And I'm back to work again - thank you all for the congratulations! He is perfect though, and we are still well rested. I do get the feeling this won't happen for long though.
re: the new site, as you can see... CREDITS! Watch the videos, interact with the ads. There are new ad types and reward methods on the horizon but what is available can refresh every day/week/month so just keep heading back and check out what ads are available.
As far as navigation, there are a ton of improvements to searching, discovery and navigation that will start to trickle through. The most important thing was to get the new structure in place - the site will start to shine in the coming months.
Belated congrats! On the whole I'm enjoying the new interface so far. The search takes a little getting used to, but it's easier to pick out albums than in the old version. The download process feels a lot more straightforward - it's a big plus not to have to be navigating back and forth from channel pages all the time. I've also just sat listening to several tracks on the site - something that on the old interface, even though it was possible, I never felt as drawn to do. In terms of ease of use, this feels like a big step forward - if you can get the ads rolling at a good rate so that there are regular credits to come for I can see myself spending a lot more time at the site.
Can somebody post some titles of, say, jazz things that are on Guvera that I should be checking out? Most of the electronic artists/labels that I follow are not on there. (At the moment I am working my way through what they have of Arvo P
Well - the entire Impulse and Blue Note catalogs, for starters! Most of the greatest of Coltrane is on Blue Note then Impulse, you can pretty much take your pick - "Blue Train" is probably the place to start. Pharoah Sanders is another name to look for; his album "Karma" is available for 2 credits. (You must be willing to expand your consciousness, however.)
Elsewhere on Blue Note, for you the name that leaps to mind is Andrew Hill ("Point of Departure"). But then there's Joe Henderson ("In N Out"), early Bobby Hutcherson ("Components"), Herbie Hancock ("Empyrean Isles"), Larry Young ("Unity"). And that's just on the harder/freer edge...there's a whole 'nother soulful side, with Jimmy Smith, many others. Lots more recs where those come from - these two labels are prob where most of my Guvera credits have gone.
By the way, if anyone does not have Alva Noto's Xerrox series, volumes one and two are on Guvera. Vol 2 especially is sublime. And I just used some Guvera credits to fill in the less-than-30-second tracks on Vol. 1 that I was too cheap to spend emusic credits on back when I got the album.
Just a footnote - I picked up the "long tracks"(some of which aren't that long,GDI)=album only from Wynton Kelly's Kelly Blue - nice album - then got the 4 $0.49 ones at eMu - it's a Concord group so of course the 4 tracks from eMu came in Fraunhofer ( I was resigned to such in advance), but pleasantly the 4 from Guvera came in LAME encoding. I probably should have held out for the whole album but I had ants in the pants and not enough downloads.
The morale of the story being they are a great place to pick up old OJC titles, Fantasy, Concord etc.
Black Unity is pretty ferocious, perhaps not worth even just the one credit... unless it's the kind of thing you like. IIRC, not that far removed from Coltrane's "Om." Not easy to listen to. More of an "experience" kind of thing.
Yes, I listened to quite a bit of Black Unity - certainly different. Quite enjoyed most of it in a 'not sure I would listen to this regularly but it's interesting' kind of way.
@ddanmar - Just wanted to follow up that the re-design seems like a very solid move in the right direction at this point. Of course I wish it was easier to find albums, but the service is obviously going to appeal to the singles-listeners primarily so that's not a surprise. Either way, I've found it much easier to "interact" with ads, get and use downloads, and just play some tracks than ever before. Seems like you guys might be able to really improve the monetization aspect at this point and keep it viable.
Do experiment with punctuation on the Guvera search engine. For instance, a search for "Balkan Beat Box" yields one of their albums, while "Balkan Beat Box," shows two more.
@dddanmar, One thing that I can't find any more on the new site is the process for redownloading from history if a download fails. I have had two failed downloads in the last two days. Not a tragedy as they were free credits; just wondering if there is still any way to recover a failed download?
Prof, the past answer to that has been the link for "if your download doesn't start." I know, not much help if you complete a DL that later proves to be faulty. I have a track that's bad after 2 DL attempts; will duly report, but would be surprised if they were to fix the track.
The past answer was a bit more than the "if" dialog - it used to be possible to view your history of recent downloads and redownload a track if it was still within 5 minutes or so. It didn't always work - my experience was that sometimes if the download was not working then the history thing was not working either - which might be part of why they streamlined. The other thing is that the option of buying tracks for cash seems to have gone away (presumably low usage compared to cost of running it?), so if all the credits are free ones there is less obligation on their part to fix bad downloads, except in terms of minimizing customer annoyance. On the whole I must say the new site is working very well.
Comments
re: the new site, as you can see... CREDITS! Watch the videos, interact with the ads. There are new ad types and reward methods on the horizon but what is available can refresh every day/week/month so just keep heading back and check out what ads are available.
As far as navigation, there are a ton of improvements to searching, discovery and navigation that will start to trickle through. The most important thing was to get the new structure in place - the site will start to shine in the coming months.
Eight more this morning!
Craig
Elsewhere on Blue Note, for you the name that leaps to mind is Andrew Hill ("Point of Departure"). But then there's Joe Henderson ("In N Out"), early Bobby Hutcherson ("Components"), Herbie Hancock ("Empyrean Isles"), Larry Young ("Unity"). And that's just on the harder/freer edge...there's a whole 'nother soulful side, with Jimmy Smith, many others. Lots more recs where those come from - these two labels are prob where most of my Guvera credits have gone.
By the way, if anyone does not have Alva Noto's Xerrox series, volumes one and two are on Guvera. Vol 2 especially is sublime. And I just used some Guvera credits to fill in the less-than-30-second tracks on Vol. 1 that I was too cheap to spend emusic credits on back when I got the album.
The morale of the story being they are a great place to pick up old OJC titles, Fantasy, Concord etc.