Even though they should have been in closed betas for months to iron everything out, inevitably big web platform redesigns take some time to bed in. So I didn’t rush to judgement on the latest (the most radical in over a decade) redesign of venerable mp3 download site emusic. But its been up a couple of months now, and surely time to share some thoughts.
THE GOOD
You can search by record label
My music is an improvement on previous versions of databases that tracked what you’d downloaded.
Wish list and my emusic sync – ie downloaded takes it off one and adds it to the other
Removal of emusic downloader, the new ‘in-browser’ downloading is more reliable.
Does look a bit fresher visually
THE BAD
The removal of almost every functionality from the site bar searching and downloading.
No reliable list of new releases recommended for you – as the global new release list always includes mucho dross this is essential.
No syncing of downloads with itunes
Can’t comment on albums in your lists
NOT YET TRIED
any of the apps (tend to use the site just to download from)
Daily download
The paranoiac in me also says good new content is very thin on the ground at the moment, and is this part of the change too, but experience would say it tends to come and go in waves.
Me no likey at all.
Absolutely spot-on with above comments. The “good” points are pretty much irrelevant, whilst the “bad” ones are just annoying/frustrating.
My commiserations. Last FM had a redesign and it was AWFUL. I do still go there but it’s not the same. 🙁
The redesign is ultimately irrelevant. It’s the content that’s the most important part, and it appears to me that great huge chunks of catalog have disappeared, certainly for UK users.
Pretty much everything on my old ‘Save For Later’ list (around 90 albums) is no longer available. Even things that I’d downloaded a couple of days before the big change are now no longer available. I’m really struggling to find anything to download at the moment. Even the new releases/additions aren’t a patch on what they were.
Content is now provided by 7Digital, a UK company, but the music/download rights are clearly from a US bias.
I’ve been a subscriber for 12 years now and never really had issues. Now I’m wondering whether it’s worth having at all. Very poor.
As for the redesign. It looks fine. It’s just a redesign. I liked the Download Manager, as that enabled me to set the defaut location for downloading files to (‘Automatically add to iTunes’ for me), but just coming into the normal browser folder is a drag.
It was always possible to search by record label.
Yep, lots of saved stuff just upped and vanished without warning. Don’t they realise that a heads up might have prompted an avalanche of booster pack sales and a bonanza of furious urgent downloading?
Don’t use iTunes, so no significant difference with syncing here.
It seems to me that there’s just as much new stuff, although, as you say, the trimmed down front page makes it harder to find – but my method was always to go to the charts and filter according to taste (and that might be why I think there’s loads – I just happen to like a lot of the new stuff that has come in lately, which might fall into the “dross” category for you).
I can’t understand the distinction between “Saved For Later” and “My Wish List” – what’s the point of that?
A surprising amount of searches now seem to throw up “album only” downloads, including something – can’t remember now – which, before the facelift was available as individual tracks..
Bring back the charts!! I used to look at a few pages of those, before sub checking in my genres of choice to prompt me what was new and of appeal. Now it all seems a bit random, needing a checklist in advance to check and see if in e-music. I have to say I couldn’t find much this month at all, outside of electronica, so I have a load of possibly risky purchases, bar the new Justin Currie which looks promising.
Beatles and Roger Waters apparently.
Good: Track/disc numbers in the filenames now have leading zeroes 🙂
The demise of the download manager is good as that often didn’t work, and even when it did it often gave the impression that it wasn’t.
I’ve only done one round of downloading and they had enough for me not to have to take a punt on anything that time, though I had hoped that the Afghan Whigs might’ve reappeared so I could have got “In Spades”. Maybe next month…
I never had a problem with the downloader since the last update a few years back and before that I used a faultless third party one anyway. I much prefer the downloader way of doing things cos you can configure it. I do appreciate being able to download stuff multiple times like we used to be able to do in the old days.
The content has certainly shrunk but, in these early days, I’m making the most of the stuff that wasn’t there before – last month I had a bit of a bonanza session in the first couple of days the new site was up because it had labels such as Domino available in the UK again which it really shouldn’t have done. If I’d known it was going to go after a few days, I’d have filled my boots a bit more.
There are albums that have come out so far this year that would have been available before that simply aren’t now, ATO records has a very weak selection now and the new Hurray For The Riff Raff was listed for a few days but I just couldn’t download it.
The search is as bad as it ever was, if you cut an artist name from the site and paste it into the search field, sometimes nothing comes up!
I’m sure to stay, I’ve been an Emusic user since the last century and there have been ups and downs before and I’m on a very good grandfathered scheme where I could easily miss couple of months downloads entirely and still get value for money.
@johnw example of artists who have/have had music on the site who I am waiting to see if their new albums appear:
Ride
Way out West
as well as Afghan Whigs
though the new Jason Isbell has appeared promptly (excellent) and curios such as the Zabriskie Point soundtrack with some deep cut Pink Floyd has now appeared.
You can, kind of, recreate the Chart by, on the ‘Browse Music’ page, choosing ‘Popular This Month’ from the drop-down menu top right.
I do agree though that they don’t provide so much signposting for new popular content or editorial of any use – the similar artists seemed reasonably accurate.
But the fact that you can download multiple times is a plus.
There’s still good stuff there – new Kevin Morby, Phoenix, Nev Cottee, Slowdive, Todd Rundgren
There is a whole slew of krautrock through Bureau B,
https://www.emusic.com/label/27471/Bureau-B
Has there never been a concerted effort to rename the genre k.a. “Krautrock”? Simply saying the word makes otherwise sensible people sound like dummkopfs..
Why is it that only English-speaking people complain about the term “krautrock”? It’s well accepted in Germany and no-one finds it offensive here (and yes, they know its origins…).
I’m not a massive fan of the genre search, as inevitably to get everything out I might be interested in would mean multiple searches.
The old site’s ‘New and Recommended for You’ plus the download chart plus my own notes did a pretty good job of putting what I might be interested in in front of me. Really hope this is re-instated. The ‘popular this month’ is pretty much what the download chart was, though see very little movement in it.
I had put my membership on hold for a while – at least 6 months – then there was a good offer to start up again. But after 3 months I was really struggling to spend my money again, lots of the music that I was interested in, (and it came up in searches) was not available in my region.
I have suspended again – they were quite unhelpful about that – but if there is not a better selection in 6 months when it starts up again, I’m gone.
I’m an eMusic subscriber of old which means I still have a ‘golden handcuffs’ deal which means I get stuff cheap.
Paying to download mp3s is already starting to feel a bit quaint. Ultimately here’s the deal for me.
I don’t really do streaming, it’s not for me…I like buying records and music is too important to me to trust to some content provider online that might vanish overnight, and I don’t want my ability to listen to music to depend on internet access (which is a bit flaky where I live). I stream music just to audition stuff and if I like it I’ll buy it.
I buy music I really want on CD or Vinyl and I like a hard copy.
I like digging for old music in record shops and wherever – mostly Vinyl and the odd CD.
I like my eMusic account to keep me stocked with new stuff that I might not want to invest in too much but don’t mind paying a couple of quid so I can put it on my mp3 player because (and here is the crunch) I don’t want to listen to music on my phone.
So eMusic has provided well for the last one for some time. However, as SimonG points out the catalogue is getting very thin now particularly for UK releases and I have been seriously considering cancelling my membership. I can live with the lack of iTunes integration but I hope they can sort the catalogue issues out – I’d have thought the record labels would have been keen on eMusic as I suspect it has a hardcore who are happy to pay for music and surely they’d get far more income from an eMusic subscriber than the pennies from Spotify and Apple music?
@dr-volume I too am a phone luddite – I have a small samsung clipjam thingy for running and stuff it full of emusic mp3’s.
While those of us with grandfathered accounts can cut it some slack I wonder who on earth would join it now when for the same monthly price you can have Spotify premium etc. Daughter (15) has gone full luddite and listens to those there CD’s (though she has Spotify of course) but the mp3 is a mostly-unloved halfway house between them and streaming.
As that famous quote about the CD had it ‘who on earth thought it a good idea to put studio masters in the hands of the public’, there are clear sonic qualities still attached to the shiny disc. But your 192 kps mp3 is neither fish nor fowl. However the fact you can anonymise an mp3 does make a CD swap still more fun that swapping Spotify playlists.
I cancelled last year. Whilst it was good value, it was hard to use my downloads because the choice was getting smaller. Ended up taking a family Apple music sub* for the same price as the 75 track equivalent download deal I had. I use Apple music a lot more than I did eMusic.
*I may be killing the music industry.
@dr-volume @timtunes @johnw @deviant808 et al
Ok so this is a good sign https://www.emusic.com/label/70979/Rarity-Music a whole lot of great 60s stuff, proper albums from Cream, Them, Moody Blues, Kinks, Dave Clark 5 etc….and er Burt Kaempfert.
And for the electronica people https://www.emusic.com/artist/rs_126840/John-Digweed includes all his recent epic DJ ‘Live In..’ including the full mixes as single tracks.
So although the redesign is still very questionable some catalogue gains are starting to emerge….
Good tips, cheers
I looked through all those Rarity Music issues a few weeks ago and looked for thecompany on the web and drew a bit of a blank. Has anyone else downloaded any of them? Is the sound, what some might call ‘authentic’ (ie lots of clicks and pops)? or are they as worth downloading as they look?
Well @johnw I am no audiophile need @fentonsteve really, but I’ve downloaded Disraeli Gears and just swapped headphones between Spotify premium high quality and the emusic MP3 for Mothers Lament and there is the tape hiss on both but otherwise no discernible difference.
I seem to recall Spotify premium is 320kbps Ogg Vorbis. eMusic uses 192kbps variable mp3, I believe. Both are lossy formats so lower-than-CD quality.
Disraeli Gears is not exactly an audiophile master recording, so the lossy encoders don’t have much detail they need to throw away.
I have the Abbey Road half-speed master LP of Disraeli Gears and it doesn’t sound that great, tbh. John Martyn’s Solid Air in the same series sounds amazing, as it is a much better master recording.
Cheers for the tip @moseleymoles in the end I found a few goodies so eMusic has me for at least another month and I’ll follow up your links when my credit ticks over