Spurious Logic

As I’ve said before I’m a fairly long time user of eMusic but this has come to an end.

It’s a combination of a couple of different factors. I haven’t found compelling music with them in the last six months or so and their selection seem to be branching off into more mainstream and conversely, more niche music. Any time I log in now it’s punting crappy indie-lite bands or amorphous musical noodlings. Neither of which I mind too much but I’m not happy paying a monthly subscription on the off chance I’ll actually find something I like. Also, right now, I need that monthly subscription.

So off into the wilds of yon internet I travelled to find a decent, legal, music supplier. Of course there’s always youTube but honestly you spend more time searching for and queueing up music than you do listening. And then halfway through you get rick-rolled.

Next on the list is grooveshark.com. Basically users upload music and anyone can listen to it. It works the same as youTube except that there is some tagging of tracks and organization of albums. It is Ad-supported  which I didn’t realise this as I’m running ad-block. Legality aside, my problems with this is similar as with youTube. i.e. You spend more time looking for albums than you do listening. In addition to that, there are often duplicate tracks in albums or mis-tagged tracks. Which leads to all sort of confusion. Though if I want to listen to any chart or popular rap stuff, this the the place to go.

I really, really want to like bandcamp.com, but it just doesn’t do it for me. It’s got the same problem as jameundo.com in that there’s no editorial control. Anyone can put their stuff up there so you get professional musicians rubbing shoulders with someone struggling to play twinkle twinkle.

Looking at my list of complaints, the problem is not finding music. It’s finding the music I want to hear. eMusic did that reasonably well until the signal to noise ratio dropped.

Image from wikimedia commons

I like eMusic.com, I really do. I’ve been a member since 2007 and I’ve given them €484.71 over the years and in return I’ve downloaded a huge number of songs, found band’s I wouldn’t have heard of before and generally found it good value for money.

Here’s the thing. I’ve found over the last few months, that music I want to download, is marked as

“ALBUM UNAVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

We’re sorry. This album is unavailable for download in your country (Ireland) at this time. Some albums are available in slightly different versions, as result of varying licensing agreements. Some albums are licensed in one country but not at all in another. That’s frustrating, we know, but we are continuously working to bring every title to members in all countries.

Follow this <band name> search link to see a search results page for this album. If a version for your country is available it’ll be shown there. Follow the link to that album and you will be able to download it from the album page.”

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So I’ve been on eMusic for years at this stage and I’m always happy with the stuff they have on there. Not to say I’ve made some bad downloads but it is a fantastic service towards finding new music.

Jamendo on the other hand is something I signed up to ages ago, took a look around and didn’t bother with after that. Jamendo is a pretty site but doesn’t have the hand holding editorial features and the music is of a much wider genre variety and genre standard.

eMusic all sounds professionally produced, signed (if independent) bands wheras Jamendo tracks often sound self recorded.

I then found:
http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/64104 (good pop music. Not entirely my cup of tea but I can recognise quality – better than most chart pop anyway)

and
http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/49216 – REALLY not my thing but I can’t think of any other site where you’d find the description “METAL  SWING” and it’d be accurate.

<edit>
After about 2 hours browsing Jamendo, I remember why I havn’t been there in a while. The ratio of experimental noodling/crap metal/shitty electro trance dance to actual good stuff is so high it’s not much fun.
I realise it’s good to have somewhere that anyone can put music up but some sort of ranking/accurate tags/editorial control would be nice. I don’t want to say quality control because well, quality in this context is entirely subjective and I wouldn’t want to see anyone not get up there because an admin doesn’t like that style.

I recently signed up for Last.fm and overall I’m very happy with it. I had used Pandora.com in the past (when it was possible to listen to it from outside the US and they both seem to suffer from the same problem.

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“Boxer” by “The National”.

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