Well that may be the end of eMu for me.

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  • It looks to me as if they are going for some Hawthorne effect, according to which any change in environment that is interpreted as a sign of interest in those at whom the environment is directed causes a temporary rise in productivity. (Has anyone ever researched purchase patterns in relation to visible site upgrades?) Various things that actually affect functionality (DLM, Oopses, boards, redownload mechanism) are broken - so lets change the graphic design a bit for a quick morale boost effect.
  • edited April 2011
    It might be a bit like supermarkets who move everythng around every year or so, so that you don't get too comfortable and only go to those aisles you know you need something. If things are moved around you are likely to buy other products too. It could be that is what emusic are doing. I don't recollect many changes at itunes store, or even Amazon though. Someone somewhere must have researched this, surely? Possibly someone has told them that the colours, layout etc are wring for the kind of demographics they want to attract?
  • Someone somewhere must have researched this, surely? Possibly someone has told them that the colours, layout etc are wrong for the kind of demographics they want to attract?
    See my post above.
  • so that you don't get too comfortable and only go to those aisles you know you need something.
    It's also a way to make staff clean the shelves.
  • edited April 2011
    Just more pointless whining and bitching....no, I don't mean the eMu message boards, just two examples from today's drop that to me show the deteriorating direction of eMu as a going concern in the future - both are albums I would have taken serious looks at previously at a better price point, but at $15 for 2 album sets, $0.79 tracks they just don't get the trigger finger to itching:
    1.The Definitive Bill Evans on Riverside and Prestige
    2.Arise Rootsman - Jamaican Roots 1965-1983.
    I dunno, but if I'm coughing up $7.50 an album, I'm thinking I want the real thing.


    This on the other hand is more freaking like it - Machito, A Man And His Music - double album for $4.40. Probably a scavenged collection but at that price worth having for me.
  • You sure you want to cough up the $1.30 for it?
  • You sure you want to cough up the $1.30 for it?

    What about the sales tax? That's a deal breaker for me.

    (Thanks for that, BTW, BT)
  • I made up my mind to cancel when my annual subscription expired, but I waited til the last minute to cancel because I still had some credits and I didn't want to get shut off prematurely (although I guess I would have continued to have access til my expiration date, but I didn't want to chance it). So at the last minute, I spent my credits down to a useless .21 and then hit the cancel button. I chickened out at the very end, opting to put my account on hold for a month with the intention of cancelling at the end of the 30 days. I still plan to cancel at the end of the 30 days (I think), but it was such a hard decision for me I guess I had to take baby steps.

    I was surprised, though, that just this week I have already found 2 albums that I want and I see emusic has them (at a significantly lower price I'm sure). But I am wondering if saving a couple of bucks is worth the irritation of constantly wading through all the newly added crap just to maybe hit on something that looked interesting. It was just getting to be too much work instead of enjoyment. But I will see how much I miss emusic in a month.
  • edited April 2011
    @BDB
    This on the other hand is more freaking like it - Machito, A Man And His Music - double album for $4.40. Probably a scavenged collection but at that price worth having for me.

    In the UK they are charging £18.48 through track pricing we still have - no way for a double CD that can probably be bought on Amazon for half the price. I know it is the way that albums with lots of short tracks are priced automatically,but I'd have thought that they could set up an alert for this kind of thing if they wanted. It is interesting that I wouldn't have noticed so much with credits instead of prices, and I know that I am getting a good bonus on my download plan so it wouldn't cost me as much as that, but it still seems expensive, and there are people out there without bonuses each month
  • I see that Machito release is $17 something at Amazon, BTW.

    To today's point - I see these "new" releases over at eMu on the New Rounder label - most are not at all new, some are eighties or nineties, but they're coming in at $6.99 or more - there's a Gatemouth Brown for $7.11 - 9 tracks, like 42 minutes - really? Glad I got that one years ago. I suppose these are re-releases.
    My rant for the day is if you have any old Rounder in your SFL's it might be wise to pass judgement and git or split soon before they get recycled into the "New Rounder" at higher prices. Am I being too cynical? I've got a number I'll look at this weekend, and some of those I already thought were a stretch at $5.99. Lastly that "new" Ann Peebles New Rounder release is at 7digital for $5 currently.
  • Those complaints about the SFL problem, when the total doesn't equal the detail because emu has lost rights to sell an album, it seems like people wouldn't be complaining about that emu bug. It's a pretty nice indicator to track when labels (important to the individual) are leaving emu. When I saw a difference between my summary number and detail, I went searching for what had gone missing. Otherwise, it could be gone and one would never notice.
  • @ kez. Don't feel bad, I did the same thing. Even though the big indie labels are gone, I'm sometimes surprised at how much is still left that I want. The new Acid House Kings being a great example.
  • @choiceweb0pen0 -

    yeah, I suppose a lot of people elect to put their account on hold for a time instead of downright cancelling. The thing that made me have second thoughts about cancelling was the fact that I would lose my loyalty bonus of $5/month which almost equals a whole extra album per month, although I will have to weigh that against the cost of a new account when compared to the old one I have. I noticed many people with old annual plans - which is what I had - were complaining that even with their loyalty bonus, they still got less for their money than newbies subscribing for the first time (at least when new accounts were at a 30% discount; not sure if that's still applicable). Not exactly my idea of a "loyalty" reward!

    I hadn't heard of Acid House Kings before. I had to laugh a little when I realized my initial impression of them (a group of old tripped out hippies doing hard metal or something) turned out to be completely wrong!
  • To today's point - I see these "new" releases over at eMu on the New Rounder label - most are not at all new, some are eighties or nineties, but they're coming in at $6.99 or more - there's a Gatemouth Brown for $7.11 - 9 tracks, like 42 minutes - really? Glad I got that one years ago. I suppose these are re-releases.
    My rant for the day is if you have any old Rounder in your SFL's it might be wise to pass judgement and git or split soon before they get recycled into the "New Rounder" at higher prices. Am I being too cynical? I've got a number I'll look at this weekend, and some of those I already thought were a stretch at $5.99. Lastly that "new" Ann Peebles New Rounder release is at 7digital for $5 currently.

    Just to reiterate, the parade of recycled releases coming out on the New Rounder label continues, $6.99 for 30-40 minute old releases - very discouraging. This Earl Scruggs Revue from 1978 at $6.74, a Sony release, ain't no better - damn the album or the 8 track was cheaper than that back then.
    Feel it's time to seriously clean out the backlog from SFL before the ship takes on any more water.
  • @kez My loyalty bonus is just $2.50 a month. I've been on an annual plan for several years, but been a member since fall 2006. I know I did some number crunching to decide if I should just go down to month by month, but there is an advantage to the annual plan, ($114 vs 143 I think) but nothing like it used to be.

    I don't have their newest album just yet, but recommend the earlier "Mondays Are Like Tuesdays." I agree that their name is misleading, if not puzzling.


    BigD-Bluez That is discouraging and doesn't do much for their claims about "most" albums priced at around $5.99. It doesn'' seem like a label's back catalog should be so pricey.
  • Oh wow, BigD's Rounder comments prompted me to go look and I find ... Rounder has disappeared entirely for me. Well not entirely, there is a Joe Diffie record and the Chris Hillman/Herb Pederson At Edwards Barn release from January. And that's it, when until recently we had it all. It must have disappeared in the last week or so since I'm sure after my last refresh I went and double checked I had all the Tom Russell which was largely on Rounder.

    That .... sucks. I agree that those prices are out of whack for catalogue stuff but even so it's such good catalogue stuff (and $10 cheaper per album than Australian iTunes even if it is there which it may not be) I'd buy and album or two or three each month. A great disappointment, I can only hope it comes back at some point, as mysteriously as it left.

    Meh!
  • What happened with Rounder is that the original owners sold to the Concord Records Group, which recently purchased the Fantasy label (and OJC...). The old Fantasy and OJC's started disappearing and then reappearing - at a higher price. Art Blakey's Ugetsu is an example of an album that's back at 6.99 - release date of March 15, 2011. A lot of the "old" Rounder albums that they stopped producing showed up on eMusic and I grabbed some - and now they are comin gback as brand new - at 6.99. Emu's fault?
  • Yeah, I remember that now. I was lulled into a false sense of security since they were available for me until last week. Fantasy/Stax disappeared about the time of Sony drop and haven't come back. ;-(

    I had picked the eyes out of Rounder but there was always new stuff to find.
  • I started a parallel subscription with mtraks. Sure, it's the music service that couldn't. However, I've been downloading Topic and other English labels off both mtraks and eMu--the quality of the former is always better and more even, even though both promise the same bit rate. I'm ready to give eMu the sayonara when my annual ends. The Rounder thing is simply insulting.
  • Well, adios Rounder - not only are the releases gone, they seem to have even disappeared from my SFLs. There is not a chance in hell I am paying the New Rounder prices for these. FWIW, I can't even care enough to be mad anymore - they have worn me down with all this BS. All I want now is to pick the bones for whatever there is remaining I want at a sane price, because at the end of the day I've got my vinyl, tape, discs, and about 250G to keep me warm - I don't need them that much anymore. Sad, but only a little.
  • eMusic can be blamed for many things, but I don't see them as being more than very passive partners in labels' active decisions to raise prices. Rounder, for example, is Concord's fault, not emu's.
  • I don't see them as being more than very passive partners in labels' active decisions to raise prices
    They definitely reformed pricing to allow prices to creep higher and higher.
  • I don't care who's to blame. It's just not fun anymore. I think being left with $.48 last month was the breaking point for me. I really think I've actually quit for real this time. (Which is what I said for about 10 years of trying to quit smoking).
  • It makes me really sad that we're even discussing such a high cost of albums on eMu. $6.99 is supposed to be good for a subscription mp3 service? For 5 bucks a month I can listen to it as much as I want on Mog. The whole point of a subscription mp3 service was that I could buy stuff for 2 or 3 bucks a pop.

    I know, I've been saying the same stuff for so long now, but I've barely been around for the last month+ and it just saddens me to see that the eMu discussion can only get worse. Even after Sony there was still some hope and I was willing to rejoin on occasion. Now I can go longer and longer without even thinking about them.
  • Besides the BS, I've been watching the MB there as a matter of curiosity and hardly any of the posts the last several days have been about music, it's mostly gripes and glitches (that would be a good thread title), and no fun at all.
  • edited April 2011
    After so much vetching I figured I'd share something more upbeat - they are probably one of those European graverobbing copyright violating labels, but following up on something called Smash Rock'n'Roll Hits I'd SFL'd I looked up this label and found some interesting collections - Excalibur Recordings - from different genres, seem to be originals, not a super value, mostly 20-25 tracks per album, but at $0.49 a track could be a good source for filling in in categories where you have a lot of the hits already, which is what I plan to do with some of them.
    Forgot - listen to your samples because What'd I Say by Ray Charles on two different albums was some song in French.
    Bit-rates rather decent for these kinds of comps (by eMu standards).
  • The name Excalibur Recordings pretty much screams "copyright violation". Not complaining or judging, just observing...
  • I just realized I have a lot of still-unlisted stuff from Mordac, downloaded in both 2007 & 2008 during the great booster & crack card blowouts. Just finished listening to The Melody Unit's "Choose Your Own Adventure", which was excellent. I wonder if someone here rec'd it to me?
    Katell Keineg - I was glad to get through that woman's caterwauling. Ugh. Glad to know that stuff was only about 12¢ per track.
    The German Art Students remind me of a cross between The B-52s and....somebody else. Kinda fun.
    Ani DiFranco's "Red Letter Year" was also good. I still have unlistened full albums from Santogold, Beirut, New Pornographers....over 2000 tracks.

    Yikes. I dunno what I was thinking, that I might sign up for another month!
  • I still have unlistened full albums from Santogold, Beirut, New Pornographers....over 2000 tracks.
    Is this because you're a relatively recent convert to smart playlists? They are what's let me keep my playcount=0 generally under a hundred running, fed by new additions. My oldest unheard track is 5 weeks old. I wonder what others' pc=0 counts are (for those whose player libraries accurately reflect such things).
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