What an amazing surprise to be able to look at new releases like a human being - thanks, luddite. To Jonah's point I have felt the number of new releases in the limited number of genres I've had the stomach to look at there lately, usually Blues, seemed oddly limited, like something just wasn't right. Curiouser and curiouser.
In notes from the dark side, 5 days I've been waiting for a reply to a Defective Track e-mail from those schmucks, I'm sorry I meant, poor overworked harried Customer Service representatives.
That's what I meant by "there might be something wrong" with the process that's responsible for putting new releases into the new site. Any delay in getting new releases into the database is bad by definition - that should actually be their third priority, after fixing problems with download transactions (which do seem to be working better now) and removing banner ads/images wherever they stupidly appear.
Realizing I used to go browse emusic regularly. Just hang around, click on stuff, find things. 2 weeks into the new experience I have no inclination whatsoever to visit any page unless I already know I want to download something from it. The pay-decent-prices-to-download things function is actually still working for me, and for now still keeping me there, but what they describe as the "experience" has evaporated.
Well thank you Luddite (that name seems somehow appropriate in this context) it has made me realise just how bad the new site actually is, and it is not just because certain things are not working as they should. I hope it keeps going like this for a while!
You might want to try a nice glass of warm milk with those cookies, and if you're lucky you'll drowse off and not have to be tormented by that website any longer for the evening.
Y'know, I guess I should have realized this was a possibility, but it looks like their attempts to fix their bugs are actually making things even worse. If this keeps up, we could be looking at one of the worst (and most preventable) software-instigated business failures in the last 5-7 years. It really is hard to believe.
I should've seen it coming. Apparently now I'm an emusic employee. I knew better, I really really did. People are so angry over there, they'll take any excuse to label someone as one of Them to express their frustration.
But I couldn't stop myself. I've always been me on that forum and I guess I always will.
I just can't get worked up over design that much. Granted I quit as soon as I saw the new site, but it had more to do with the slowness making me realize that a good half of what I wAnted cost 6.99 now, and then realizing that even 6.49 isn't a really good deal. It always comes back to price with me.
I signed up as an eMusers member months ago, and then got really busy and never posted anything. But now with the mess at eMusic, I'm probably going to cancel my account there after almost 6 years. I decided I would check and see if I could actually still log in here after being dormant so long, so I could keep in touch with the eMu community, even if I'm no longer using eMusic.
I'm a bit torn about cancelling at eMu, only because I know there's still music on there I'd love, but then it looks like it will be impossible to find, so it probably doesn't matter anyway. I'm wondering now how many members they'll lose from this fiasco. Even if they fix the bugs, I have a feeling I won't like the site anymore anyway, not because of the music selection, but because of the unreadability and annoying graphics. It's hard to believe that anyone new would want to sign up for this either. I agree with ScissorMan above that eMu may be headed towards a complete demise.
I understand the desire to simply move on. I think most of us here have quit at least once. The nice thing is, emu is pretty good about offering re-join deals, which also, most of us here have rejoined at least once, too.
I really hope they don't go under. If they did, it would pretty much end my ability to buy indie jazz, not to mention that I recently started freelancing some jazz reviews for them, which has had me on cloud 9 for the month since it began.
But a nice thing about emusers is that some people here have done some tremendous work compiling excellent resources to find music that either falls outside the reach of conventional music retailers and/or acts as an alternative to them.
Welcome trad 23. I started here just over a year ago. Since then I've gained enormously from the community, especially for opening and widening my music horizons. I'm in the UK, so still on a grandfathered plan which is a really good deal. But once that goes I'm off unless the site improves. The search facility just seems so slow. I'd live with the colour, even though I don't like it, or even the large images of covers if I could find the music I am looking for. It'll be interesting to see how it all ends up, but I do hope emusic does not go under
Yes I agree BN - on the whole it is actually working for me, I can generally, for example, find a way to download. It is the actual usability that causes me problems. Given emusic's problems at the moment, I really do wonder how much the migration to the new platform had been thought through fully and how much is it Scott Taylor trying to show how good he is by doing what no-one else had beforehand. Well, he's failed the test!
I agree that design is the issue, and I don't mean the color, I mean the loss of the recommendation engine, the banner ads, the minimal info per page, loss of SFL functionality, etc. Something someone just said on the other board about emusic being most scared of losing out to the streaming sites made me suddenly realize that the only other thing I use that has the emusic-type color scheme and layout (including banner ads!) is spotify. I remember one of the emusic communications saying something about the new color scheme being a good listening environment. Makes me think a chunk of what's driving this is to try to get more like spotify (hence the new player and radio being central features for them). No idea whether they are right or wrong on this; it doesn't interest me much, and I've hardly used the radio, but maybe I represent a dying customer base. And they should still fix basic navigability issues.
The radio feature is okay. It doesn't have much new content and you still have to be on music's website. I wish the new player would continue to play even if you were in your account pages or the discussion boards. I agree with GP that it does seem like a nod to Spotify, though it has much less user interface since you can only stream the content created for each channel. I have found a few more albums through it to add to my overburdened SFL. But then I use Spotify to decide what is really worth downloading verses just streaming. My reason for staying with eMusic, though I think I may quit next year or reduce my membership, is that it has a wide selection of music, including many obscure albums that cost much more elsewhere.
Yeah, that's getting close to my sole reason for staying - that there are specific artists and albums that it would cost me much more to keep up with otherwise.
I think I'd buy far less music if I left emusic - it depends on your perspective if that is good or not - my wife would probably celebrate! The cost has enabled me to delve into new genres to me fairly cheaply in a way that I could not elsewhere legally in the UK. Even then I suspect much of what I download from emu isn't available that way - not that I have ever tried or want to.
I think I would too greg. I also have tried to buy less music elsewhere to justify the cost of my eMusic membership. Getting as much music as I do, I often feel more like a music consumer than a music listener. I often feel like I have a wide but shallow knowledge of music.
It's difficult to be certain, given that the eMu boards have never really worked properly, but it looks like they've now deleted the stuff making fun of the lead developer that was drawn from his social media sites.
Important advice for the eMu management folks: The stuff making fun of the guy was actually OK to keep. The things you want to delete are the various PHP files, client-side scripts, and WordPress customizations that he's worked on since joining the company.
I've just been looking at the messag board over there. Still people saying things like I've been a member for 5 years and never ever posted before. The uproar is far greater, from a wider range of posters than ever the changes last year lead to. Yet very little from the moderators - I've seen barely two or three comments since Thanksgiving. Either they are sitting it out whilst they make improvements or they are planning something else, or maybe they are just waiting for it to go away. One comment talked about when Coke changed in the 1980s to make it more like Pepsi and how they had to go back when they recognised it was wrong. I hope emusic takes note, but I have my doubts. The Englishness in me says it is the beginning of the end for emusic - I hope not.
Comments
In notes from the dark side, 5 days I've been waiting for a reply to a Defective Track e-mail from those schmucks, I'm sorry I meant, poor overworked harried Customer Service representatives.
So that was the problem all along!
Nope, not jumping into that hornet's nest. Not me. Nothing good will come of it.
But I couldn't stop myself. I've always been me on that forum and I guess I always will.
I'm a bit torn about cancelling at eMu, only because I know there's still music on there I'd love, but then it looks like it will be impossible to find, so it probably doesn't matter anyway. I'm wondering now how many members they'll lose from this fiasco. Even if they fix the bugs, I have a feeling I won't like the site anymore anyway, not because of the music selection, but because of the unreadability and annoying graphics. It's hard to believe that anyone new would want to sign up for this either. I agree with ScissorMan above that eMu may be headed towards a complete demise.
I understand the desire to simply move on. I think most of us here have quit at least once. The nice thing is, emu is pretty good about offering re-join deals, which also, most of us here have rejoined at least once, too.
I really hope they don't go under. If they did, it would pretty much end my ability to buy indie jazz, not to mention that I recently started freelancing some jazz reviews for them, which has had me on cloud 9 for the month since it began.
But a nice thing about emusers is that some people here have done some tremendous work compiling excellent resources to find music that either falls outside the reach of conventional music retailers and/or acts as an alternative to them.
Cheers.
Another user, also disgruntled, has posted stuff making fun of the "lead developer," drawn from his social media sites.
Meanwhile, must say the new site seems to be more or less functioning on my end.
- That leaves all the user unfriendly issues to be dealt with (IMO)
In another thread there's a link to what seems to be the head developer speaking about the transition, high tech stuff that I don't understand anything of:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/11/how-emusic-scaled-wordpress.php
ie, Amazon Web Services. Does that mean that eMu DLs are now coming from the Amazon "cloud"?
Important advice for the eMu management folks: The stuff making fun of the guy was actually OK to keep. The things you want to delete are the various PHP files, client-side scripts, and WordPress customizations that he's worked on since joining the company.