At this point it's hard to judge what's really going on. For me at least, the site appears to be working more or less normally...perhaps still some issues with searching and sorting results. It doesn't help that eMu are hiding in their bunkers as the fixes dribble out; meanwhile, some of the user reactions are pretty over-the-top. It does sound like things are still pretty screwed up for some overseas customers.
I don't know why they (eMu) get themselves into these customer relations debacles, but they seem to have a gift for it. Perhaps the response would have been less hostile if the re-design had focused more on the things people have always asked for--better search, etc. It's a particular shame because they seem to have made an effort to upgrade the editorial content, but it's completely overshadowed by the redesign outrage.
I've seen a few Moderator responses, to important things like when Animals by Pink Floyd will be available, or minor particular issues by individual members, so I deduce they are or have been told to lay low since I suppose they don't have anything to say that will assuage any of the overwhelmingly negative feedback there - and I assume that's because the company has no intention of backing off this turkey served up with massive technological incompetence. It took them over a week to get back to me about removing the upcoming Hold I had placed on the account - 3 e-mails to CS - and I told them don't interpret it as support, I just want to be able to keep cleaning out my SFLs in case I want to quit. I don't suppose they are sophisticated enough to notice the reduction of several hundred titles from those Lists, and auger what that implies however.
Yes, I'm really starting to think they think they can reach a different demographic and are OK with shedding all the folk who want to dig deep into the catalog and don't care about the radio. Or perhaps that they have some fixed idea in their head about future survival meaning becoming a little bit of amazon and a little bit of spotify and staking their future on this regardless of who leaves in the short term. For all I know they could be right, much as I dislike the significant loss of functionality on the new site (it's really not about the color scheme for the most part). It still gets my goat that they communicate and implement as if they are willfully trying to make their customers angry.
You could well be right GP. We are probably not that profitable, especially those of us with grandfathered plans - I am only paying 20p per track at most, 12p for those I get via Groupon deals. This kind of business model works on a massive turnover - the Walmart (in USA) or Tesco (in UK) approach. Emusic have tried that - we don't know if they have succeed or not. The alternative is to go for a lower turnover, in units sold, but with much greater profitability per unit, as long as you are just slightly cheaper than the market leader - ie itunes Those prepared to pay more are probably younger than me! The danger is that they will actually turn to file sharing sites instead. I showed my 20 year old niece the new site - she was happy with the colours/design. She is used to itunes - fortunately she does not download illegal stuff, so would go to a slightly better value site if what she wants is there
So they make more money from several hundred ADD teenie/tweenies who will pay eMu's top shelf prices and don't use up their downloads or let their account lapse and get recharged or whatever than from one aging downloading maniac who's good for every download and a couple of boosters per month on average, huh? That may well be I guess. It's just hard to digest from a music fiend's perspective. Are we the 1% in this equation?
One percent? Me even registering as much as one percent reminds me of the night that Michael Jordan scored 64 points and mediocre Bulls center Will Purdue joked that he'd always remember it as the game that he and Jordan combined to score 65 points.
I buy small-label and self-produced jazz. I am Will Purdue.
I don't know what's happening behind the scenes but on the message boards, on Twitter and on Facebook you get the same response from CSR. "We're sorry you're experiencing problems, please email emusichelps@emusic.com" and maybe something about how hard they are working to fix it, thanks for your patience. I don't want to harp but it's been three (3) weeks and the site is stil basically unusable for me so ... the time for patience has passed I reckon.
In case anyone is interested, here's part 2 of my email exchange with Noah:
My reply:
Thank you for your reply.
Well, Im not angry anymore and never was at you or any other member of the staff. I am confident that you do the best you can under the circumstances.
The basic functions on the site has improved, so I no longer see a reason to put my account on hold.
It worries me though, that from how I understand your reply, You and Emusic believes that its just a matter of getting used to the new design.
- There is, as I see it, way too many steps backwards in the user friendly side of the site. The issues mentioned in the Emusic Classical thread are important and valid points and I would like to urge you to pay attention to Nereffids post.
RE: Date added on browse label pages:
- This is important because it enables you to check wether a label is still active and helps to avoid very early additions that very often has low bitrates.
RE: Browsing freshly ripped:
- This is something that I just dont do anymore, and stopped doing after the last redesign where you had to look for the artist name. Now its even worse with the 3 columns. This is way too time consuming.
What Emusic needs to do is to make columns Artist > Album > Genre > and maybe label and year. Like the great lists for Europe provided by Dhaun. (If Dhaun can do it so can Emusic)
RE: RSS feeds:
- Is there plans about adding a clickable RSS icon on pages where feeds are available ? I know the feeds are there if you know how to fiddle around with the url, but it would be a great service from emusic to the subschribers, the labels and the artists.
RE: The mouse over function on artist pages:
- This was a nice feature from the last redesign, unfortunately no longer there.
RE: The scroll bar on album pages (12+ tracks)
- I wish it would go away but would it be possible to at least make it scrollable without having to grab the bar with the arrow ?
- Enough for now. . .
Ib.
- And the reply from Noah:
Hi,
I agree the classical search was a mess. I use was because as of Dec 6 2011 the fix we had worked. That issue is now resolved.
However the date added isn't fixed. This is something a lot of other members brought up. There was some issues with date added before redesign, but it was a lower priority to address. This is probably still going to be an issue going forward. I don't have a timeline for this to be fixed.
Freshly ripped, agreed we got feedback that having a thumbnail view or list view would be really ideal. I agree with that plus it's not in alphabetical order. The year filter is coming back. Member services constantly is providing a list of features either removed by the new design that we want back, and new features members are requesting. Once I get more information on this I can pass it along. Right now we are addressing critical issues before we do lower priority things.
RSS it worked in the old design. I have to get help with this because I'm not very familiar with it. I thought I had an email in outlook about it but I can't find it. I'll follow up on that.
The mouse over is coming back. It wasn't included in the latest update, but it's coming back.
I'll provide your feedback on the scroll bar. Would a suggestion of clicking in that window and hitting the down arrow to control that section be good as well? Personally the less I use the mouse the happier I am.
There are more updates to come, let me know if there is any thing else I can address. Sorry for the late response but I wanted to reply when I knew more issues were fixed and stayed fixed.
Regards,
- I'm impressed ! - They actually do listen to the subscribers.
I think Noah certainly is earning his pay - he's stepping outside the canned responses. I had to contact CS twice more or less simultaneously, with different downloading issues for each of my 2 accounts. In one I said I couldn't switch my DLM from disabled to enabled, and in the second I mentioned this in passing. To the first I got a totally unhelpful response to try reinstalling the DLM, but to the second Noah explained that this was a bug they knew about and were fixing.
Yes I actually feel that Noah is doing a good job in difficult circumstances, far better than Cathy Nevin last year, and he is having to put up with a lot from members
I had a phone conversation with the marketing guy at emusic this morning, which was interesting and helpful. I posted (with his permission) the main points over at the other board here and here.
Several folk actually. Not in that many words, but there's a whole strand of comments from folk apparently believing if they can get this specific developer fired then they will have held emusic accountable for messing with their customers. They're also posting stuff from his personal websites, facebook etc.
Okay, I totally get the anger, been there myself in the past, but stalking people to other websites seems way over the top (as well as proof of having way too much time on their hands and no idea on how to best utilize it).
as well as proof of having way too much time on their hands and no idea on how to best utilize it
Bear in mind, however, that this is probably time they used to spend/waste browsing eMusic before the debacle, so there is an element of the wheel weaving as the wheel will here.
Lol, yes, probably, but that doesn't address the "and no idea on how to best utilize it" portion of my statement. Wasting time browsing music on emu... that's something I am probably guilty of more than most emu customers, but how the next step from that is reading employee facebook and twitter accounts, as opposed to browsing bandcamp or mtracks or music forums, that's a leap of logic a little bit out of my reach.
Yes and we all know about people wearing a hoodie, don't we? GP will understand when I say Daily Mail readers just hate, with a vengeance, anyone wearing a hoodie. They will even go to the opposite side of the street to avoid them. Needless to say I am a Guardian reader (again probably only GP will get the reference) so I like hoodie wearers - in fact why haven't I got one?
But I agree that some comments have gone way to far. Whatever we think we shouldn't go as far as some suggest...
Comments
I don't know why they (eMu) get themselves into these customer relations debacles, but they seem to have a gift for it. Perhaps the response would have been less hostile if the re-design had focused more on the things people have always asked for--better search, etc. It's a particular shame because they seem to have made an effort to upgrade the editorial content, but it's completely overshadowed by the redesign outrage.
No, by saying nothing about it, they have made that very clear.
I buy small-label and self-produced jazz. I am Will Purdue.
I'm Spartacus!
Craig
My reply: - And the reply from Noah: - I'm impressed ! - They actually do listen to the subscribers.
Being a moderator on the AAJ forums is tough, but we have way more latitude in drawing the line on behavior than Noah (and the other emu mods) has.
Edit - thread up here
Did somebody actually post something to that effect on the forum?
Bear in mind, however, that this is probably time they used to spend/waste browsing eMusic before the debacle, so there is an element of the wheel weaving as the wheel will here.
But I agree that some comments have gone way to far. Whatever we think we shouldn't go as far as some suggest...