post a synopsis of our experience soon on our Medium blog.
Sorry, That Album Is Unavailable
Looks as if nothing is currently available...Soulcoal, you for one have passed on some great tips, on this and other threads, which have helped increase my Wish List back over the 100 mark!
I've found some great albums via this discussion thread and also the one on "What I bought from eMusic last month".
My special picks are the Lizard albums ("Single Omen" and "Half-Live"), "Poco Live", "Hunting the Snake" by the Schlippenbach Quartet, "Elephant Ball" by Crystal Sypho, the Marion Brown albums ("Why Not?" and "Marion Brown") and the Coil albums. The JPT Scare Band albums "Acid Acetate Excursion" and "Acid Blues is the White Man's Burden" are pretty good too.
Top 1970 album from one of Australia's top progressive/psychedelic bands and what a great album name! Rated by The Guardian as one of the 101 strangest records on Spotify! Still on eMusic.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/aug/07/101-strangest-spotify-tamam-shud
http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5732
Goolutionites-and-the-Real-People
Sorry,