The New Allmusic: D/D?

It's a total disaster...almost like they made it bad on purpose, because things like this don't just happen by accident.

I am beginning to buy into the conspiracy theories here, though - the inflated click statistics and the bot-foiling structure. There's nothing else to explain it - certainly not 'we're only a small company' - it hardly takes any resources at all to solicit feedback from core users in a systematic fashion.

Dear allmusic fans-

As you’re aware, we’ve recently relaunched the allmusic site with expanded content and functionality and a whole new look. It is an ambitious undertaking and one that hasn’t gone off without some snags. We are working hard to fix the problems and ask for your patience while we work through this transition period.

We’ve been on the net since 1995 providing a free music reference resource. We would hope that through our ten years of service we’ve earned a little patience from our users as we work through the transition to the new site and some of the difficulties we’re experiencing. We’re a small company with small company resources. While we’re flattered by our users’ expectations, our resources are limited. We’re a small company from Ann Arbor, MI, trying to provide a great resource for music fans.

While we can’t respond to every piece of feedback we receive, we do read every bit of it. Feedback from our users is very important. We appreciate the time you take to share your thoughts with us. The following are some updates on the site and some responses to your comments.

SLOW RESPONSE TIMES
We are experiencing some response time delays as we did not anticipate the more than doubling of our traffic with the relaunch. We are working to add servers to handle the capacity and to get all of our servers properly balanced. This site is bigger and more complex than the old site. The speed difference won't be very noticeable once we get everything in peak form.

SUPPORT OF NON-IE FOR WINDOWS BROWSERS
Optimizing a site of allmusic’s complexity and size for all browsers and operating systems is no small feat. This isn’t a simple “brochure-ware” site of static pages. While we would love to optimize the AMG sites for all browsers and all operating systems, we simply don’t have the necessary resources to do so. Despite some users flattering comparison of our site with that of Google, Amazon and Yahoo!, we are a small company with limited resources. So, we had to pick the most widely used browser by our users (over 87%) to optimize the site for and then work on compatibility issues with the other major browsers as we go forward.

We are concentrating on making the site more accessible through Opera, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. We know how important it is to our users and we’re moving quickly.

REGISTRATION
The allmusic site remains totally FREE to our users and only requires registration for access to new Premium Content. If you are uncomfortable registering, we understand and invite you to continue to use the portion of the site (roughly equivalent to the former site) that does not require registration. But we would like to take a moment to explain why we have introduced registration for Premium Content.

The AMG websites are FREE sites that are marginally supported by only advertising and product sales. To attract advertisers and retailers, we need to provide them with basic demographic information of our users so they can determine if our site is a fit for their products. We provide this information only in the aggregate (i.e. 60% of our users are male) and never pass on any individual user information. Please read our privacy policy for more information. Without these advertisers and retailers, the AMG websites would be out of business. Registration is a common practice among free publishing sites such as the AMG sites (i.e. NY Times, LA Times, etc.) that fund their enterprise through advertising and product sales. AMG is in line with common Internet practices and, as a good Internet citizen, zealously protects the privacy of our users.

TAB FORMAT
We realized when we designed the tab system that we would make some folks unhappy, but we felt the trade off was worth it. If we stuck to the one page approach it would limit our ability to add additional information. That design approach (one page) just doesn't scale as we expand content. And it's a real problem with artists with extensive discographies. We think that once folks take some more time on the site, they'll see that there is much more information available now than there was on the old site. The addition of the Songs and Credits tabs are both good examples of information that just wouldn’t be possible in a one page format.

Thanks for all your feedback. Together, we can make our service better than ever.

Sincerely,
AMG

Links that appeared on TWX:

A version of AMG that actually works

A potential explanation, for the conspiracy inclined.

my memory of the web publishing biz from my time in it way back in
so if users now have to click three times as many pages as they used to, and therefore "see" three times as many ads as they used to, the site can turn over its ads three times as fast and make three times as much money.

the old days of two or three years ago is that advertisers buy a certain number of clicks when they buy an ad. advertiser gives website money, website keeps ad on site until it's literally been seen X number of times.

though i assume that somewhere along the way the advertisers would start saying "wait a minute..."

my memory of the web publishing biz from my time in it way back in the old days of two or three years ago is that advertisers buy a certain number of clicks when they buy an ad. advertiser gives website money, website keeps ad on site until it's literally been seen X number of times.

so if users now have to click three times as many pages as they used to, and therefore "see" three times as many ads as they used to, the site can turn over its ads three times as fast and make three times as much money.

though i assume that somewhere along the way the advertisers would start saying "wait a minute..."

There are a number of ways to buy online advertising - per view (impression), per click, per actual transaction subsequent to click - but in any of these cases, the advertisers are going to be most interested in AMG demonstrating that the people viewing/clicking the ads belong to the demographic/psychographic groups that the advertiser is targeting. They are most likely less intersted in whether or not the site is designed to generate more or less views/clicks . . . they just want qualified people in the numbers that they've negotiated.

Does "strategic opportunities" actually mean anything, for those versed in corporatespeak?

The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Teams
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000242.php

I wasn't trying to be a smartass, at all. In businesspeak anything involving "strategy" almost always means "buying somebody out."

Strategy can relate to Organic Growth [without Strategic Acquisition.]

Organic Growth
http://www.exemplas.com/performance/147_2028.asp

it's true.

"strategic opportunities" sounds to me like "surgical strike." funny how corporatespeak and pentagonspeak have so much in common.

i'm not trying to make this amg thing more than it is.

i really liked amg, i thought a bunch of their reviewers were great, and i liked the simple and easy to use interface, even if it sometimes meant long page loads (i.e. for elvis presley). i use a lot of different computers, so it's unfeasible to keep logging in and out, not to mention the fact that the new interface relys heavily on graphics, thus leaving out all of us who still use (sigh) modems. so i would have to say dud, on the available evidence. maybe it'll improve, though.

their coverage of Polka---tragic.

I'll bet this has something to do with Microsoft's coming iTunes ripoff.

yeah, they always had huge gaps of course, how could they not? the least one could say is that they were always improving, though not at an even pace necessarily. i hope that advance hasn't halted though i suspect it has. better coverage of salsa probably wouldn't show up on the performance reports.

the lies and obfuscation of the (hastily-removed) apologia really seem to signal the end.

The old AMG...only a memor-eee...

Memories...Light the corners of my mind...misty water colored memooorieeess of the way we were...

That's hardly fair - you had less to work with.

http://www.mp3.com

they license a lot of Allmusic's material (although some info is not available), so you can use it instead. it's not as good as the old Allmusic, but it's a lot faster than the new one.

http://www.allmusic.com/old

until someone changes the directory permissions.

Especially on looking up Doom Metal. this album i've never heard of got 5 stars from 2000? i downloaded some tracks, it's fairly good, but is it worth 5 stars for such a jokey album?

or is this like that moronic "Who Dat?" thing.

Thanks you two, that sounds... promising.

Sanpaku, is there a way to keep up with the ratings of your favorite users instead of having to generate a big list every so often?

User ratings are incorporated in the rankings once every two weeks or so, and you can easily just click your bookmarked custom chart query (I have em for albums, eps and singles in my browser). There's a running sidebar of reviews from individual friends on one's "homepage". But there's no way of looking at how friends in the aggregate have rated releases for the past month or such (like, say, anydecentmusic). The reason I have to dig so far down is that it's the only way of finding obscure but good August (etc.) releases when the chart is already crowded with releases from the past 7 months.

Cool, I was browsing the site earlier today and I already found two great songs I hadn't heard before ("When It's Over" by the Wipers, and "Talk About the Weather" by Red Lorry Yellow Lorry). Time to register an account!

.. and "Talk About the Weather" by Red Lorry Yellow Lorry

good call.

The Ad Blocker blocker has been removed.

no it hasn't

Huh. Well it has been on my end.

(using Firefox)

hmm, I use Firefox too, but the adblocker warning pops up the instant I enable Adblock Plus or Ghostery.

Try Ublock Origin instead of Adblock Plus - it's better and much less bloated.

It seems a bit intermittent. I get the pop up on Chrome at work, but not on Chrome at home, and they both have ABP installed.

ffs I added allmusic to my Ublock whitelist but it still won't let me into the site. Grrrr.

Haven't had any problems with Ublock for months, but since this morning I'm seeing the notice again. They must have changed something in the code. It will probably be fixed when one of the third-party filter lists get updated.

Just found out that you can skip the ad blocker notice if you disable all JavaScript (including inline scripts) on the site. It also speeds up the site immensely, although some images aren't displayed and things like the discography browser won't work. But the main content is perfectly visible.

http://tedium.co/2016/09/20/allmusic-database-historic-importance/

I finally set AdBlock Plus to make an exception for AMG and lo and behold they seem to have gotten rid of the most egregiously awful video ads that were the point of objection in the first place. Cool.

UI still sucky/slow compared to its heyday, but what a treasure trove nonetheless. I was feeling deeply adrift in my record shopping without it.

I can't use the site at all. Whitelisting the site doesn't work. I even ran a different browser with no adblocker installed and it wanted me to disable it.

Likewise for me. It's completely broken.

personally i have found that things have not been too bad recently,
but todays visit saw the return of the surround ads.
ie. the ads that go around the whole page, take an age to load causing the page to jump all over while they load, and totally look shit.

It is quite distracting when you have two gigantic deodorant cans either side of your page. I abandoned AMG a while back, but sometimes I'll use a different browser without adblock if I have to. Yep it is fucking awful.

I've started noticing albums that are invisible/passed-over in the discography browser, though they have entries - e.g. Aerosmith's Toys in the Attic and Hall & Oates Big Bam Boom. Very weird. Both also have no album art though I'm sure they used to (and why wouldn't they?). Very weird and annoying. I worry things are really starting to break down behind the scenes.

That's...odd. I know both of those very much had reviews at one point.

They do! Sorry, I wasn't clear - you can totally pull up the individual entries. They've just fallen out of the discography.

Ad Block blocker is back with a vengeance! I go to "Disable on allmusic.com" and refresh the site only to have it tell me that I still have it enabled.

Friendly lot, you AMG folk.

lol I miss early 2000s AMG

Memories, corners, mind

I too got blocked by the ad-block blocker when I tried to look something up yesterday but Chrome also popped up some malware warnings so I just noped out of there

RIP AMG in its late 90s/early 00s form

I think everyone should boycott this type of shit progress.

If you use uBlock Origin (and you should), you can disable all Javascript on the site, inline and third-party. You'll lose a little functionality, but you won't see any more ads or notices.

your not kidding it's a proper take down The Man adblocker is that mother!

Yep I'm getting "disable ad-block" pop up even with adblock already disabled, and malware warnings. RIP allmusic.

agreed : RIP.

uBlock Origin, as recommended above does a right job on Allmusic guys

It does the trick, but I'm so tired of having to go all David Copperfield on websites to function. The pop-ups, the annoying adds, the cookie pop-ups, the 'sign up for our fucking newsletter' stuff. Seeing ads while logged in at ilx. I know this is all 'society is in the gutter' but ~the internet~ is p much dead to me these days.

LBI hits the spot.

LBI probably doesn't use uBlock Origin.

I hardly ever see anything of the things you mentioned. And when something does get through the filters, 'Block element' is just one right-click away.

This was still bothering me, because I did turn off the blocker for them and it wouldn't let me in. Googleing I found the solution, well it works for me.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/182

The part about blocking first-party cookies on allmusic.com and sidereel.com works.

in chrome it is under - settings - show advanced - privacy settings - content settings - manage exceptions.

The site seems fast too with that.

just when i thought the allmusic experience could not get any worse, they prove me wrong.
f*cking ads that pop up and have to be clicked through to get to the review.
truly awful.
if i created an account and logged in, would there be less advert excess ?

You have to be an advertiser to log in

Use an adblocker like uBlock Origin, no ads for me on Allmusic.

yeah, i re-enabled my ad-blocker - all ok now.
i thought the site prevented viewing if you had ad-blockers enabled.
but seems okfor now.

brave browser has an ad blocker blocker blocker.

this fucking internet shit is getting to be like the most pointless chess game ever.

(i highly recommend brave browser, btw)

a few weeks ago they stopped letting me use my site search shortcut, claiming i was using it as an api. ok i will not go to your website, congrats.

today they are 404

i followed a tip from (I think) Marc Masters that if you subscribe, all the ads go away and the site runs turbo-charged, and this is indeed my experience

it's a no-brainer when i consider how much I've gained from allmusic over the past, I dunno.... 20 years??

I'm in your skull.