SwingDJs

I've been a customer at eMusic since 2002, but I'm getting really sick of it. My main points of disappointment:

• * Primitive search function. You cannot search for a particular song by a particular artist!
  * Incomplete catalogs. Many albums that are available at other digital music services for unknown reasons never make it to eMusic, leaving large gaps in the Chrono Classics, the Hep series, etc.
  * No quality control. Loads and loads of inferior product (pirated material) flood the site, making it harder and harder to find the good stuff. The News section becomes useless.

I've notified customer service about the search function, but they don't even seem to understand the complaint...

I completely agree!

emusic used to be about having the best selection of obscure titles and cheap prices, but it's gradually losing these advantages.

The search has always been a total joke.

The search is sucktown, but I'm going to stick with it because:

- it's a cheap, reliable download site. That means I don't have to pay the shipping costs from America (where I buy most of my CDs), I don't have to use the itunes store (and I don't have access to amazon), I can buy something at the last minute if I'm away at an exchange and need something STAT;

- it has the Chronological Classics and Complete Jazz series (even if they are incomplete);

- I enjoy doing random searches and being able to sample one or two songs by a new artist (especially newer bands). The crappy search tool actually facilitates this sort of exploration.


I suspect my (moderate) satisfaction with it is owed mostly to my fairly low demands (I'm not a hardcore collector), and the fact that it's not the only way I buy digital (rather than CD) music. I make great use of CDBaby (particularly when I can download albums), and I'm a really big fan of bands' selling their albums directly through their sites, or via bandcamp.

I agree completely about the search, and like anton, I've complained about the search from time to time - and I've never had a response. Using Google to search the site can work, however, so I'll often us that approach when I'm after something specific.

I wouldn't be surprised if most customers simply don't need the sophistication that we do from the search facilities (otoh, the eMusic search makes the iTunes one look positively space-age, and that's saying something)

There are some plusses - they have a huge selection of great music (when you can find it), complaints about the search systems aside their customer support is pretty decent, and last but not least, because I signed up with them some years ago, tracks are currently costing me around .17pence (28 cents) each, assuming I download my full monthly allocation. Which is an excellent deal...

On that basis, I'm happily sticking with them for the forseeable future. I'll keep banging on about the search thing from time to time, on general principle. Maybe they'll do something eventually...

On a related note - does anyone know what the processes are behind companies like eMusic / Amazon / Spotify obtaining their digital catalogues? The reason I ask is because when I find a defective track on eMusic, or an album where all the track names are incorrect, the same track / album will usually have identical problems on Spotify and Amazon. The obvious conclusion is that all three companies use the same source(s), rather than converting albums themselves.

I actually got a reply from eMusic customer support:

Hi Anton ,

Unfortunately at this time, there is no way to perform a simultaneous search for track and artists. We are currently working to develop a more detailed and refined search function. We hope to have this more advanced search tool available soon.

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Regards,

Customer Support

In the U.S. the eMusic and Amazon mp3 catalogs are quite similar. Hence, I often use the Amazon mp3 search engine and then check if eMusic has the albums I find with those queries. It usually works.

Overall, I'm happy with eMusic, despite some shortcomings. To me, it is a great tool for expanding the breadth (and sometime the depth too) of my collection at a low cost. It also helps that I have only about 28-29 downloads per month.

Lorenzo

It also worth mentioning again that emusic has very different content depending on which country you are in. In Australia we are blocked from all the major labels, yet charged the same amount (that's IF you were lucky enough to get an account before the shutout!).

Plus, on Amazon we can buy any CD but no MP3 downloads. Ridiculous contradictions.

Emusic has redesigned their site but didn't do anything about its useless search function. Too bad...

I went to cancel my account but that feature was broken. Nice strategy for keeping members! lol

anton wrote:Emusic has redesigned their site but didn't do anything about its useless search function. Too bad...

I've finally had a dialogue with one of their support guys (on Twitter) about the search. After getting me to describe what I thought was wrong with it, which I did (at length), I managed to get them to admit that they'd had a lot of feedback saying exactly the same thing.

He claimed that a revised and improved search was on the agenda. I got him to clarify, asking whether it was a future development, or actually in progress, and he claimed that it was in progress. I say "claimed", as I'm not 100% convinced he wasn't simply saying what he thought I wanted to hear. Time will tell.

Anyway - as I'm still paying 1/5 of the amount per track that I'd be paying iTunes or Amazon, I'm still sticking with them for the time being, warts and all.

I have to admit that I am still a customer at Emusic. I'm using Spotify (which has largely the same content as Emusic) to search and preview. Then I search on Emusic using the album name. Sometimes that fails too - for instance, if the song is 'I Got Rhythm', the artist is 'Benny Goodman' and the album is 'The Best Of', it is near impossible to find the right album/track...

emusic is so pants. it's just so irritating. but i can't quite bring myself to close my account because i'll never get it back.

Oh _god_, emusic. *headdesk*

When my credit card expired I walked away from Emusic because I couldn't figure out how to cancel. The didn't refresh my downloads since I wasn't paying for their service but they contacted me about 8 or 9 months later asking me to pay the accumulated balance even though I hadn't used the site. I wrote a letter of complaint at which point they then closed my account and have since been spamming me with special renewal offers.