It's appropriate that you use pitchfork with a little cap, because I'm the only Pitchfork who's on the map. There's no true Pitchfork other than me. I'm the Pitchfork, you are the sheep. You will listen to whatever I say. You will even listen to Mr. Tom Waits.
GP - you can't report to emu QA. The department does not exist, never has, and is unlikely ever to exist!!!!! (I can do more then amc2) If it did exist they would have shut down emu as a Health and Safety risk. At least you are getting recs.... mind you I'm not sure I want them if all I get is Tom Waits.
The hat department fits and sells artisanal hats to Brooklyn residents. What you thought they were still a music company? It's just a front for the Mad Hatters.*
* note the distinction between the mad Hatters running the Corp., and the mad haters on the boards.
I will say that those recs are doing okay by me. I do get one or two now and then which clearly are not tied to my interests but are based solely on the rec by the editorial staff, but, quite frankly, I used to get stuff like that with the old rec engine... it's just that they were easier to ignore when I was faced with 48 tiny album cover images for my recs (or however many it was) as opposed to the meager 6-10 I get now, where they stand out like a sore thumb. But my ambient/quiet-type music recs have been decent so far. Jazz, not so much.
I tell ya, I did both amuse and irritate me when the rec engine recommends me a jazz album that I didn't think worth mentioning in my weekly rec column. I'm not saying I should be the sole arbiter of what jazz emu society should be listening to (though, let's be honest... I should be sole arbiter), but if I dismissed an album summarily from any consideration for my column, it shouldn't be showing up in a system rec when it clearly has no tie to anything I've purchased. I'm sure it simply does something like Jazz - Sax... both albums have that meta-tag, and if I bought one album with that tag, then the "crappy" jazz album with the same tag gets randomly chosen as a "rec" for me. Bleh.
"it shouldn't be showing up in a system rec when it clearly has no tie to anything I've purchased"
My, you're optimistic. My reward for downloading mostly electronic, ambient, and lately some jazz has been personal recommendations doggedly focused on Vander Graf Generator, Yes, Fairport Convention, Leonard Cohen, and Jack White. Getting something that is actually jazz when you download jazz sounds to me like a roaring success.
I have also seen enough evidence of things I would not normally buy showing up in the personal recommendations the day after I looked at their page for some reason to feel quite sure that there is some page view tracking going on in this new rec engine. That's somewhat sophisticated and all, but I actually am not keen on that method - it assumes that my reasons for looking at a page have to do with possible purchase rather than, say, being amazed by the gross cover art or wanting to hear a sample of some band my daughter is listening to.
It occurs to me that I might be an easy target for the emu rec engine. I buy two things from emu... jazz and quiet ambient music with some electronic flairs. My emu purchases are far far far less diverse than my selections when I lived in Chicago and went to music stores all the time. Of course, the expansive music diversity of other members' selections, like many on this forum, still might not go toward explaining why you're getting the recs you're getting.
It really is a shame that it's not working like it used to. Between the rec engine on the front page that greeted me whenever I logged in and the Similar Albums section at the bottom of any album page were two very useful tools for me back in the day. The Similar Albums seem to be picking up a bit, but I haven't really explored it much lately. Though I did, actually, play with it yesterday off of a Spiritualized search... it gave me obscure bands like Slipstream and The Dark Side as well as more obvious ones like Spacemen 3 and various Spectrum projects, along with some others that did, upon inspection, have a similar sound. So that might not be working too bad, though that's a small test population. I would expect that the Similar To section would be far easier to institute than a new rec engine, but this is something I have almost no familiarity with.
And, of course, not long after posting the above, allo darlin is one of my recs, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've purchased or anything I'm remotely interested in. That, hot on the heels of the equally ridiculous rec of miss frankie rose, is discouraging.
Thinking about it, emu seems to have it only half-right. Apparently staff picks are getting stuck in the rec population, regardless of their actual relevancy to the individual customers' listening and purchasing habits. That approach would be completely acceptable if it were my Jazz PIcks that were being foisted onto the buying public, because, as all good sheep know, people should only be buying music that has my seal of approval. Let's hope that emu sees where it's going wrong, and gets my recs up there were they belong.
one more kick at the dead horse for me: all recommendation engines are awful.
jonah, if you truly only download jazz and ambient music, you probably are an easy target for the engine. so maybe it's worse than most, 'cause unless i'm wrong here, allo darlin' is neither jazz nor ambient.
@amc2 - A QA department! You amaze me. They should all consider their position in the company as they are obviously not doing a good job, else we wouldn't have the mess of a site we do have. But of course we are not the people that emusic wants to attract, so how would I know... But I do admit that I am missing emu after being on hold for two or three weeks. I can't see it (the hold) lasting that long with my withdrawal symptoms.
Fresh proof, beyond the revelation of the Quality Assurance Department that my earlier post provoked, that the Moderators over there either don't actually read the posts, or they just pull a robo-response out of their ass that might if they're lucky have something to do with the topic, or the poor bastards are at their limited wits end - link. Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in. If only I could just not give a damn.
I am coming up to the end of my hold period, I was tempted to go back for June as they should have the new Lights Out Asia release and maybe the new Paul Buchanon ( ex Blue Nile) plus enough stuff to justify 50 downloads, howver if the techinical side is kaput might not worth doing.
Heads up: I just posted my complaint about the slow performance of the site at the other message board. Please register your observations and critiques of CS and eMu's general ineptness. Thanks.
According to Adam Klein, "the entire eMusic site will be tailored for smartphones and tablets in the next few weeks". So maybe the fact it barely works on computers is OK then.
Thanks GP - it just confirms that emusic tailored the revamp for smartphones and tablets. Maybe they expected to gain lots of new customers whilst retaining enough of their existing customer base to remain profitable. My suspicion is that they were wrong, but who am I to know?
I think emusic revamped the site just cuz the old "housing system" (for lack of a better term) cost money to maintain, and the new "housing system" is free.
I recall seeing j edward keyes on the tube 2 or 3 months ago touting the iPad app for eMu. The irony being their website was still a complete (as opposed to partial) trainwreck at the time. Imagine, being such a dinosaur that you'd want to download digital music on a computer - that's so last century.
Imagine the frustration of all the phone and pad users who'll be told to wait 2-3 days for CS. Perhaps "exploring new music" means being stuck with a problem until you give up trying to fix it.
True enough, Daniel. It actually shows how badly they are doing if they wanted that kind of 'saving'.
i'm still very much a fan of emusic, but i can't defend the system-changeover that led to the current tsunami of glitches. it might have saved a lot of money, which in turn might help emusic stay profitable and maybe prevent further price-point increases, but they just mishandled the rollout. there should have been much more beta-testing across a range of operating systems, and tested over a long period of time.
Well, exactly. That's my question, is what good is a download site "tailored for smartphones and tablets" - ? Unless you can buy things mobile and have them show up on your computer (like iTunes) or DL them (like Amazon). They have talked about a "digital locker," but that was quite a while ago. Could it be that they are planning to transition to a subscription streaming service, like Rdio?
Comments
no rhyme there, i realize.
Mains a mystery what hat dept actually does!
* note the distinction between the mad Hatters running the Corp., and the mad haters on the boards.
I tell ya, I did both amuse and irritate me when the rec engine recommends me a jazz album that I didn't think worth mentioning in my weekly rec column. I'm not saying I should be the sole arbiter of what jazz emu society should be listening to (though, let's be honest... I should be sole arbiter), but if I dismissed an album summarily from any consideration for my column, it shouldn't be showing up in a system rec when it clearly has no tie to anything I've purchased. I'm sure it simply does something like Jazz - Sax... both albums have that meta-tag, and if I bought one album with that tag, then the "crappy" jazz album with the same tag gets randomly chosen as a "rec" for me. Bleh.
My, you're optimistic. My reward for downloading mostly electronic, ambient, and lately some jazz has been personal recommendations doggedly focused on Vander Graf Generator, Yes, Fairport Convention, Leonard Cohen, and Jack White. Getting something that is actually jazz when you download jazz sounds to me like a roaring success.
I have also seen enough evidence of things I would not normally buy showing up in the personal recommendations the day after I looked at their page for some reason to feel quite sure that there is some page view tracking going on in this new rec engine. That's somewhat sophisticated and all, but I actually am not keen on that method - it assumes that my reasons for looking at a page have to do with possible purchase rather than, say, being amazed by the gross cover art or wanting to hear a sample of some band my daughter is listening to.
It really is a shame that it's not working like it used to. Between the rec engine on the front page that greeted me whenever I logged in and the Similar Albums section at the bottom of any album page were two very useful tools for me back in the day. The Similar Albums seem to be picking up a bit, but I haven't really explored it much lately. Though I did, actually, play with it yesterday off of a Spiritualized search... it gave me obscure bands like Slipstream and The Dark Side as well as more obvious ones like Spacemen 3 and various Spectrum projects, along with some others that did, upon inspection, have a similar sound. So that might not be working too bad, though that's a small test population. I would expect that the Similar To section would be far easier to institute than a new rec engine, but this is something I have almost no familiarity with.
Thinking about it, emu seems to have it only half-right. Apparently staff picks are getting stuck in the rec population, regardless of their actual relevancy to the individual customers' listening and purchasing habits. That approach would be completely acceptable if it were my Jazz PIcks that were being foisted onto the buying public, because, as all good sheep know, people should only be buying music that has my seal of approval. Let's hope that emu sees where it's going wrong, and gets my recs up there were they belong.
jonah, if you truly only download jazz and ambient music, you probably are an easy target for the engine. so maybe it's worse than most, 'cause unless i'm wrong here, allo darlin' is neither jazz nor ambient.
i hear com-pu-tors will take over the world someday. i can't afford one, myself, but i hear things.
i'm still very much a fan of emusic, but i can't defend the system-changeover that led to the current tsunami of glitches. it might have saved a lot of money, which in turn might help emusic stay profitable and maybe prevent further price-point increases, but they just mishandled the rollout. there should have been much more beta-testing across a range of operating systems, and tested over a long period of time.