Arggh! For the umpteenth time I find myself swearing I've left my last MB rant over there. It may just be true this time because I really am getting beyond caring. Really they've done me a favor by weaning me off the holiday downloading glut (which they had precious little contribution to). I think the Golden Age is a mere blip in the rearview mirror now - oh, wait I do want to pay $8.24 for Lionel Ritchie's attempt to stay relevant with a Nashville album - NOT . So I think the moral of the story is that it was a good few years to stock up when we was able, fer the Dust Bowl descended on us - got me a hell of a root cellar full of MP3's by golly, so's I'm grateful, but I think it's the dimming of the day.
Just tried their new recommended for you feature. It gate me 12 recs. I saved half of them for later, one which I'm almost certain to buy (it's on experimedia, so I bet I can stream the whole thing first before buying). Of the six I didn't save for later, one is by an artist I already like and don't need a reminder to check out his catalog, a couple others are by artists that I'm not into but I can see totally why they rec'd them to me (ie, Monolake), and another was an album I was familiar with (a jazz album) that I wasn't interested in much.
I'd have to say the greatest source of my happiness (based on one set of recs; we'll see what the future brings) is that the personal recs were heavily skewed in favor of ambient, and not jazz. I don't need their jazz recs. But I could use some helpful pointers in the ambient category.
Jonah, would you like me to ask about a review copy of the experimedia title for you? Jeremy at Experimedia knows and approves of MiG since the Woven Tide review and has been very helpful with review material; we have corresponded a little - I can ask his to send you a link.
I could use some helpful pointers in the ambient category
Let me get back to you on that. I want to try to search a little bit more to stream first, be sure it's something I really like. But if it is, then definitely. Thanks for the offer.
As far as the music recs, I didn't mean to imply that I'm fishing for recs or anything. I just always liked the old rec engine to add album recs to my own efforts to discover stuff. Whereas with jazz, I don't need emusic's help to find jazz, since I'm already drowning in more than I can get to.
Check this out - an album, rec'd by Doofy, which I got 3 tracks off. When I went back today to get some more, 4 songs are now album only, but not a one is over ten minutes. Looks like 7 is the new 10. Looks like it's time to quit again.
It's still only 3.89 on emu, 5.99 on amazon for six tracks.
I might take a gander later at other Fantasy titles and see if it's across the board with that label, and see if other labels are following suit. Actually, I'm gonna glance at the emu Blue Note albums right now.
Could this maybe be the new version of the albums only available as full albums by request from the labels. (the ones with "we say: better all than nothing")
The recent "free" Hüsker Dü albums was subsequently changed to album only regardless of track length.
Not sure. I mean, of amclark's example of the Art Farmer album, there's six tracks on the album, four of which are album only. The only two that aren't album only are under seven minutes long. If a label wanted to create the condition of "buy the entire album or nothing at all," then I'd think that all of the album tracks would be album only.
Something I have noticed on emu lately is that some albums still have variable pricing, even with album only tracks. Now, some albums that have only one album-only track immediately get album priced at 6.49 (or 6.99, etc etc), but some albums with album only tracks (like the above Art Farmer) don't get pushed into the standard album-only pricing structure. In fact, some (but not the above Art Farmer), will basically come to an album price by adding the .49/non-album track to a .98/album-only tracks to get the album price. Not sure how the Art Farmer album price was derived.
The new Burial ep is $3.99, 3 tracks, all over 7 minutes, only the two over 10 minutes are album only, so there's definitely some custom pricing there... a couple weeks ago it was only $1.40, I think, which was even lower - I don't know if there were album only tracks or not.
it was the whole thing (i downloaded it the first day it arrived). it's a steal, at either price.
i actually prefer the last ep -- street halo -- which i thought was a stronger move toward a sunnier and dancier side. but this new disc has some wickedly heavy beats and that wind-swept, rainy, freezing london vibe that burial has nailed. i read somewhere that he captures london like no other artist, in any medium, since a famous author whose name escapes me, and i think that may be right.
Just stumbled upon a more modern usage, new to me, for an old term, which I feel describes what has occurred at eMusic too perfectly to not share with the class - Mung (computer term), the act of making several incremental changes to an item that combine to destroy it. Defined as "Mash until no good."
From Wikipedia
They make no sense to me. I got the Cloud Nothings again, which I can understand. But then I got a bunch of stuff that has no business being in my rec list. I got two recs that were "other" albums by artists I already purchased, so that's pretty ridiculous, since I hardly need help discovering music that I've already discovered on my own. No jazz on the list, even though that accounts for half (or more) of everything I've purchased at emu. Now, I'm actually glad not to be getting a bunch of jazz recs, but it still makes no sense. I'm hoping that the recent bad batch of recs has something to do with the changes they were talking about making to the rec engine, and that it will be more like my first (and successful) pass with it.
you all have really found useful recommendations from emusic's engine -- or any auto-engine, for that matter? i don't think i've ever found even one. i'll get my recommendations from emusic's editorial staff, this forum, ILX, pitchfork, resident advisor, juno plus, the every-good-song-ever tumblr page, the awesome tapes from africa blog, maybe 30 twitter feeds. that's more than enough, and actually represents gatekeepers whose opinions i trust.
Well, I found some great recs from emusic's old rec engine, as well as their old "if you liked this, then try these" options, too. Their new rec engine gave me some solid ones the first go around, but nothing the second time around. I don't really use any other sites.
I'm hoping that emu continues enhancing the new rec engine. I enjoy seeing other options, as long as they're relevant and not something I purchased before.
I actually found the "If you like this..." much more useful than their recs. I tend to agree with Daniel that few sites recs have actually helped me a lot. For example, I download a number of West African artists from emusic, and their old recs always came up with any number of World artists from, eg, Asia, that I really wasn't interested in. Similarly jazz recs would lead to eras, artists that I was not downloading. Having said that at the moment the new recs process is not available to us, so I cannot comment on that.
honestly, instead of an auto recommendation engine, i'd rather emusic set up arrangements with a bunch of cool review sites (like those i string-cited above) and create pages with their reviews and links to the albums, or maybe just the albums that are "highly-recommended" by each site, whatever. spotify does this, to a limited extent (see, e.g., the p4k and spin pages on spotify).
Yes I can agree with that Daniel. I use, amongst others, Bright Young Folk, to keep up to date on UK folk music. A number of us use All About Jazz, and I also regularly read and use reviews in the Guardian newspaper. For me also emusic's new jazz releases is very useful. I cannot quite remember who writes that! When emusic was easier to search, I would search genre myself, but that is just too time consuming now.
eMusic used to be an interesting search tool, even if I didn't always pick the recs it came up with. It always was a gateway to exploring new labels, or to discover collaborators of my favorite jazz musicians. The current rec engine continues to puzzle me. I would rate the recommendations either obvious or clueless. Indeed, I see no reason why it should continue to show me anything by Wilco or Decemberists. THE OLD REC ENGINE ALLOWED US TO ELIMINATE BAD CHOICES: that was a significant advantage to making it work better. "If you like this ..." is better, though I think I've used it once to get a Gaughan/Irvine album.
I agree that I rarely got good recs from the re engine, but I don't think that's actually as much of an argument against it as folk make it sound. I also get most of my recs from emusers + a few trusted review sites. But the old rec engine still had a niche performing the following functions:
(i) the very haphazardness of the recs would occasionally, maybe because of cool cover art or something, make me go listen to samples of something that would otherwise have been outside my orbit.
(ii) it would also occasionally, perhaps even regularly, throw up obscure artists in my target genres that I had never heard of but ended up liking, particularly where the album it threw up was released some time ago. That tends to happen less through review sites because you tend to have to search more for reviews of obscure stuff (which implies knowing what you're looking for) unless it's new releases.
(iii) it would fairly regularly tip me off that an album by some band I was interested in had landed at emusic. My music collection has reached the size where I doubt I could list all the artists I like from memory, let alone keep up with when they all have releases due. And in many cases this would not be a new release, but an older unavailable album that had newly floated to the surface of the digital sea, so new release lists would not have helped me either.
The positive hits do not have to be frequent or impressive for those purposes to still fill a useful little niche in my information ecology. If you don't expect it to do everything or take over the music recommending function wholesale, then it's less of a problem that its successes are small and random.
The new one does not impress so far though. As I wrote over at the other place, I am curious about the fact that the day after I searched for (did not download or listen to, just searched for) the new Leonard Cohen album on emusic it appeared in my personal recommendations, with no other reason I can think of for it to be there in terms of past downloads etc. If the new rec engine is basically a disguised upselling mechanism for promoted content they can keep it.
Points 1-3 in GP's post pretty much exactly describe how the old rec engine was useful to me, and in that order. More often than not, I would just click on a small icon album cover that looked interesting.
Miss Frankie Rose popped up as one of my recs. There is absolutely no basis for that happening. Occasionally on the old rec engine, I would get a rec that was, also, equally despised by my ears, but when I'm only getting 10 (or so) recs at a time with the new rec engine (as opposed to the, what, maybe forty little album covers that would pop up at a time on the old one), having some awful like MFR show up in my recs is a supreme irritation I'd rather not encounter.
Comments
I'd have to say the greatest source of my happiness (based on one set of recs; we'll see what the future brings) is that the personal recs were heavily skewed in favor of ambient, and not jazz. I don't need their jazz recs. But I could use some helpful pointers in the ambient category.
What would you like your new ambient to resemble?
Let me get back to you on that. I want to try to search a little bit more to stream first, be sure it's something I really like. But if it is, then definitely. Thanks for the offer.
As far as the music recs, I didn't mean to imply that I'm fishing for recs or anything. I just always liked the old rec engine to add album recs to my own efforts to discover stuff. Whereas with jazz, I don't need emusic's help to find jazz, since I'm already drowning in more than I can get to.
Cheers.
Jared, is eMusic Going to Fix this Site?
- (from the other board)
That's odd. Amazon has it priced the same way... http://www.amazon.com/Back-To-The-City/dp/B000UB33CG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1333318734&sr=8-2
It's still only 3.89 on emu, 5.99 on amazon for six tracks.
I might take a gander later at other Fantasy titles and see if it's across the board with that label, and see if other labels are following suit. Actually, I'm gonna glance at the emu Blue Note albums right now.
Will be interested to hear emu's response to see if Fantasy has customized their pricing this way.
The recent "free" Hüsker Dü albums was subsequently changed to album only regardless of track length.
Something I have noticed on emu lately is that some albums still have variable pricing, even with album only tracks. Now, some albums that have only one album-only track immediately get album priced at 6.49 (or 6.99, etc etc), but some albums with album only tracks (like the above Art Farmer) don't get pushed into the standard album-only pricing structure. In fact, some (but not the above Art Farmer), will basically come to an album price by adding the .49/non-album track to a .98/album-only tracks to get the album price. Not sure how the Art Farmer album price was derived.
i actually prefer the last ep -- street halo -- which i thought was a stronger move toward a sunnier and dancier side. but this new disc has some wickedly heavy beats and that wind-swept, rainy, freezing london vibe that burial has nailed. i read somewhere that he captures london like no other artist, in any medium, since a famous author whose name escapes me, and i think that may be right.
Mung (computer term), the act of making several incremental changes to an item that combine to destroy it. Defined as "Mash until no good."
From Wikipedia
They make no sense to me. I got the Cloud Nothings again, which I can understand. But then I got a bunch of stuff that has no business being in my rec list. I got two recs that were "other" albums by artists I already purchased, so that's pretty ridiculous, since I hardly need help discovering music that I've already discovered on my own. No jazz on the list, even though that accounts for half (or more) of everything I've purchased at emu. Now, I'm actually glad not to be getting a bunch of jazz recs, but it still makes no sense. I'm hoping that the recent bad batch of recs has something to do with the changes they were talking about making to the rec engine, and that it will be more like my first (and successful) pass with it.
I'm hoping that emu continues enhancing the new rec engine. I enjoy seeing other options, as long as they're relevant and not something I purchased before.
(i) the very haphazardness of the recs would occasionally, maybe because of cool cover art or something, make me go listen to samples of something that would otherwise have been outside my orbit.
(ii) it would also occasionally, perhaps even regularly, throw up obscure artists in my target genres that I had never heard of but ended up liking, particularly where the album it threw up was released some time ago. That tends to happen less through review sites because you tend to have to search more for reviews of obscure stuff (which implies knowing what you're looking for) unless it's new releases.
(iii) it would fairly regularly tip me off that an album by some band I was interested in had landed at emusic. My music collection has reached the size where I doubt I could list all the artists I like from memory, let alone keep up with when they all have releases due. And in many cases this would not be a new release, but an older unavailable album that had newly floated to the surface of the digital sea, so new release lists would not have helped me either.
The positive hits do not have to be frequent or impressive for those purposes to still fill a useful little niche in my information ecology. If you don't expect it to do everything or take over the music recommending function wholesale, then it's less of a problem that its successes are small and random.
The new one does not impress so far though. As I wrote over at the other place, I am curious about the fact that the day after I searched for (did not download or listen to, just searched for) the new Leonard Cohen album on emusic it appeared in my personal recommendations, with no other reason I can think of for it to be there in terms of past downloads etc. If the new rec engine is basically a disguised upselling mechanism for promoted content they can keep it.