That double booster is reasonable. I was going to spend a final month with them after a free month, but a 40 for 20 can be a concluding sentence just as well. And Jonah, I hesitate to even read your posts out of fear of staying at eMu.
Don't tempt me. I am still listening to some eMu metal tracks I downloaded from 2009. Growly.
I dunno, sometimes I am in the mood for metal. I can't imagine walking around all day with it on my iPod, though.
Can someone with an American account in America tell me whether Valcour Records is still on eMu? They are a Cajun/Zydeco label in Louisiana and I buy everything they put out sound unheard, everything's fantastic if you like those genres (run partly by Joel Savoy, scion of the famous Savoy cajun musical family). Anyhow, they aren't on eMu for me anymore, just wondering if it's just Australia or they've been pulled entirely? I tweeted at them about it, no response.
They do sell digital downloads on their website for $9/album so I'll continue to buy their stuff but would be a pity if they're gone from eMu.
OK well, I just looked and they are back for me too. They definitely were not on the weekend because I did a bunch of searches for their artists to make sure, and nothing. Just one of those lovable eMusic experiences. CRISIS OVER STAND DOWN.
OK well, I just looked and they are back for me too. They definitely were not on the weekend because I did a bunch of searches for their artists to make sure, and nothing. Just one of those lovable eMusic experiences. CRISIS OVER STAND DOWN.
Just in case they had a change of distributor and disappeared for a few days because of that, you should double check your library before downloading anything new for a little while. I say this only because if they did change distributor, they might start showing up in Freshly Ripped and get confused with something actually "new."
If you logged into eMu and found an apparent glitch in their system enabling you to selectively download over twenty albums for free, would you do it? This just happened to me though not on eMu, and I'm wondering if I should have a stronger sense of guilt. I didn't make the glitch, and to make the analogy comparable to eMu it would be like finding your account mysteriously well funded.
The glitch was fixed of course, but long after I had logged off. With quite a few new albums.
Is 160 kbps reason to complain? (And yes, I checked the frequency spectrum, which comes in under 18600 HZ).
The album in question is Joe Fielder's Sackbut Stomp, played by an ensemble of on trombones and tubas. Listening on BC, it's a fun and raucous affair. However, I dl's a few tracks from eMu, and luckily, I checked out the quality before proceeding further.
This is the problem I tend to have with eMu: the ripping process is constrained, mostly to the detriment of solo instruments (or small ensembles of similar instruments). The result is a sound that is too compressed, too clipped, lacking the quirky sounds that come from solo performances. The performance is robbed of the intimacy it is supposed to have.
My take is that eMu switched over to VBR0, which to my ears and musical set up is every good as FLAC. However, they never re-ripped their old tracks. When they first started in their practical giveaway years, everything was a low rip rate, and outside of gentle acoustic, for the most part under 192 just sucks.
Just been to the emusic discussion board for the first time in quite a while - I wanted to put in an album request. The front page seems dominated by the usual emusic problems but one interesting thread about whether someone should rejoin or not after 3 years or so away, some (not all) thoughtful reflections, not least by emusers. I've been considering my membership yet again. I've become a music collector rather than a listener. I'm sure I have music on iTunes that I will only ever play maybe a couple of times at the most in the future. Why did I buy it then, I can listen on Spotify or elsewhere, and if it is not there, would I miss that one listen? The counter argument, of course, is that without that first listen it might not go on to be a regular fixture on my playlists. The fact that I have had to buy a couple of new albums recently from Amazon from artists that were on emusic has not helped me. My plan therefore is to go back on hold yet again to see if the thread stays or not.... Watch this space
I'm thinking of quitting for a while (after I burn off the recently purchased, discounted booster packs), but I still feel that music is a bargain when it comes to entertainment. Four complete listens at $9 makes for a satisfying experience. If I can get my wife to listen, the better. Compared to other diversions, it's cheap. Two people at the movies is seldom less than $11 (excluding food and incidentals), and offers no repeat experience. A decent dinner for two starts at $40 (no bottle of wine, but the days of drinking that much are far behind me).
While I am at it, let me mention table top games. I had left the hobby when my son was born because of lack of time. During that time there has been an explosion of designer games with diverse and complex themes. Now that he is old enough, I've been looking back into the hobby. There are many games at many price points, but it seems most of the prestigious games cost $50-100. Some of those games are so complex or have such unique themes that I would never play them with my family. Moreover, they take 2-4 hours to play, effectively cutting deeply into family time if I found outside gamers interested in the game. Many games have a sort of planned obsolescence: the basic game becomes boring after a few plays, and requires $30-40 expansions to keep it entertaining. It's not unheard of for someone to make a $75 purchase but only play the game 2-3 times. $5.00 per person per game might not be bad, but it's very likely that is the end of the game's potential to entertain. Personally, I would love to get Robinson Crusoe, but there is a good chance we would never get through the first game because of its complexity.
So I don't feel guilty if it seems I am collecting music more than listening to it. 3 hours (4 plays) is a decent return, IMO, and even albums I don't love have several tracks I will keep returning to. Moreover, there are more opportunities to sample music that make it safer to purchase. I also have more opportunities to enjoy both alone and with people.
I have just gone on hold for 3 months, I have a huge pile of music that I still have not got round to listening to and as August is a quite month it seems a good time to stop. A couple of weeks away with my good lady will help although she has asked to make sure there is no Epic 45 of July Skies!
Re collecting versus listening, I have said something like this before: collecting is not the same as what one might call stockpiling in my mind. A collection is curated, selected, and occasionally culled, and part of the fun of collecting is the sifting and prioritizing and shaping of the collection. Stockpiling just results in a large heap of stuff. To put it in other terms, collectors are not necessarily hoarders. Collecting allows me to value certain music more than streaming does, and as BT says, an album often costs me less than what I sometimes have to pay for a cup of tea in an airport (paid around $7 recently in Oslo), and the cup of ends up back in the airport after a single use. Buying at least some albums also does more to sustain the arts than streaming does, and that seems worthwhile. Streaming has its place and is very useful for sifting and reducing the number of really pointless purchases, but it's a specific place and for me not nearly as satisfying as collecting.
Using your definition GP, I've become more of a stockpiler recently, and what I need to do is maybe organise into a collection. My wife reckons I am a hoarder anyway, so it would make sense that I am a stockpiler. I take the point that you and BT make about relative costs - I spent £4.80 this morning on a magazine to read an interview with Eric Clapton. Fairly soon that magazine will end up in the recycle bin. But I have reached the point with emusic where I think I need to spend more effort into getting limited quality rather than just downloading for the sake of it at the end of every month before renewal. If we had labels like Island, Domino, Matador, and Blue Note on emusic I might feel differently
I've been going through recurrent phases (like today) not of wanting to stop exploring new music, but of thinking I should get more brutal about culling the old. Just spent an hour deleting albums, mostly netlabel stuff that really only merited a couple of listens in the first place. Of course the dent that made is practically invisible.
I am generally feeling dissatisfied with my current rotation system. For the last few years my current set of interlocking smart playlists based on genre and rating has worked really well to get everything in my library rotated multiple times. Now I am starting to feel like I am playing stuff I don't love just to rotate it, and there are gems in the library that I am missing. Not sure how to improve the system right now, though, other than culling some things that are not interesting me any more (either through deletion of the two-star rating that I use to exclude things from any of my playlists). Need some new system-building inspiration.
What I suspect is wrong would require a huge time investment to fix. My rotations are based on rating and genre, but often what I want to listen to is based on mood and occasion. Late evening and red wine requires jazz (but not frenetic jazz) or choirs or ambient or Frahmish piano. Walking home from work I want energy - could be rock or electronic or uptempo jazz. And so on. I need an extra layer of tags that are not genre-based but whim-based ("quirky things", "late night things", etc.) Could be done, but for 22k tracks it's daunting.
Gp, sounds a bit like browsing the large sample is a problem. What about trying to just make that easier? Keep your "rotation criteria", but limit it by N tracks randomly chosen. Then browse that playlist. You'll get a bigger album sample with a smaller set of tracks. Then, when you see something that grabs your fancy (in a shorter browsing time), click through to play the whole album (as is your wont, iirc). May or may not actually help, but seems plausible.
Hmm, interesting idea - may give it a try. I do use some other smart playlists for content management rather than listening purposes.
I think e basic problem is that the size of the collection is now such that the chances of the album that I suddenly feel like listening to actually being rotated onto the iPod are getting smaller, even with the rating system causing more-loved albums to rotate on more frequently.
Yeah, I don't think there's an automatic solution to that. The compromise strategy is to sync a dumb playlist that you fill with the "unheard gems" in your spare time - you have to actively manage it over time, but at least whatever's in it at a given time will be automatically loaded to your iPod. You could also have a smart playlist that's based on that dumb playlist but not heard in the last week (or whatever). Then you can access that but not look at stuff you recently listened to.
That's what I've started doing - I have a "now listening" dumb playlist for algorithm overrides.
It worked more simply before I started listening to so much jazz. I used to use mainly a 5* list for stuff I want permanently on hand, a rotating 4* list for good stuff, and a more slowly rotating, smaller 3* list for stuff to check in on every now and then to see if I like it any better than last time. The trouble is now that my jazz, ambient, electronic, and other genres listening are about a quarter each of my listening, going by rating doesn't do a good enough job of balancing the genres. So I started some genre-specific playlists.
But once started down that path the road keeps forking. I ended up making a separate ECM list. Then I found the jazz playlist does not differentiate quality, so stuff I got for free from Guvera to research the history of the genre but might not care for that much might come up more than, say, a recent piano trio that I really like. So I am starting to think I need to structure the jazz list (and the other genre lists) by having it be a composite of several other smart lists based on rating + genre, so that it weights to higher ratings. Then I started wondering if I really wanted a separate piano trio list, because I am listening to that subgenre a lot lately. But in this direction lies an ever larger and more specific set of smart playlists, and so I am wrestling with whereabouts to apply Occam's razor.
You know, it would actually be a vast improvement if iTunes/iPod had an equivalent of the Pandora thumbs up/thumbs down (rotate this more/less frequently) toggle for each track/album.
Comments
I dunno, sometimes I am in the mood for metal. I can't imagine walking around all day with it on my iPod, though.
They do sell digital downloads on their website for $9/album so I'll continue to buy their stuff but would be a pity if they're gone from eMu.
Just in case they had a change of distributor and disappeared for a few days because of that, you should double check your library before downloading anything new for a little while. I say this only because if they did change distributor, they might start showing up in Freshly Ripped and get confused with something actually "new."
Cheers.
The glitch was fixed of course, but long after I had logged off. With quite a few new albums.
:-)
The album in question is Joe Fielder's Sackbut Stomp, played by an ensemble of on trombones and tubas. Listening on BC, it's a fun and raucous affair. However, I dl's a few tracks from eMu, and luckily, I checked out the quality before proceeding further.
This is the problem I tend to have with eMu: the ripping process is constrained, mostly to the detriment of solo instruments (or small ensembles of similar instruments). The result is a sound that is too compressed, too clipped, lacking the quirky sounds that come from solo performances. The performance is robbed of the intimacy it is supposed to have.
Is it for you, too?
I feel like I should've constructed an Upworthy headline for this post.
While I am at it, let me mention table top games. I had left the hobby when my son was born because of lack of time. During that time there has been an explosion of designer games with diverse and complex themes. Now that he is old enough, I've been looking back into the hobby. There are many games at many price points, but it seems most of the prestigious games cost $50-100. Some of those games are so complex or have such unique themes that I would never play them with my family. Moreover, they take 2-4 hours to play, effectively cutting deeply into family time if I found outside gamers interested in the game. Many games have a sort of planned obsolescence: the basic game becomes boring after a few plays, and requires $30-40 expansions to keep it entertaining. It's not unheard of for someone to make a $75 purchase but only play the game 2-3 times. $5.00 per person per game might not be bad, but it's very likely that is the end of the game's potential to entertain. Personally, I would love to get Robinson Crusoe, but there is a good chance we would never get through the first game because of its complexity.
So I don't feel guilty if it seems I am collecting music more than listening to it. 3 hours (4 plays) is a decent return, IMO, and even albums I don't love have several tracks I will keep returning to. Moreover, there are more opportunities to sample music that make it safer to purchase. I also have more opportunities to enjoy both alone and with people.
Hey, GP, thanks for the kind words on the forum.
Cheers.
Re collecting versus listening, I have said something like this before: collecting is not the same as what one might call stockpiling in my mind. A collection is curated, selected, and occasionally culled, and part of the fun of collecting is the sifting and prioritizing and shaping of the collection. Stockpiling just results in a large heap of stuff. To put it in other terms, collectors are not necessarily hoarders. Collecting allows me to value certain music more than streaming does, and as BT says, an album often costs me less than what I sometimes have to pay for a cup of tea in an airport (paid around $7 recently in Oslo), and the cup of ends up back in the airport after a single use. Buying at least some albums also does more to sustain the arts than streaming does, and that seems worthwhile. Streaming has its place and is very useful for sifting and reducing the number of really pointless purchases, but it's a specific place and for me not nearly as satisfying as collecting.
I am generally feeling dissatisfied with my current rotation system. For the last few years my current set of interlocking smart playlists based on genre and rating has worked really well to get everything in my library rotated multiple times. Now I am starting to feel like I am playing stuff I don't love just to rotate it, and there are gems in the library that I am missing. Not sure how to improve the system right now, though, other than culling some things that are not interesting me any more (either through deletion of the two-star rating that I use to exclude things from any of my playlists). Need some new system-building inspiration.
What I suspect is wrong would require a huge time investment to fix. My rotations are based on rating and genre, but often what I want to listen to is based on mood and occasion. Late evening and red wine requires jazz (but not frenetic jazz) or choirs or ambient or Frahmish piano. Walking home from work I want energy - could be rock or electronic or uptempo jazz. And so on. I need an extra layer of tags that are not genre-based but whim-based ("quirky things", "late night things", etc.) Could be done, but for 22k tracks it's daunting.
I think e basic problem is that the size of the collection is now such that the chances of the album that I suddenly feel like listening to actually being rotated onto the iPod are getting smaller, even with the rating system causing more-loved albums to rotate on more frequently.
It worked more simply before I started listening to so much jazz. I used to use mainly a 5* list for stuff I want permanently on hand, a rotating 4* list for good stuff, and a more slowly rotating, smaller 3* list for stuff to check in on every now and then to see if I like it any better than last time. The trouble is now that my jazz, ambient, electronic, and other genres listening are about a quarter each of my listening, going by rating doesn't do a good enough job of balancing the genres. So I started some genre-specific playlists.
But once started down that path the road keeps forking. I ended up making a separate ECM list. Then I found the jazz playlist does not differentiate quality, so stuff I got for free from Guvera to research the history of the genre but might not care for that much might come up more than, say, a recent piano trio that I really like. So I am starting to think I need to structure the jazz list (and the other genre lists) by having it be a composite of several other smart lists based on rating + genre, so that it weights to higher ratings. Then I started wondering if I really wanted a separate piano trio list, because I am listening to that subgenre a lot lately. But in this direction lies an ever larger and more specific set of smart playlists, and so I am wrestling with whereabouts to apply Occam's razor.