And who are their editors that do the editor's picks? I'm curious if they really have jazzers there who can act as a source of information and perspective or if it's just indie guys who like jazz well enough but spend more time reading about what they should be recommending rather than listening to it.
yeah, i think they have legitimate jazz critics; they just don't contribute to the 17Dots blog (e.g., phil freeman (author of running the voodoo down: the electric music of miles davis); kevin whitehead (jazz critic for NPR's fresh-air; author of why jazz? a concise guide).
I've become more cynical as I get older so I believe that their recommendations throughout are more linked to marketing than to any other reason these days. I have stopped looking at 17 Dots anyway, not that I ever did much, because so much I cannot download here
to some degree, this has to be true. emusic is, obv., a for-profit business catering to a niche. but i'd say that, despite that, they are given pretty remarkable freedom over what they write and promote. they trash titles that other publications love; they praise titles that are almost totally under-the-radar, at least at the time they promote it.
I think they just don't sell much jazz, period. Sometimes you look at their jazz charts, and as you get past the first few pages, there are big chunks of catalog in alphabetical order...no doubt denoting albums that are DL'd a few times, or not at all. I bet they would welcome more editorial input on jazz, if they didn't have to pay for it!
There's a part of me that's considering offering to do some legwork in trade for free downloads. Just not sure if it's even worth approaching them about it. I guess if the mood overtakes me, I will.
I've never really paid much attention to 17 dots. And I'm pretty sure that the 17 most frequent emusers posters are a much more reliable guide to what I might want to listen to.
Well, for all emusic's imperfections, apart from one bout with the downloader committing sepukku all over my machine, I have consistently received the file I downloaded. Yesterday my daughter bought a two album deal from Sia's website, for which the underlying vendor is www.myplaydirect.com, and FIVE of the tracks are defective (track fragments). And somehow it sucks more when it's music bought for one of your kids. We'll see what their customer service is like...
ETA: Well, the answer is prompt (response time: four hours), courteous (friendly apology), and a no-questions-asked re-enabling of the downloads so I can redownload the files. Too bad about the initial downloader problem, but this is the way to resolve it. Full marks.
I'm happy for you, GP. Bad enough to experience the problem in the first place, but that crappy uncertainty over how your request will be received always sucks. Does feel pretty good, though, when we receive solid customer service.
Hey, everyone else, there were two different posts made of the forum a while back (one, I think, was even in response to one of my posts) where Noah gave an email on where to contact him and/or maybe it was that to contact him it was to the Contact Us link but include something specific in the subject line so that it got filtered directly to him.
Anybody have a lead on where that might be? My searches on the emu forum have come up with nothing.
Membership questions are best directed to our CS group. However, if you feel more comfortable directing issues to the Message Board team here, we will certainly act as the go between and work with CS. In fact, a couple of our team members here are from the CS group. Keep in mind, some situations may be best addressed in a private email from CS - which may be the method we use to reply to your concerns. That will be handled case by case.
The email address you can use is service@emusic.com
Hope that helps!
Justin
Two posts later, an afterthought:
There is something additional we can do to help with your CS inquiries. Since you are all frequent message board users, we can automatically route your CS emails to a queue which the moderator team can handle and respond to. The only requirement is that you email CS using the email address associated with your eMusic account. This way the routing rules will work correctly and consistently.
It's funny in a peculiarly painful way to consider all the odd permutations of search terms one cycles through, then to come face to face with keywords that are so painfully obvious and simple.
I just find myself wondering why they feel they need to keep monkeying around with the website mechanics over there when cruel experience has clearly shown that the webmonkeys aren't up to the task. Do they have to strive to attract newbies browsing on their smartphones and mobile devices? I mean when have they upgraded anything there lately that didn't leave some segment of the customer base out in the cold - the Download Mangler you can always bet is not going to work right for some system or another. I don't even mean something like expecting Lion to work properly - I naturally assume it won't, and I'll be waiting a few before I even upgrade to that just to let everyone play catch up.
Less buying, more listening, less buying, more listening.......maybe if I start chanting that as I go to sleep each night...
As a mobile device user, let me say that it's worse than ever over there from that aspect. I find myself wishing they'd just go plain vanilla; text, links and pictures only.
In other news, the eMu employee lounge now has a refrigerator with a light that goes on when you open the door. Also rumors of a toaster that toasts bagels.
Along with the new player, which I actually do like, it appears that eMu is doing something potentially sneaky in there.
If you look at View Source for the topmost frame of an album page, there's a line in the JavaScript section beginning with "function (win)," containing an array variable called "exemptPaths" - apparently this replaces certain links or JavaScript references that might be inserted into the page after it loads (something that's usually done by browser plugins and extensions) with a non-working link to "http://www.emusic.com/listen/#". The "exempt paths" are URLs that they've put in the page(s) themselves; they're not replacing those.
This is probably just a bug they added due to their not testing the new player with various browser add-ons (and I wouldn't blame them, considering how many add-ons are out there). But if you look at things from a darker perspective, it's also possible they're targeting a specific browser add-on with this code, though I have no idea (yet) what that add-on might be... I don't think the add-on is Ghostery, because it doesn't really stop Ghostery, it just makes it harder (if not impossible) to clear the Ghostery notification box in the upper-right corner of the page. But regardless, that's how I noticed it, and it only started the other day. Unfortunately, the Ghostery box sits right on top of the "Search" control, so they've effectively made searching from album pages more difficult (if not impossible).
Then again, if you prefer to think of it more positively, I suppose it could even be an attempt to circumvent malicious code running within eMu pages, effectively correcting the insertion of links to malware sites and the like. Hard to say, really!
Gosh, I just cannot express how excited I was to find this listing as I was checking the Freshly Ripped today - in the Jazz section no less - link. Really!?!?? On the bright side, I haven't spent much there the last couple of weeks.
After snarking about how members aren't being specific enough about their complaints in the wake of recent "upgrades" the long suffering Noah wrote, "Check out the site later today for some new enhancements that might correct some issues you are experiencing." Personally I love the word might, especially regarding service issues.
Well, speaking as a programmer myself, it really is frustrating when folks forget to tell you what browser and OS they're using. Unless of course you have an assistant whose job it is to e-mail the person back and ask, but who can afford those, these days?
My guess is they tested under Chrome only, or else that and OS X/Safari, because they wanted to show their demos on Android tablets and Macs/iPads. Seriously, this is getting to be a real problem in the web-based development industry - the desktop is still the most-used platform by far, particularly for online retail purchasing, but more and more we're seeing developers who only care about getting things to work on the "sexy" gear like tablets and smartphones, because the corporate outsourcers who are paying them think those things are cooler.
I understand his asking that but when that many people are complaining I would think you have to figure they are using a variety of platforms and that perhaps it is your vehicle that is buggy. This always seems to be the last thing they want to admit over there. Bottom line gripe-wise for the customers seems to be if it ain't broke don't replace it with something that is.
Were sorry. This album is unavailable for download in your country (United States) at this time.
- Link - This was free in Europe up until yesterday.
Any chance you were at or near the US embassy when you tried downloading it? Our sphere of influence can't be contained by some pissant lines of demarcation.
Maybe the US bought Denmark. Now that we have a bad credit rating, it's so much easier to get those big loans. We'll try it out for a while, and then when we can't pay anymore just walk away.
I just looked at the boards for the first time in maybe 6 months, and there are still people talking about quitting. One called Spokanista says she's been around since the unlimited days.
They offered me a measly $10 to re-up, but I'm not bought that easily.
I'm still cheerfully downloading albums that I want that are unavailable/more expensive elsewhere on a monthly basis. And shopping elsewhere for the rest.
Comments
yeah, i think they have legitimate jazz critics; they just don't contribute to the 17Dots blog (e.g., phil freeman (author of running the voodoo down: the electric music of miles davis); kevin whitehead (jazz critic for NPR's fresh-air; author of why jazz? a concise guide).
to some degree, this has to be true. emusic is, obv., a for-profit business catering to a niche. but i'd say that, despite that, they are given pretty remarkable freedom over what they write and promote. they trash titles that other publications love; they praise titles that are almost totally under-the-radar, at least at the time they promote it.
Hm, not so sure. I no longer underestimate emu's talent for pissing me off.
ETA: Well, the answer is prompt (response time: four hours), courteous (friendly apology), and a no-questions-asked re-enabling of the downloads so I can redownload the files. Too bad about the initial downloader problem, but this is the way to resolve it. Full marks.
Hey, everyone else, there were two different posts made of the forum a while back (one, I think, was even in response to one of my posts) where Noah gave an email on where to contact him and/or maybe it was that to contact him it was to the Contact Us link but include something specific in the subject line so that it got filtered directly to him.
Anybody have a lead on where that might be? My searches on the emu forum have come up with nothing.
Two posts later, an afterthought:
My search terms? email moderator
Thank you.
Less buying, more listening, less buying, more listening.......maybe if I start chanting that as I go to sleep each night...
If you look at View Source for the topmost frame of an album page, there's a line in the JavaScript section beginning with "function (win)," containing an array variable called "exemptPaths" - apparently this replaces certain links or JavaScript references that might be inserted into the page after it loads (something that's usually done by browser plugins and extensions) with a non-working link to "http://www.emusic.com/listen/#". The "exempt paths" are URLs that they've put in the page(s) themselves; they're not replacing those.
This is probably just a bug they added due to their not testing the new player with various browser add-ons (and I wouldn't blame them, considering how many add-ons are out there). But if you look at things from a darker perspective, it's also possible they're targeting a specific browser add-on with this code, though I have no idea (yet) what that add-on might be... I don't think the add-on is Ghostery, because it doesn't really stop Ghostery, it just makes it harder (if not impossible) to clear the Ghostery notification box in the upper-right corner of the page. But regardless, that's how I noticed it, and it only started the other day. Unfortunately, the Ghostery box sits right on top of the "Search" control, so they've effectively made searching from album pages more difficult (if not impossible).
Then again, if you prefer to think of it more positively, I suppose it could even be an attempt to circumvent malicious code running within eMu pages, effectively correcting the insertion of links to malware sites and the like. Hard to say, really!
My guess is they tested under Chrome only, or else that and OS X/Safari, because they wanted to show their demos on Android tablets and Macs/iPads. Seriously, this is getting to be a real problem in the web-based development industry - the desktop is still the most-used platform by far, particularly for online retail purchasing, but more and more we're seeing developers who only care about getting things to work on the "sexy" gear like tablets and smartphones, because the corporate outsourcers who are paying them think those things are cooler.
Craig
Any chance you were at or near the US embassy when you tried downloading it? Our sphere of influence can't be contained by some pissant lines of demarcation.
They offered me a measly $10 to re-up, but I'm not bought that easily.
Craig