The New Allmusic: D/D?

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.

Thulsa Doom - Seats Are Soft but the Helmet Is Way Too Tight

i can't afford the time for (and am not impressed by) the new grapics. From the old high content-per-screen site to the new too-many-clicks site, some costing ten seconds, with loads of intermediate rubbish

yeah DUD.
so was it too good to be true before, a free lunch ?
this new thingie is a real idealogical defeat for the values inherent in indie and so many other musics that AMG (the exception) covers

(can "Premium Users" customise out all this extra baggage with their site preferences ? i haven't had the time to try. i haven't found a "text only" but perhaps it's more reasonable to expect a "text with old-fashioned lo-bandwidth pictures or banners" option)

i'd pay a small-to-reasonable premium (as i do with so many other sites) to avoid most "suggestions" (the pictures) and all "latest" content(the ads) even if i usually don't want to register with _anyone_ connected to the music business. I sure hope AMG doesn't now go down the demographic modelling line just for those advertisers

Frank, if you like it more power to ya. I'm never going back. Microsoft's tit doesn't taste good to me.

They could have charged for their service as it was. Big deal, I would have forked over a couple of bucks a month or whatever.

According to Alliance Entertainment's press kit:

AMG customers include Barnes &
Noble, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Real Networks,
BlueLight.com (Kmart), CDNOW, Best Buy,
Circuit City, Blockbuster, Ticketmaster,
Yahoo!, AOL’s Spinner and MovieFone,
ARTISTdirect/UBL.com, and MTV
Networks Europe.

Are they gonna offend AOL (owner of Netscape) and Yahoo! to get in a monogomous fuck fest Microsoft?

All the extra clicks, the unnecessary flash, the lack of flow to the pages, the extra scrolling, ugly design (the old one looked so much better!), it doesn't display right in opera, and I could go on and on but much of it's already been mentioned. I liked the compact design of the old site. It was so easy to get information at a glance. I hope they realize how much this sucks and change it soon.

So (you might say), use Safari or something else. And yet, with Safari, my log-in is erratic. Sometimes it "remembers" me, most often it doesn't, so I have to constantly enter my e-mail addy and my password.

The AMG site has always behaved differently in my browser from most sites, even jealously commercial sites like Amazon. I've always just asumed it's an information gatherer. How else could it be so so slow (as it always has been)? If it's gone upmarket (blah blah about increasing servers etc.) i see no reason at all for it to still be that slow.

That is unless there's still multiple server and client stuff going on during the loads, and since i've crashed the site in a number of ways, i have no reason to assume the site isn't accessing a variety of databases depending on the data. Whose databases ? Clients databases ? Is that an exhaustive list of clients above ?

I can think of a few other organisations who'd be oh so keen to access AMG user data, outfits who could only be either a friend or a foe to AMG.

And the speed here is orders of magnitude slower than the previous site, doubtless due to all the extra clicking being undertaken.

It should be used in university courses on how not to design an information based interface.

It does, yes. At present, I have no other thoughts to offer on any of this as I had nothing to do with the redesign beyond beta testing briefly -- it worked fine with Safari on my Mac, and I was one of many testers.

I am, in fact, on a Caribbean island and I intend to spend tomorrow afternoon doing nothing but sitting on a beach for seven hours, relaxing in the sun and/or shade and reading a book. Yay me. Seeya all soon!

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.