Emusic Beta

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  • I emailed them about the SFL not coming across - they confirmed that is still in the works.
  • They have a significant number of Archie Shepp releases that were not on the old site.
  • Brighternow - I found 72 titles listed for Innova.  Right now the only way I could find to search by label is to look for an artist you know is on a particular label and once that comes up, you can search by clicking on the label name below the record.  Not ideal, but a start.  Missing my wish list!
  • edited April 2017
    @Doofy said:
    I was poking around too, and disappointed to see the selection pretty much the same as before. Holes in the catalog, and some labels still missing altogether.

    I'm interested in which labels you found missing ?

    @stewrat said:
    Right now the only way I could find to search by label is to look for an artist you know is on a particular label and once that comes up, you can search by clicking on the label name below the record

    That's what I found out too.

      I do hope that Emusic has gone on air with a very unfinished site.

    - The infamous Mozart search  brings up 6908 artist results the first time and 6956 the second. (?)

    The Album filter brings up 21.972 albums. It has been loading for about 5 minutes and are not finished yet

    - And composer search is no longer possible.  (unless I have overlooked something)


    - The way I see it, search has gone from very bad to a total disaster.


  • Black Saint/Soul Note and Timeless are awol.

    I agree that search is possibly worse, at least in terms of serving up irrelevant results. Looks like it might be essentially the same as 7digital's
  • edited April 2017
    Thanks Doofy,

    Staalplaat seems to be missing too . . .

    - and now there's 7244 hits for Mozart :#

  • - and now there's 7244 hits for Mozart :#
    Seeing 8400 hits from here - and 28450 albums

    I hope the new dataset for classical has not yet been integrated...
  • More notes on the mechanics of the new site as it stands now:

    Downloading a track at a time (because it's cheaper!?), one clicks on the price of the track, another click to confirm that you want to purchase, and then your browser is redirected to the My Music tab.  To get the next track, you need to navigate back to the album and click the track price again.

    To download your music, you can navigate to the album under My Music and select Download at the top of the album track listing.  This brings down the whole album as a zip archive.  I don't see any indication of "you may download this file 3 more times" or the like.

    Just the mp3 files for the tracks are in the zip.  The cover.jpg file is no longer included, but you can pull the image out of one of the track files, and I'm seeing nice large images, 600x600 or 800x800 pixels.

    The tracks I've downloaded so far are encoded at 320 kbit/s.

    Track file naming now is formatted as "disc number track number track title.mp3", for example "01 02 Shining Star.mp3".  Files are tagged with "Purchased from 7digital.com" in the comment field.

    Maybe this is the 7digital back end.  I haven't used them before.
  • Brighternow said:
    That's what I found out too.
      I do hope that Emusic has gone on air with a very unfinished site.

    But isn't that the point? This is not the full rollout - it's a restricted beta for volunteers. Betas are not supposed to be ready, that is why they are betas and not full releases.
  • edited April 2017
    Here's the reddit message board. Puzzlingly, they seem to have convinced themselves that their customers are suddenly going to switch to streaming (from their app), rather than downloading as we have all been doing for years. In response to a comment that DL'ing after purchase is not straightforward:
    Offering the download as an option at the point of purchase is totally valid. Our thinking was that downloading the physical file becomes less relevant if people are simply purchasing then listening on the app/site.
    Later

    Out of interest, what do you use to listen to your music?

    An integral part of emusic is going to be the cloud storage for ALL your music - purchased from EMusic and elsewhere. For now we have manual upload from the web and automatic upload via the apps. Would you use the app to listen if you could pull in all your music from other places?

    We have a sync agent tool in our sister product MyMusicCloud that allows automatic upload from desktop, as well as google drive and Dropbox. A version of this for EMusic is very much part of our plans.

    The phone has become the default method for playing music.
  • edited April 2017
    Brighternow said:
    That's what I found out too.
      I do hope that Emusic has gone on air with a very unfinished site.

    But isn't that the point? This is not the full rollout - it's a restricted beta for volunteers. Betas are not supposed to be ready, that is why they are betas and not full releases.
    Hmmm, Yeah . . . I would have thought that the beta testing is to see how it works for the users and subsequently fine ajustments would be made.

    It still worries me that essential core features like composer search, label search, composer, ensemble information on album pages,  album, single comp. filters, date added  AMO is missing.
  • I was chosen for the original beta testing, then allowed in as a beta tester on the actual site. I'm not much of a streamer, so I didn't do a lot of testing on the first part.

    On the new site, I have purchased and downloaded an album - the download was a little slow, but the download was direct, and not through the download manager. I know that their focus is on streaming, but bypassing the downloader for a zip of the album is welcome (I save the zip in a backup file in case something happens to the album). 

    In an email last Friday they said that new releases would be on the site in 24 hours. Either that has not happened, or the browse for new releases was not updated. Labels are missing - there was a point on Friday when I was able to log into the old site - maybe I should have downloaded the newer releases I wanted then, instead of being a good boy and waiting for the new site. 

    I noticed this morning that "My Music" has been updated - looks like a bunch of older stuff is there as well as the most recently downloaded. As a test, I downloaded a track that I had purchased 2 1/2 years ago - looks like it was downloaded ok, and I don't appear to have been charged for it. 

    I can't remember which album it was now, but I looked at an album I chose to stream during the original beta testing, and it was unavailable for me to purchase/download - not sure of that issue. I've checked a couple of others I chose for streaming and they are available for purchase/download - could have been that particular album (Emusic acknowledges some problems with albums). 

    As stated by others, search by label isn't really a thing yet. If you can get to an artist on the label, you can click the label and get their catalog, so that's a start. Where's SubPop, though?

    I dumped or only had a couple of albums on my wish list (I purge quite often), so nothing has come over, but none may. It's an issue they're still working on. 

    So, still issues to be worked on, but the sites' been faster and should be good going forward (I hope).  
  • They sent a list of features they are still working on in an email - it stretches a good month into the future. Given that one of the issues they explained on the old site's board was that they had stopped adding new albums to the old site I can understand them wanting to get the new one functioning as soon as possible, even if not all the features are quite there. The biggest disappointment is going to be if some of the labels remain AWOL.


  • Ninja Tune seems to be missing
  • Hey BN - I found 619 albums from NInja Tune . Looked for Bonobo and clicked the Ninja Tune label.
  • edited April 2017
    Searched for Bonobo too, but your link brings the labelname but 0 results, which is strange because I see the prices in USD
    - I had the impression that the € version wasn't on air yet.

    - ETA: but there's probably a number of ways of making area restriction.
  • edited April 2017
    This has just popped up in my email inbox:

    APR 10, 2017  |  02:42PM EDT
    Jamie replied:

    Hi,

    We wanted to thank you for your continued activity as part of the eMusic message board community. We wanted to offer you the opportunity to be one of our moderators for one of our new community features going forward; the eMusic subreddit; www.reddit.com/r/eMusicofficial/

    Let us know if you’d like to get involved!

    Jamie

    Customer Support

    How satisfied were you with the resolution we provided today?
    Poor | Fair | Good | Great
    ________________________________________________________________

    I wonder what excactly I'm supposed to do as a moderator.

    - And when it comes to satisfaction. . . hmmmm ?  . . . I hardly get any response from Emusic  to my questions / comments / content requests.
  • Naive Classics releases seem to be cheaper on the new site.
  • I went on the Emusic Facebook page (one of the emails said that many people were posting problems there, so I joined), and they said that anew beta would be available tomorrow, with label search added.
  • I hit my first downloading problem yesterday. I bought this: https://beta.emusic.com/library/album/1286224 and it is in my library and will play but will not download. Waiting for emusic to respond.
  • Hi - joined up here to comment on the beta. I won't be signing up to the subreddit as I've seen plenty of complaints about being automatically signed-up for loads of other subreddits by default & I'm not interested in getting involved in a site that thinks that's a good idea...

    Anyway...I'm in the UK and wasn't due for a credit update until next week so the £25 bonus was a nice surprise & allowed me to get started - so thanks eMusic for that.

    Initial login took ages & I got a message saying I needed to join despite using my usual details. Eventually it connected & since then there's been no problem.

    Neither my SFL nor My Music has carried over - the issue was acknowledged in an email from eMusic so fair enough.

    First album I wanted to buy turned out to be unavailable for d/l - another issue affecting some label content that was also mentioned in the email. Ninja Tune seems to be one of the labels affected - the new The Bug vs Earth & Forest Swords releases are what I'm after - with the most recent releases being unavailable. Brighternow: I see 632 releases listed under Ninja Tune here in the UK. Mute also affected - new Goldfrapp unavailable for example.

    Observations

    - still getting confused by the search within Browse Music/My Music conflict

    - issues with using the 'back' button following a search, as mentioned above

    - label search not actually present yet, as mentioned above by others - just available when you find a release on that label by searching for an artist you already know is on the label

    - I like the links to website/social media that have been added to some of the label pages, although how much I'll use them I'm not sure!

    - Took me while to work out how to d/l the music rather than add to My Music - I'd assumed a DLM would be used. Not sure I like having to use zip files but I'll get used to it.

    As mentioned by others I'm unlikely to stream from the cloud via phone so streamlining the d/l process would be an improvement.

    - price per track has increased from 0.42 to 0.49 - irrelevant as long as my plan is grandfathered at 75 tracks for my subscription fee but until next week I won't be sure that's the case

    - hadn't noticed that some albums may be cheaper to buy per track so I'll keep an eye out for that in the future

    - did an experimental upload of a single 11-track album to My Music: took a stupidly long amount of time to do so, so I won't be adding any more of my non-emusic collection any time soon

    - Warp music are back! 506 releases showing so far - but the sort by release date is all over the place within the label listings, with the year listed apparently having no bearing on the order listed

    - Blackest Ever Black & On-U-Sound are also back

    - no problems adding to Wish List

    - managed to get Lustmord's Dark Matter, which wasn't available on the old site!

    All-in-all it's a promising start!

    cheers
    Lee
  • Welcome aboard, @Dark_Magus / Lee.
  • We have been away on holiday for nearly two weeks. I volunteered to be part of the next stage of the pilot, but haven't logged in there yet, thought I would check here first! i'll see how it goes.....
  • Some initial thoughts

    • Definitely not the full range of albums available, but a couple I have been waiting for for some months are now there
    • I'm finding it difficult to sort out new releases from newly added. Maybe there is a way around it
    • I notice that tracks, on the EU/UK system, are now 49p each compared to previous price of 42p each. As my plan is for 100 tracks per month, I am not sure if that will impact my monthly credit bonus to reflect this.
    • I have bought several booster packs over the last couple of months. There is no way to find out when their end date is
    • At the moment I can only add music to My Music. I am assuming that this will eventually change so I can download fully. I do play quite a lot of music when in the car, so like to download.
    But overall my experience so far has been good.

  • edited April 2017
    Hey ! labelsearch is now active.
    https://beta.emusic.com/label/62317

    - Only 3 albums available from Cuneiform in €urope :'(


  • I've got 14, BN! I've been using the label search this morning
  • I've had a reply from emusic. Yes UK prices have gone up from 42p per track to 49p per track which means my grandfathered plan reduces from 100 tracks per month to 85 tracks. Probably reflects the worsening exchange rate post the Brexit vote!
  • edited April 2017
    I am curious - has anyone else successfully bought and downloaded an album in the last 2-3 days? I am still unable to download the Guglielmo Vivaldi box. They did get back to me and said they are working on a fix (no clear timeline), but I am curious as to whether there is a problem with downloads generally or whether it is because this is a huge file and they didn't think to set the system up for 400 minute albums. I am wondering whether it will work if I try to purchase normal length albums.
  • gp do you mean any albums or just from the beta? I purchased and downloaded an album from the regular old site (and using emusic-j) last night and it worked fine.
  • I just downloaded a 6 track album from the beta site.  The site is a little pokey right now, but it works.
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