Sudden realization: subscribing to eMusic makes me a bad person.
For my complaints with the system this weekend, I received $12 credit, which more than covers all the errors with the system. That's generous, but it also seems like I must express this extreme rage with every little problem. I haven't had any problems with 7dig, I notice that people having problems this weekend don't go to the same extremes.
The problem is that we do not know if the emu message board represents the membership or not, but it is again becoming a complaints board. I like emusic too, but it is just so difficult to use these days that it puts people off using it.
I notice that people having problems this weekend don't go to the same extremes
On the rare occasions when I've lost credits, I've politely but tenaciously kept after it until I got 'em back!
Must say, I do not experience the problems that others on that board report. I use older versions of the DLM, so that's presumably why. Yet when I was having trouble on one computer recently, the problem was fixed when I upgraded to the latest DLM.
The problem is that we do not know if the emu message board represents the membership or not, but it is again becoming a complaints board. I like emusic too, but it is just so difficult to use these days that it puts people off using it.
i'm going to go out on a limb and say the message board doesn't represent the membership, and never did. in fact, my sneaking suspicion has always been that the vast majority of the site's 400k members are mostly transient, pop-ish fans, who wind up subsidizing the site for the layer of core subscribers to whom emusic caters (not out of the goodness of emusic's heart, but because that is the central purpose of the site's branding effort (see, e.g., "stimulating curious musical minds!" and other creepy slogans)).
They have always responded quickly on the few occasions when I have had problems and have always refunded. And Daniel I am sure that you are right. It took me about two years before I added a comment to the message board - there is no way 99.5% of members ever go to the board and add comments if 400K is right. 0.5% gives 200 members contributing and that looks high... What I'd like to know is the churn rate of members.
my protip for the morning on this subject: stop listening to the echo-chamber of complaints that is the emusic message board nowadays.
I don't spend as much time over there as some people. However, I would say respectfully, that the moderators have themselves have asked that people use the board to report performance issues, which I did the first time. My frustration came out when I had a second problem in a short time span.
I now look at the emu board, generally, once a day to check out Dhaun's New Releases in Europe thread, but have stopped contributing. At one point with monitoring emusers and emusic and occasionally AAJ I was spending too much time on message boards, so now I stick here!!
However, I would say respectfully, that the moderators have themselves have asked that people use the board to report performance issues, which I did the first time. My frustration came out when I had a second problem in a short time span.
that's true, and i don't begrudge people for registering complaints. i'm talking about constant, endless haranguing and bellyaching; self-congratulatory fist-bumping after complaints; dropping into threads about music to steer them toward complaints (or at least to just be sour, to dampen others' enthusiasm or interest); etc.
you're not doing any of that, btw. i'm thinking of others.
I almost put this in the RIP thread, but I thought it would show bad taste towards those musicians in the sky, but it does look as though the emusic message board is terminally ill. I've just been over there to go to have my daily browse of dhaun's European New Releases thread. There have only been a very few comments in the last 24 hours or so, and nearly all are complaining about emusic's service. It is beginning to get to the point where emusic should do the decent thing and leave it to Rest in Peace. I remember some great conversations over the last few years, and many here will remember better than me its heyday. I even look back to the Wanderer days now with affection - I remember, eg, amc2's great rant! I do wonder where all the posters are now - OK, the key ones are here, of course, but without emusers posting there, there would be very little left. It is coming to a sad end, unfortunately.
It looks like eMu's twitter help account might be a better place to contact them about issues. I haven't looked at it too often, but it seems like they get back to people quickly on there.
For the first time in a long time, it's been more than 30 days since I quit, and still no free rejoin offer. Could this be it? Could this be the end? I wonder how much their membership will shrink if they quit giving rejoin offers?
Oh the good old days. Which I wasn't really even there for. But still there was some fun to be had on those boards. And some time to be wasted.
I got to the stage where I just got fed up with getting no response from anyone. I had a long chat with Brad Secora which was nice( he agreed with all I said but nothing else came of it) and got a months free credits but it seems to me that the company is sliding towards the edge. It is hard to fathom that a company that trades as an internet subscribtion model has got to the stage where it is asking it customers to clear their computers, cannot bring back functions that have been missing for over 6 months and seems to have no business direction or USP.
Here is the UK and Europe we only get half the service anyway and since I have been on hold I have been able to find plenty of great music and start to go through some of the back catalogue that I have been ignoring.
I am due to come of hold next month and I may go back for a month as it looks like I can justify using all my credits although I am worried that the site and its technical probs might put me off.
Its a great shame as E Music as it was fitted my ideal as a company, however its seems the present management have no idea of where they are going with it and you can see it either closing soon or being sold off to another company.
I had an unusually good experience with CS today. I bought "The Best, the Ultimate" Mozart collection (see the deals thread), and noticed that track 34 was cut off. I had a response withing 4 hours from CS confirming my report and they rewarded me with 49 cents credit. Someone allegedly named Presley told me "We do keep a record of tracks members have reported as defective. We will contact you when it has been fixed. Please do not re-download until further notice." I do not recall being told that they keep track of that sort of thing before.
Hey, Plong, let us know what you think of the rest of it when you get the chance. I was this close to pulling the hammer on it but was held back by the facts that I wasn't acquainted with the 2 orchestras that contribute most of the tracks, and more to the point, that my Mozart Smart Playlist already contains 11GB, which might be enough for a sane person, except for something really tasty. Thanks.
I listened to about half of the tracks today, and I was impressed. Usually those mass compilations have some very old sounding recordings, but all of this was clear, fresh sounding. The Apollo Symphony Orchestra produces "royalty free recordings," which is what RFCM stands for in most of those tracks (here is another site that sells these tracks). I guess that someone invested $3500 in royalty free tracks and throws these massive comps up. If 600 suckers, er, lovers of fine classical music bite, they might make some money.
I figure if I can find a few more bad tracks eMu will give me enough credit to have the collection for free.
Just a tidbit from the MB that tends to reinforce some of the suspicions as to the focus of the management's aspirations. As for me, you know what they can do about the aspirations.
I surf on my phone way way more than on a computer, so I'd love a nice little emusic app. But what are the chances that emusic will come up with a nice little app? Snowball, hell, etc.
But more important for emu overall; why do you have to gut your website to make an app or a mobile site? Don't try to make your site mobile friendly, just make your site work, then make a mobile version or an app. Or do I not understand how these things work?
I hate the whole idea of music on phones (actually I hate phones and the whole culture of 'apps' - don't get me started!)
I'm not sure if any of the other UK based members remember this, but 2 or 3 years ago Emusic started selling gift vouchers in the major supermarkets here. The gift cards were a bit misleading, in that they had band names printed on them that were the biggest bands Emusic carried at the time. I had visions of people getting these cards at Christmas from relatives who thought Emusic was another iTunes, and then proceeding to whine on the message board when the site didn't live up to their expectations. All of this talk of apps for phones and tablets just makes me think Emusic has a terminal case of failing to understand its own strengths and audience.
They're at it again - you could pay $4.40 for this record like I did back whenever - '50's & '60's Lost & Found Records Vol.1, or you could pay $5.84 for this New This Week version of exactly the same record on exactly the same label. Not exactly high finance at these prices but what the hey? Is this rocket science or what? I suppose all that "musical discovery" is just too much of a burden. Or is "musical discovery" our job now? Perhaps that was the point of the site redesign.
Well on my iPad I am using the Dolphin browser...and emusic pages load with the header and footer and a blank grey space in between. No surprise there then.
So, MP3 tag cognoscenti - I'm now listening to this album (iTunes) and I notice some of the tracks have these huge track Name tags, some of them stretch almost across the whole page if you expand the column with a load of info. So my question is - if this album has these, why do so many albums (Various Artists comps especially) have truncated lines that cut off after a certain point? I assumed it was a function of number of characters or something but obviously this is not the case, so is this on the labels?
This is on my laptop at work which only has 17GB of music on it but I've been eyeballing this situation and I believe all the examples I've found were downloaded from eMu.
I'm carrying this over from another thread where it was really just an incidental find, but now that I've had the chance to search iTunes on my home desktop it very much seems to be the case that it is eMu downloaded material that specializes in truncated tags, which I've found in the song Name column, as well as in some longer examples in the Artist and Album columns. I keep fairly faithful discrete master playlists for Amazon, 7digital and eMu downloads and I have yet to find similarly truncated lines in either the Amazon or 7digital lists, in any of these columns. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon in their collections?
Glad to know it's not just me that can't get the daily download today. Misery loves company ; )
That is the only reason I visit the mordac message board.
Intersting to notice that here in the UK we used to get the Monday release about 4pm our time, I have just checked and it seems that nothing yet has come through. As Monday is our big release day it seems strange that E Music is getting later and later putting them on the site.
I was thingking is the Paul Buchanon release was available I might come off my hold but I think it will stay for a little longer.
@Lowlife, I took a gander at Freshly Ripped about an hour ago here in the States and the newest items were dated the 19th. Horse latitudes, or the usual horse manure, don't know. These days I just sit and wait, unless it is a new "Freshly Ripped" glitch they've created. Eventually they catch up and then it's like a bonus - some new additions I might actually want. Did actually find a few last week.
Comments
For my complaints with the system this weekend, I received $12 credit, which more than covers all the errors with the system. That's generous, but it also seems like I must express this extreme rage with every little problem. I haven't had any problems with 7dig, I notice that people having problems this weekend don't go to the same extremes.
my protip for the morning on this subject: stop listening to the echo-chamber of complaints that is the emusic message board nowadays.
On the rare occasions when I've lost credits, I've politely but tenaciously kept after it until I got 'em back!
Must say, I do not experience the problems that others on that board report. I use older versions of the DLM, so that's presumably why. Yet when I was having trouble on one computer recently, the problem was fixed when I upgraded to the latest DLM.
i'm going to go out on a limb and say the message board doesn't represent the membership, and never did. in fact, my sneaking suspicion has always been that the vast majority of the site's 400k members are mostly transient, pop-ish fans, who wind up subsidizing the site for the layer of core subscribers to whom emusic caters (not out of the goodness of emusic's heart, but because that is the central purpose of the site's branding effort (see, e.g., "stimulating curious musical minds!" and other creepy slogans)).
that's true, and i don't begrudge people for registering complaints. i'm talking about constant, endless haranguing and bellyaching; self-congratulatory fist-bumping after complaints; dropping into threads about music to steer them toward complaints (or at least to just be sour, to dampen others' enthusiasm or interest); etc.
you're not doing any of that, btw. i'm thinking of others.
Oh the good old days. Which I wasn't really even there for. But still there was some fun to be had on those boards. And some time to be wasted.
Here is the UK and Europe we only get half the service anyway and since I have been on hold I have been able to find plenty of great music and start to go through some of the back catalogue that I have been ignoring.
I am due to come of hold next month and I may go back for a month as it looks like I can justify using all my credits although I am worried that the site and its technical probs might put me off.
Its a great shame as E Music as it was fitted my ideal as a company, however its seems the present management have no idea of where they are going with it and you can see it either closing soon or being sold off to another company.
I figure if I can find a few more bad tracks eMu will give me enough credit to have the collection for free.
But more important for emu overall; why do you have to gut your website to make an app or a mobile site? Don't try to make your site mobile friendly, just make your site work, then make a mobile version or an app. Or do I not understand how these things work?
I'm not sure if any of the other UK based members remember this, but 2 or 3 years ago Emusic started selling gift vouchers in the major supermarkets here. The gift cards were a bit misleading, in that they had band names printed on them that were the biggest bands Emusic carried at the time. I had visions of people getting these cards at Christmas from relatives who thought Emusic was another iTunes, and then proceeding to whine on the message board when the site didn't live up to their expectations. All of this talk of apps for phones and tablets just makes me think Emusic has a terminal case of failing to understand its own strengths and audience.
I'm carrying this over from another thread where it was really just an incidental find, but now that I've had the chance to search iTunes on my home desktop it very much seems to be the case that it is eMu downloaded material that specializes in truncated tags, which I've found in the song Name column, as well as in some longer examples in the Artist and Album columns. I keep fairly faithful discrete master playlists for Amazon, 7digital and eMu downloads and I have yet to find similarly truncated lines in either the Amazon or 7digital lists, in any of these columns. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon in their collections?
Craig
That is the only reason I visit the mordac message board.
I was thingking is the Paul Buchanon release was available I might come off my hold but I think it will stay for a little longer.
yes, DAMMIT, that's what i found too. DAMMIT.