Thanks for that confirmation Lowlife. I've not been on there for several days so wasn't aware if it was planned or not. Hopefully they are trying to make the experience better for us! I don't ever remember going to Amazon or itunes and having this problem...
that i couldn't say, since webpage i try to load in this old laptop from my old firm is like asking a 92 year old to get off the couch and answer the doorbell. he'll do it, but it will take a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
Try New Rounder - same old s**t, new higher prices. Hate to be all negative but there were some things I wanted that got dropped when they did this switcheroo and replaced them with $6.99 - and we're talking old LPs that were short - 30 something minutes.
You know that time variable is a funny thing. I have the same reaction sometimes to price/time ratios. But...
I hesitated for a long time before buying this 26 minute EP for $6.49. Finally bought it when emusic was throwing free credit around, and even then when the money was purely fictional I hesitated. Now it's one of my favorite things and I have no regrets.
At the other end of the scale, when you post box sets that are 8 hours long, it mostly puts me off rather than attracting me, because I do want to listen to what I buy, preferably at least several times, so "8 hours of music for $2.99" (or whatever) actually translates in my head to "I'm going to have to listen to this for 24 solid hours" and feels like a big chore unless the music really excites me. Some months I feel like I'd rather buy short albums, to help me keep up with listening.
I was also thinking just the other day that there was something to be said for the constraints of the LP age. I have too many CDs that are an hour long and outstay their welcome by 15-20 minutes. (Others of course that I wish were even longer).
That's not to say don't post the box sets, not at all! I have picked up several of them. Just thinking aloud about how I react to time/money equations.
Part of my reaction is ingrained from the days when LPs and cassettes were disappearing and those newfangled CDs were up to $18.99 down at Tower Records, and I just felt like some material was just way overpriced in the grand scheme of things - like country records that always seemed to come in at 10 tracks and 30 minutes. I just wasn't going to go there - except for the must haves, like when I paid $21.99 for the English import version of Junior Brown's first album Twelve Shades of Brown (12 songs, about 35 minutes) and was happy as a pig in s**t - it was nowhere to be had otherwise.
The rest of my reaction comes from days, not all that long ago, when an album came in for around $3.60 over at eMu, the good old days - I sound like some hippie reminiscing over the good old Panama Red days - Christ, I hate hippies, but that was another thread wasn't it? In a sense this winnows the field for me, and has cleared a lot of chaff from my SFLs, because I think harder about whether I really want something. Still there are a goodly number of things I would like, but just not that badly.
Well, I'm back in; it took long enough, but they finally made me a month for $.99 offer.
And so, is it just me, or has Rounder disappeared?
i'm waiting for when i quit, then they lure me back with a .99/month offer, and then every album i want disappears from emusic as i'm trying to download it. like the receding memories that jim carry was chasing in eternal spotlight of the spot . . . whatever the hell it was.
Performance art is right, or lack there of, when it comes to eMusic's performance. I posted it over there, but basically couldn't get Jazz Pianist Eric Reed's album page to load, just got an error page. Then when I finally did get to his latest album's page for "The Baddest Monk," it only half loaded, something I'd never seen before. Frustrating.
Edit: It's working this morning, though looking at the board over there, it sounds like most, it not all artist pages, were down.
or maybe the entire emusic message-board is becoming a chaotic piece of performance art
I once had a piece of software where you could input a stanza structure and a collection of words/phrases and it would generate random poems from them. Not sure what it was called, but it was freeware. 'Ranbdom verse generator' or something. Might be fun to create some of those using the top 20 phrases from the discussion board. I have no time right now, but it might be fun some time.
We had that once. I can't remember what it was called. But we cracked ourselves up for hours one evening when we set the computer to the voice function so that it would read those stanzas in its monotone computer voice.
Yeah, I remember making some hilarious ones with my kids when they were younger. Random Verse Lab, that's what it was called. We'd all just brainstorm crazy words with someone typing furiously and then generate strings of ridiculous poems. Every now and then it would produce moments of surreal genius. Fun times. It's e.g. here but doesn't run on Win 7. Probably a good thing, I have way too much to do today.
That sounds like the time we started up a text-to-speech program on one computer with speech recognition software on another computer nearby. It's like translating to Japanese and then back...
this phrase ^^^^^^^^^^, btw, was the pivot point for one of my favorite serve-and-volley discussions on the emusic message boards. no, really!
it went something like this.
ME (D, ESQ.): i love Artist X.
ANTAGONIST: i do not like Artist X.
ME (D, ESQ.): there's no arguing with taste.
ANTAGONIST: i do not like Artist X. Artist X is shamelessly derivative. Artist X is not good!
ME (D, ESQ.): Artist X isn't derivative, but even if he was, derivative isn't synonymous with "not good."
ANTAGONIST: there's no arguing with taste!
It doesn't make any sense to say that grandfathered plans lose money for emusic. Emusic takes a percentage of everything it pays out; if you get x tracks at $.2y per track, or if you get 2x tracks at $.y per track, you're still spending the same amount, and emusic is still making the same amount.
Grandfathered plans were only ever a problem for emusic if they kept away labels, but emusics got all the labels it wants right?
I think I had this fight with Cinthebox before though. I'd still argue that the switch to major labels was the real end of discovery - all the current problems C complains about flowed directly out of that, and were pretty predictable I'd say.
I've said it before, people make way too many assumptions one way or the other about how the monies flow. None of us know for sure how eMusic's (or any other music service's) balance looks/works.
I wonder if "he who shall not be named but already was" is proud of what eMusic has become.
Comments
And so, is it just me, or has Rounder disappeared?
I hesitated for a long time before buying this 26 minute EP for $6.49. Finally bought it when emusic was throwing free credit around, and even then when the money was purely fictional I hesitated. Now it's one of my favorite things and I have no regrets.
At the other end of the scale, when you post box sets that are 8 hours long, it mostly puts me off rather than attracting me, because I do want to listen to what I buy, preferably at least several times, so "8 hours of music for $2.99" (or whatever) actually translates in my head to "I'm going to have to listen to this for 24 solid hours" and feels like a big chore unless the music really excites me. Some months I feel like I'd rather buy short albums, to help me keep up with listening.
I was also thinking just the other day that there was something to be said for the constraints of the LP age. I have too many CDs that are an hour long and outstay their welcome by 15-20 minutes. (Others of course that I wish were even longer).
That's not to say don't post the box sets, not at all! I have picked up several of them. Just thinking aloud about how I react to time/money equations.
The rest of my reaction comes from days, not all that long ago, when an album came in for around $3.60 over at eMu, the good old days - I sound like some hippie reminiscing over the good old Panama Red days - Christ, I hate hippies, but that was another thread wasn't it? In a sense this winnows the field for me, and has cleared a lot of chaff from my SFLs, because I think harder about whether I really want something. Still there are a goodly number of things I would like, but just not that badly.
i'm waiting for when i quit, then they lure me back with a .99/month offer, and then every album i want disappears from emusic as i'm trying to download it. like the receding memories that jim carry was chasing in eternal spotlight of the spot . . . whatever the hell it was.
Edit: It's working this morning, though looking at the board over there, it sounds like most, it not all artist pages, were down.
"Which one do I listen to?"
"The one in the middle, man."
I once had a piece of software where you could input a stanza structure and a collection of words/phrases and it would generate random poems from them. Not sure what it was called, but it was freeware. 'Ranbdom verse generator' or something. Might be fun to create some of those using the top 20 phrases from the discussion board. I have no time right now, but it might be fun some time.
@Esquire
Lol, pretty good.
We had that once. I can't remember what it was called. But we cracked ourselves up for hours one evening when we set the computer to the voice function so that it would read those stanzas in its monotone computer voice.
one man's hi-speed road rage on a gridlocked interstate is another man's performance art.
de gustibus non est disputandum.
it went something like this.
ME (D, ESQ.): i love Artist X.
ANTAGONIST: i do not like Artist X.
ME (D, ESQ.): there's no arguing with taste.
ANTAGONIST: i do not like Artist X. Artist X is shamelessly derivative. Artist X is not good!
ME (D, ESQ.): Artist X isn't derivative, but even if he was, derivative isn't synonymous with "not good."
ANTAGONIST: there's no arguing with taste!
See here
Now I've been told off well and truly!! I didn't know I was cranky, but perhaps I am for still supporting emusic with my money.
Grandfathered plans were only ever a problem for emusic if they kept away labels, but emusics got all the labels it wants right?
I think I had this fight with Cinthebox before though. I'd still argue that the switch to major labels was the real end of discovery - all the current problems C complains about flowed directly out of that, and were pretty predictable I'd say.
I wonder if "he who shall not be named but already was" is proud of what eMusic has become.