emusic, classic or dud?

A rant I ranted last weekend when drunk follows. I stand by it all, the user experience of this site goes from idiotic to idioticker ... but I still love the basic premise of emusic, so that's why I actually care a bit. Who dreams up these shit ideas anyways???

/rantstart
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I know most or all of these things have been said many many times before, but I'd just like to add my voice:

-- One should *not* be required to know that one should click a button labelled "+" to save for later. I do not want to "+" the album, I want to save it for later, so I'm looking for a part of the screen saying "save for later", or "remember" or "make note" or something synonymous. Not "+". There are swathes of blank grey space on every page now, so I do not buy that "+" was necessary for space considerations.

-- EVERYTHING IS TOO BIG except the actual information content on every page. This ties in with the "+" point.

-- Tying in with both points above, DO NOT HIDE THE MOST RELEVANT INFORMATION. If an album has 274 tracks, you not only ought to, but *MUST* SHOW ALL OF THEM RIGHT AWAY. No scrollbar, not a "more" link.

-- OK I can choose between seeing 24 and 48 albums on each page. WITH HUUUGE COVER GRAPHIX HURRAH! No. That is not what I want, and especially not in three columns. If it absolutely *has* to be limited, I want to see as a minimum of 500 albums on each page, in ONE column, and hold the covers, not interested in those. (Please remember that for many of us, ctrl+f is a mode of webreading.)

-- Do not violate Web navigation standards. In Opera, shift+click means "open in new tab". In Firefox, ctrl+click means "open in new tab". Emusic ignores all of this, and opens the link in the same tab. Yes, one can rightclick+"open in new tab", but that is not how I (for one) intuitively browse; you are violating universal usability contracts here. (To be "fair", I believe the previous version of Emusic violated them as well.)

-- The general rule to be remembered above all others: Redesigns, updates and revamps are, without exception, A BAD THING per se. I'll grant that sometimes they are necessary. There were quite a few things with Emusic it was necessary to redesign, update and/or revamp. The overlap between these things and the ones that have been worked on is zero.

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/rantend

i haven't been able to browse at all since the change - i have to search for everything using google

so much for discovering new things or browsing labels

guesswork: new ceo of this year wants to make it "premier streaming site", use established brand "emusic" to compete with established brands "spotify" and "pandora"; not give a shit abt actual extant business model and customer base. In other words ALL IS LOST unless I'm a bit paranoid obv.

you're not paranoid, but i don't think that's the motivation for the site changes.

they went from some costly framework for presenting the site to users to a nearly-free framework for presenting the site to users. the transition has been very rocky, and they apparently didn't do enough beta-testing or take other curative steps. it's gotten better, but there are still many bugs to be worked out. the change, as i understand it, was not motivated by any great decade in revenues or profits (emusic is still at about 400K subscribers, as it has been for a few years now), it was just a cost-saving measure that hasn't been handled well.

this is all from the emusic message boards. i agree with a lot of what anatol_merklich said, btw.

sorry, "any great decay"

finally canceled my account after...eight years of membership? it just got too tedious to try and spend all my money now that track costs are so variable. every month it was like a game of tetris trying to spend down to below a buck.

mmmm. time has passed, sadly; always warm feelings though and they're welcome to leave the toothbrush just in case