All Music Guide's Response to Redesign Complaints

As a developer who works on a high volume site that displays almost all content dynamically, I can tell you that I understand the feeling of being a bit stretched, but there is absolutely nothing that they do that requires a templated system that relies heavily on IE/Win only coding.

I will be patient (to an extent) because this has been such a wonderful resource for me in the past and because it remains a free resource. That doesn't change the fact that they deployed when the site wasn't ready for prime time, they made questionable design decisions, and the server problems that they are having come as a bit of a surprise--did their traffic really pick up so much overnight that they suddenly need more server capacity or did someone write some horribly inefficient code to perform all of the back-end functionality?

I'll be patient as well. I've probably made use of their site more than any other on the net. I do expect it to get better with time. As for the vast amount of information they've put together...if this is as good as it gets, they might just as well burn it so far as I am concerned, because one can't reliably access it.

I think the criticism was really mostly about the stuff that Allmusic did _not_ do, rather than the stuff they _did_ change. In other words, people didn't see the changes they so desired, and instead vented their frustration at the minor annoyances with the redesign.

The problem could be one of many things: a reluctance to change the underlying data engine, not enough reading of the cluetrain manifesto, having a marketing strategy that precludes having what users _really_ want (an open, simple site without the weird and unnecessary bells and whistles that create too much noise).

It's tough to say which of these is creating the problem. Obviously this redesign shows that the problem exists. Because the redesign is now done, also obviously Allmusic will not radically change any time soon.

The only answer to a company that doesn't do what users want is to use the power of the Net to compete by creating a high-quality, free offering that does do what users want. If they don't want to make their site's pages appear on Google, I'm sure an open project would.

and just to add insult to injury, it seems the 'classic' interface has now been taken offline too, http://allmusic.com/ redirects to the new... thing.

That's beyond ignorance, that's just contemptible.

R.I.P. All Music Guide

(deletes bookmark, shakes head with disgust)

Ugh.

I'm a web developer, and while none of the sites I've worked on have had anywhere near the user-base that AMG has, I can say emphatically that if there's something in the design of your content driven site that forces you to exclude a decent chunk of users (4-5% at latest tally I think?), then there's a problem in your design. It's really a shame, AMG's content is among the best on the web, I can just imagine if they had hired StopDesign (or any other forward thinking designers) and had a great website to go along with it.

dear amazon, please buy them please :D thanks!

To be honest I've never really used AMG so the changes impact me not a whit. I would, however, be interested to read a response to the above from Andy - will you still be using it as a resource, are you going to be patient?

For me, what's most distressing is that it's clear that no users were brought into the design process. Considering their rabid fan base, finding people willing to test the site throughout the design phases would have been a snap. But no, they assumed they Knew Best and launched with what made sense to them... and clearly not to anyone else.

Compare AllMusic to Google or Yahoo? No, not at all. Completely different purposes and scales.

May I offer a simple, realistic comparison? IMDB. Quite similar in content size and types, although I'd guess AllMusic would have a bit more (artists->bands, albums->songs, etc.) Bottom line, AllMusic should only be slightly less usable as IMDB. It is much less usable.

As far as multi-platform compatibility goes, that is exceedingly simple if you keep the layout simple. There is no need for the funked up tricks they are doing (or trying to do). Again, reference IMDB's site. Also, basic testing as you develop would find and solve most problems early on -- before public release.

As far as server load. The server load sucks because everything is "dynamic". It does not have to be. The vast majority of pages could easily be static, with dynamic includes for ads and such. Obviously, searches and such would need to remain dynamic. But, artist pages are relatively static. When the data behind the scenes changes, the static pages can be regenerated. There is /no/ need to serve these pages dynamically, as that kills servers.

Hire somebody with proper development skills (not doo-dad skills) and create realistic, value-added goals.

Hell, I bet a streamlined site could garner quite a bit of revenue in yearly subscriptions fees. I get/got more out of AllMusic than I do from some magazines, and yet I subscribe to a few of them.

As a user, I was incredibly sad to discover the new site design. Like many of the other respondents, I've used AMG very heavily over the years.

As a developer with a background in HCI, I found the site even more disturbing. Everything about the new design, from the low-contrast color choices to the ridiculous, spinning widget in the masthead screams aesthetics over usability.

I've been waiting a long time for AMG to fix most of the problems listed above, as well as a few smaller issues that point to a poor decision making process on the part of the development team. For instance, who thought it was a good idea to make every link on the site a javascript function call? By doing so, they prevented nearly all mobile users from using the site in any meaningful way. AMG provides EXACTLY the type of content that you might be interested in when browsing through a music store.

I also don't give much credence to the argument that cross-platform development is too hard for a small company. The differences between platforms, while significant, are hardly overwhelming enough to justify the IE only decision for such a popular website.

I respect the fact that small companies have limited resources. This shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor prioritization and bad business decisions, though. If anything, limited development resources should promote more intense scrutiny of any effort like this redesign.

If I could speak directly to the decision makers at AMG, this would be my message:

You have a fantastic opportunity to make the AllMusicGuide more usable RIGHT NOW-- roll back to the old design. Listen to your users. Understand the problems with your previous design before you launch new code that solves the wrong problems. You've given a great gift to the community, but you stand to lose a lot of potential customers if you continue to operate in the dark. Hire a competent HCI specialist or two, and get them to teach your designers and developers the principles behind user centered design. When you provide a free site that's really usable, I will certainly consider paying for premium content. Until then, I'll go to another source for this information.

"AMG provides EXACTLY the type of content that you might be interested in when browsing through a music store."

So true. Whenever I'm buying music at a bookstore, new or used, I pray for the prescence of an AMG guide on the shelf in the music section. I don't own an internet capable cell, so I'd never thought about it--I can't believe their content isn't available in that manner. UGH.

AMG has been a great resource, but now it is worthless. They did not figure their users into their development plans and they went for cool and unusable, even in IE. AMG has a ton of info and needed to tweek their interface to better display their interface, they did not need the dynamic tools that don't work.

As stated above AMG would be a great tool while in a music store, garage sale, or other non-desk music venue. Had they chosen to go with Web Standards when redesigning they could have accomplished mobile version with very little additional effort. The AMG comment about building to IE first and blamming Mozilla for being broken shows they hired uneducated developers to steal their money. IE stopped development, except for serious bugs and huge security holes, in 2001 and has many broken presentation layer elements. Had the developers chosen to build to Web Standards first and put in a few hacks to have IE present *correctly* they would have been a lot farther ahead.

Building dynamic sites should not have caused these problems if they would have gone about developing correctly. It seems nothing was spec'ed properly as far as server needs. Nothing was stress tested on a development server, prior to going live.

This is a great living example of 1998 foobar development. Too bad little was learned in the past six years. It seems it would be quicker to go back to the previous version and put this version in the trash heap with Boo.com. The next step is let the developers go back to being used car salesmen and then start with focussing on the users and what they are interested and understanding how they like to use the info and where. Then bring in developers who have a clue how to develop in 2004.

I remember seeing the same set of excuses several years ago for a number of sites. Designing to IE, using cribbed "standards" rather than actual w3c recommendations, and actually degrading user experience just doesn't cut it in 2004. Yes, they have limited resources. But isn't that just motivation to do it right the first time?

My chief complaints? A Flash component that seems to provide minimal functionality for the premium real estate it offers, landing pages that lack the basic info I'd imagine most users want to see, and an under-utilization of cacheable material. The page appears to have div-itis and a glut of unnecessary tables at the same time. Is there really a need to wrap every item in a div? Sometimes twice?

I see they're still using the javascript onclick crap instead of links. Is there any conceivable reason for this, outside of pissing off users and breaking the entire tabbed browsing paradigm? Oh yeah, so it's harder for me to copy a link for a friend... which still goes to their site.

What I don't get is why Allmusic has made its site so head-spinningly complicated for what is, in essence, just a lot of content presentation. There's nothing on allmusic.com that requires nearly the level of persnickety code that the site uses (and that goes for the old Javascript-loving site, too).

I'd like to second the note about user percentages. Let's guess that allmusic.com gets 10 million page views in a month. If, as their customer service letter notes, they deliberately optimized their site for the 87% marketshare IE browser without worrying about any others, that means Allmusic has *consciously* ignored 1.3 million monthly page views. One point three million! That's not just short-sighted; it's plain stupid.

This is one of the most screamingly obvious case studies for standardized code I've ever seen.

Greg, the comparison to IMDB is the perfect one, and, I agree, they really are trying to do pretty much the same thing. They might have a slightly more business case, but the functionality is pretty much the same thing. The fact that they fell so far from that mark in both usability and functionality is pretty telling.

That said, I'm all for making the thing as dynamic as possible--it allows for a very basic and easily changed set of templates for the major sections of the site, makes updating the site easier, and makes sense when the entire site sits on top of such a large and liquid database. What they don't seem to have done is put a good caching system in place to take load off of the server and make the whole thing quicker for the clients. With a good caching system, the server load would be hella lighter and the user experience shouldn't be far off of what they would see if they were accessing a static site.

Well, here's hoping they manage to fix the problems.

A decent music-info alternative (for now): Discogs.com. They only cover Electronic and Hip-Hop, but that might change in the future.

AMG has (had) a wealth of great content that was once possible to access through complex URLs (from which I could access through a clever AppleScript in iTunes), but now that is no longer possible. The URLs no longer work, and a once useful resource is now a manual chore to use, and an even worse user-experience at that.

What exactly is so difficult about a content database that is so difficult to display on the Web? I know they're a small company with small resources, but what then why is the site so insanely complex and poorly developed? Both IMDB and Google started off as little companies, but at least their sites worked well. Even goliaths like Microsoft tend to at least get their main search sites to -- you know -- WORK in my browser.

Good job, AMG. You just lost another user.

> 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.

Right. How about next time you redeploy the person who designed your utterly useless flash spinning menu thing to working on working up a good XSLT template instead.

> The main Mozilla problem is a glitch in how tables are displayed.

Anyone who uses tables for design layout doesn't "get" the web, nor do they understand the power and functionality of CSS. Please hire a competent web designer; you can find one at alistapart.com, et. al.

Sitepoint weighs in, with references to Waxy:

AllMusicGuide: A Web Standards case study

Just rechecked in on AMG and noticed that it more or less is functional and looks decent on Mozilla. Not to mention that it was running quick (at least at this moment). Good to see a company with a fine product evolving to meet the needs and concerns of it's users.

It makes me wonder how they can fix the Mozilla problems in a day or two, but it was apparently too big an effort to fixe them for the launch.

I wonder about why, if you know you don't have much time and resources, you choose to spend them on things like that spinning tree-branch (nevermind completely useless) Flash navigation.

"We're a small company with small company resources."

Then you have no business undertaking a project that obviously requires the resources of a large company with extensive resources.

What the heck did they change it for. I used to be a DJ at a college station and I used their site all the time to research R&R history, birt/death days, etc. A great online discography (when Oh when is Michael Strong's Great R&R Discography going online!?), lots of family trees, etc. I saw no reason to change what they had. Sure there were a few frustrating things (the oft-mentioned ridiculous URLs among them), but I learned to live with it. They really didn't ahve any competition and since it's all free anyway, they're obviously not going to start charging for access and competing with ... who?

Give us back our old AMG and fire the damn idiots who thunk up this crap. Probably marketing bozos.

Andrew said:
"We're a small company with small company resources."

Then you have no business undertaking a project that obviously requires the resources of a large company with extensive resources.

--------------------

Dude... that's retarded. Would you prefer no site at all?

They seem to have yanked the response page from their site already -- I'm getting a page not found error.

Perhaps someone at AMG realized that their rationalizations were as nonsensical as everyone here has handily pointed out?

i found this site when i searched for "Allmusic.com sucks" (actually found antoher site that linked here) and I will be bookmarking this site! Back to the topic at hand: i use AMG more than any other site on the web (except yahoo) and see this as a sign of the apocalypse! AMG just went from one of the most incredible sites out there to a steaming pile of carp. I'm assuming that browser incompatability will work itself out, but this new multi-tab system is total garbage. "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. " - BS! I would have a hard time buying this if they added one extra click to the process of browsing the info, but they have gone off teh charts! now you have to click on a new tab for discography....click on a new tab for LPs...a new tab for LPs...EPs...compilations....then, once you finally select the album you are looking for...you may need to open a new page to "read more" to finish reading the ONE PARAGRAPH description of the album...then if you want to see the album credits...guess what....right!
Please continue to flood AMG with negative feedback as much as possible!

thought i'd mention a couple things i actually do like about the redesign:

-no more '...' truncating of long song names.
-ability to sort information using column headers.

that's all i could come up with. and nipsey, i was thinking the same thing about how ludicrous it is to have to click a 'read more' link to see the entire (one paragraph) review, especially considering the rationalization of how using the tabs allowed them to put more information on each page.

http://monkeydo.biz/allmusic/ <--it took this guy just a couple hours to bring the front page up to standards.

AMG should have taken a lesson from Google's interface philosophy. Less is more, people. Especially if you have limited resources. Dump the eye-candy, the animated graphics, the 3D spinning navigator thing (whatever the hell that is) and if you MUST use a tab control then make it an actually client-side tab control, not a glorified hyperlink that has to reload from an already-slow server.

I'm a long time fan of AMG, but I'm also a longtime Opera user, which now crashes because AMG is so overloaded with pointless bells and whistles. Not only do the servers run slower, but the site now requries more clicks and reloads to access the same data. I understand the thinking behind the UI change: they wanted to categorize the data to make it easier to navagate. But unless AMG can *dramatically* increase their sever capacity (and from what I've read here, we can only hope that it might return to *slightly slower* than the original site) then the tradeoff in navagability wasn't worth it.

AMG, listen: if you really are strapped then don't overload your site with code bloat, resource-hogging animations and MSIE-specific controls. Slim down and streamline. This looks like a classic case of reach exceding grasp. AMG is now the Rattle and Hum of websites: a well-intentioned, over-ambitious, overloaded mess.

They got sold a bill of goods - either they got a new CEO or a new web designer who told their site needed to be redesigned to 'scale up,' they had all the info in the DB, you can scale that up any which way but the designer or CEO convinced them that they needed a new look and feel - but like IMDB, it doesn't have to look great to offer functionality that millions of people liked and used - were there problems? Sure - they had that weird url thing but I figured they didn't want external links and hey the site was free - I could live with some weirdness - like IMDB adding in odd things in each listing so they could tell if someone was stealing their DB ...

Instead of spending more money on a clearly bad design, they should just go back to the old site - if they're a small company - that's fine - tell us that and add a paypal/amazon donate link - clearly we don't liked to charged for what used toi be free but I for one would've kicked in $5-$10 bucks a month.

another day, and while it's still terrible, it at least seems to be getting faster, and working with fewer errors/timeouts. baby steps? hopefully.

No one seems to have raised the possibility that this redesign -- rather than serving the needs of current users, as claimed -- is just the first step in transforming AMG into a Microsoft pay-for-service site. The companies signed a long-term licensing agreement in 2001.

You can read the press release here:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2001/nov01/11-26AMGpr.asp

Relevant passage:
"The quality and sophistication of AMG’s music and movie content databases are key ingredients in our ongoing enhancements to the Windows® and MSN® experiences."

their current users are their potential customers. far from enticing us to PAY, of all things, they've done nothing but run us off. given the state of the redesign, why would i consider paying for the service? i might pay to access the OLD service...just to get it back. however, maybe they are marketing geniuses, and i'm too dim to see the bigger picture.

Is this another tedious chapter in MS's quixotic war on non-IE browsers? AMG's excuse for its compatiblity issues sounds like chapter and verse out of the standard excuses given by MS for similar debacles:

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/technology/1076549230.php

http://old.alistapart.com/stories/msn/

It's well documented that MS sites like MSNBC deliberately feed browsers like Opera inferior HTML, and MSDN in fact excluded Opera deliberately for a time until users complained loudly, even though Opera was capable of handling the code just fine.

Note MSNBC president Scott Moore's rationale for his site's similar compatibility issues -- same rationale given by AMG from a company that most certainly is NOT strapped for resources:

"Moore described it as 'just good business to apply the resources to the majority.' "

And if you happen to exclude you competitor's browsers in the process, it's even better business, right?

Now I learn of AMG and MS's "partnership." This is getting old. I'm sick of being sick of Microsoft.

agree 100% with matt, that i would NEVER pay for the new service, and would pay for the old service. In fact when i complained to AMG thru their feedback loop, i told them i'd pay to subscribe to the old site if they'd bring it back
asking people to pay more for less...well, seems like theres been a lot of that lately (drm'ed music anyone?)

I too am insulted by allmusic's blantant lack of readiness in re-launching. It wasn't actually broken before, why fix it?

I cannot imagine the site recovering.

And the pandering, "we are not a big company," that is sniveling and whining. Put the old site back up. It worked for Coke!

Since the new site was launched, I cannot access any of the artist pages. I can get to a few of the main pages, but that is all. For instance, I can access the "New Releases" page, but then when clicking any of the albums or artist links, nothing happens. There is no link visible when hovering over these links.

Can anyone shed some light on this??

I am using IE6, XP

Hello,

ALL of you are absolutely correct about the new
[updated? ;( ] - All Music Guide Site!

I have tried several times to access this updated
MESS and nothing is working. It is Sloooower than
any site I have have EVER seen - if it works at all! )and Iam using their preferred IE browser - yikes!)

Therefore, I have e-mailed this complete POSTING LOG to the Heads or Owners of the site.

IF they read it - they will (maybe) understand
that they have a BIG problem on their hands!

I used to use the old site ALL the time and it was just fine and worked great. This NEW update is UNacceptable and I will not be going back unless they somehow fix it? - OR - revert the site back to it's former [WORKING!] view!

One thing is for sure - they can't keep it THIS way
and expect ANYONE to go and use it!

before the new design, the web site showed the musicians and the instruments they played on each album. on the new design, i cannot find this information. did they take this feature away or can you still access this information? if so, how do you get it? thanks.

> before the new design, the web site showed the musicians and the instruments they played
> on each album. on the new design, i cannot find this information. did they take this
> feature away or can you still access this information?
> if so, how do you get it? thanks.

There is a "Credts" tab on the album level.
That shows all of the old credits and instruments that they used to list.

(You may need to be Logged In to view it though.)

I always liked UBL (ultimate band list) better anyway.

thanks for the UBL reference Splotch...i knew about artistdirect, but never browsed the site too much. this is a good alternative.

it looks like UBL probably licenses AMG content. w00t!

I've never been to this site before, but having visited it now, I think you guys are seriously overreacting.

I've never been to this site before, but having visited it now, I think you guys are seriously overreacting.

That's just foolish of you to say. The site has improved quite a bit over the past 48 hrs. The underlying design is still very poorly thought out/obtuse.

I used the old site very much.It was ecxellent!
In the new site I registered, but only I can see the pages what not need registration, when I try for example see the credits of one album, the site require login and i go automatically to home page!!!Here i see one more time welcome Gustavo, this is absurd!!
The old site was excellent.Buah!!!!!!

Thanks for the UBL reference, Splotch. I'm not going back to allmusic now unless they do something drastic - UBL is magnitudes better in speed, usability and getting all the information I need quickly. Excellent.

maybe someone here can help me.. i seem to have the same problem danx posted above.
i'm running xp/ie6, yet when i get to amg's front page.. nothing works. i've dropped my firewall and ad-blocker. still nothing.
this is very frustrating.. according to their system requirements i should be able the access the site

Just another web developer (building since 1992) chiming in:

"Optimizing a site of allmusic's complexity and size for all browsers and operating systems is no small feat."

Well, we all know this is total bull. We've already made the Google comparison: Google supplies more results, more traffic, more features and more usability than anything AMG has produced so far, and what do you know: They don't need DHTML, they don't need javascript tricks, they certainly know how to design for speed, and they get massive results from their advertising.

Their letter is a clear sign that they have neither professional web developers nor regular web users in house -- you know, the kind that publish photos, read blogs, subscribe to calendars, etc. And that this project is driven by either those who don't use the web, or don't trust their investment in it. Believe me, I've worked at a few places like this (one of them in the music business, in fact), and especially with the stuggles with the music biz online, their question tends to be: Why should we invest money into a system that is trying to undermine us? This begins a much longer conversation why the music biz isn't filling the obvious consumer void online, but I will say this much -- I can guarantee you that you will see a substantial growth of screen-scrapers, desktop apps, etc. that will piggyback onto this site, because AllMusic:

a) has the best content
b) has the worst interface

Get both of those to be the best, and you won't have to worry about people hijacking content (hint: all that javascript and obfuscation of URLs you're doing doesn't deter the people you're really worried about, only the casual users that legitimately want to use your site) -- they will come to you willingly for it.

But what gets me is:

"The main Mozilla problem is a glitch in how tables are displayed."

You're kidding me: Tables? Those things that have been around since Netscape 1.1?

Whatever. Yes, you're free. But I'd bet you if you were as lightweight, fast, and fully-featured as a Google, you'd have people paying you for memberships. And I would have been one of them.

This quote from a forum sums it up the best:

I want to find a description of "post-punk" to help explain the sound to a friend:

Old site: Click "styles" below the search box and type "post-punk", and be forwarded to their post-punk page.

New site: Notice the search box doesn't allow you to search for styles. Look around, click on "Explore by genre". Greeted with a page that has bare bones genres (about 10 or so). Click on Rock. Get a request for me to login, which I do. Get forwarded back to the main page to start my journey over again. Click on "Explore by genre" again, and click on Rock. Greeted with a listing of all the rock subgenres (a few hundred). Give up skimming for post-punk and ctl+f to find it on the page. Click Post-punk.

The more I use it the more I have problems with this new design beyond just not working with Firefox.

If you go into the "Advanced Search" function, you can search by "Style"...it does take a couple steps, but:
hit Advanced Search
1. Pop
2. Style
3. Style (Default)
4. Type Post-Punk
it comes up with a list, and Post-Punk is the top entry.

Some of this info is available in the "Site Guide"
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=32:amg/info_pages/a_siteguide.html#

(Just because the guy on that forum hasn't figured out how to fully navigate the site yet, doesn't mean that the content isn't in there).

(I posted this at Orange Cone but somebody suggested I post it here too, so here goes...sorry it is brutally long, maybe Andy can hack it up a bit for readability, or send you to the Orange Cone post.)

Wow, as an ex-employee of AMG (left on good terms, a while ago), I can say that these comments are pretty astute. From what I remember of the I.T. department (programmers & developers) and the upper management staff, there was always a disconnect in intent and my guess is that possibly Alliance Entertainment (AMG's parent company) may have requested this change, or possibly there's some new hotshot shaking things up there. I also doubt that upper management will ever admit that the launch was handled horribly (see comments in the last paragraph) and they will not "go back to the old design." You must know these people or at least how they operate ;) I sincerely hope that the talented people do not get fed up/get laid off because the site would really go down the tubes...plus, I still have friends that work there!

Andy Baio's comment about " why bother with a consumer site at all" is pretty astute (as are many/all of his comments I've stumbled across in the past week). I think the real reason is that there is a real old guard still with some level of power at AMG who believes that the real purpose of AllMusic is to be an archival resource available to the public. I can only imagine that quite a few of them are not hapy with the new direction, as they would almost certainly rather see it as an all-text informational site (maybe not...speculation), but this group would no doubt be seriously up in arms if the vision of the company veered so far from its original intent and be came solely a content provider for Barnes & Noble, Microsoft, MTV, MP3.com, Artist Direct, etc. I think The upper management also can really see the site's benefit as far as being the Business Card for AMG's more revenue-generating side. You gotta admit, it's a pretty cool demonstration of the information that AllMusic can provide. AMG's money comes almost exclusively from their partnerships with the e-commerce sites listed above, I'd doubt that the Ad revenue from University of Phoenix or "Shock the Monkey" even really covers the light bill.

Nevertheless, I think the redesign was long overdue. The old design looked like an issue of National Geographic without the naked pictures ;)

Complaints that I have heard:

"The long URLS are hard for me to copy and paste"
This was done a long time ago as a security measure since people were just going through and scraping all of the AMG's info by hitting the pages in order. So grab the URL, go to TinyURL.com or MakeAShorterLink.com and pass 'em around like that.

"You can't use Tag & Rename programs with the new site!"
Oh boo hoo, I really don't think that AllMusic needs to format their pages to fulfill the wishes of MP3 pirates...that was never the intent of the website. See above.

"AllMusic is in cahoots with Microsoft, that's why it was only available for IE at first."
Not true. I talked with a buddy who still works there and he said that a cost analysis was done regarding the amount of effort/cost it would take to make it all cross-browser compatible and he said that management decided it wasn't worth it to do the extra coding for the small group that would be affected (despite his protests, fearing the inevitable Mozilla/Safari/Opera backlash). They have clearly wized up and quickly coded around some of this stuff (which happened within a couple of days so I don't really know why they didn't just spend the two days and do that in the first place...ah well).
The real deal is that AMG and Microsoft have a business deal in that they licence AMG's content for their Windows Media Player (when you put a CD in and the CD cover and tracks come in, that's AMG). I don't believe that anything more sinister has happened since I left.

"The site is slow."
True, but that seems to have been fixed somewhat.
It is a more elaborate page, so I bet it'll never be as fast as the old site.

"That flash spinning thing is retarded"
Well, I personally think it is cool looking and fun to spin around, but not really all that useful. Worse yet, it is a _huge_ resource hog...I wish there was a way to shut it off...anybody back at AMG listening?

"The colors are ugly"
Uh...uglier than they yellow and orange of the old site?
ooooh...kay. To each his own.

"The tabs are annoying"
Aw, it's not that bad, it's just different. I've already gotten used to it.
The thing that I really like is that they _finally_ tucked away all of the "UK Bonus Tracks" and "Japan Bonus DVD" versions of CDs...I remember when you looked at the old Britney Spears page, it looked like she had more albums than the Rolling Stones with all of the different versions from different countries that were available. Now her "Main" discography has her four or five albums, and the "Extra" or "Import" versions are tucked in under the individual albums.
I did like the old "One Whole Page" approach for smaller artists, but for somebody like Duke Ellington, the new site is a lot more navigatable(?) Navigable(?) Easy To Look Around In.

"You need to click a 'Read More' link"
Well, some of the long-winded folks at AMG need more than a three sentence chunk to give an accurate overview of Bob Dylan's entire life. The "Read More" buttons were on the old site as well. I think it helps the page to pop in right away (well, relatively speaking) so that you can skip to the Discography without having to scroll through a lot of text...

"There are Ads"
Hello, there have been ads on AMG for at least a year, if not two years.

"They now have a 'Buy' button"
Also, they have had a deal with Barnes & Noble for years now, the Buy Now buttons were on the old site as well.

"You have to register"
It is free.
I honestly don't believe they'll sell your e-mail address to any spam companies.

"My Password is hard to remember"
Please change it to something you'll remember.
They give you that option.

"They are not a small company from Ann Arbor, they are owned by Alliance Entertainment in Florida!"
While it is true they are owned by AEC, there are still only about a hundred people who work for AMG (not including freelance writers) which I would call a relatively small company in regards to their impact on the world...(over 50 million page views a month!). And I am here to tell you that they are not lavishly funded by Alliance.
My impression was that AEC always sort of considered AMG to be a sort of confusing entity: AllMusic doesn't _really_ sell any hard product like CDs or Videos, there are just a bunch of guys who sit around and write about records...AMG is a million miles away from this huge One-Stop group in Florida who owns them, but doesn't really understand what they've got. The finance books have always been a mystery as to what AMG "earns" but my guess is that it isn't a lot, if they even break even. There were always budget crunches and trying to figure out new ways to spark interest in potential clients, blah blah blah...so anyway, the people who say "Why didn't AMG hire a PR firm to launch this" or "They should have done Beta testing" or "They should've hired an outside firm to re-design the site" don't realize that (although they do have a larger parent companny), AMG is essentially a Mom and Pop operation, run by a handful of hard-working, obsessively passionate, (severely underpaid...hence me leaving) individuals who simply don't have the resources to hire the big hotshot firm to do the work, they had to gather whatever in-house programmers they could spare to hunker down in their garage and crank out a new design to the best of their ability. Sure there were compatibility issues, and the site was slow, and some aspects are a bit clunky, but I personally (knowing what I know ...or at least what I _knew_ ...about the company, I think it's pretty spectacular they pulled off what they did, given the severely limited resources that I'm sure were available to them.

They're a bunch of bright MacGyvers over there, trying to make a nuclear reactor out of a tin can and a stick of gum. Anyone who has suggested that they be brutally murdered or shot in the streets should seriously be ashamned of themselves. It's a free site for Pete's sake! It may not be what it once was, but...it may be better.

Whew, and...I'm spent.
Thanks for listening.

i have tried to log on many times without success. can anybody out there tell me the correct way to log on so i can go to the credit screen? many thanks.

I also had problems with this.

one thing you can do is go into the "Change your Password" page: Here

(you can acccess it without being logged in)

Once I changed my password (to something not all gobbledy-gook, thank you very much) it solved the problem for me, but is a bug that All Music should be aware of.

Thank you to AMG's Ex for posting from an insider's perspective, but I really feel he has gone way to easy on AMG. He lists a number of complaints, and while some of his rebuttals may be valid, a few of these issues are just NOT ACCEPTABLE:

too slow - nuff said

tabs & read more - this is really where AMG went completely off the deep end. Again, this used to be the best site on the web and still has the best content. I used to spend literally HOURS on this site and learned tons about new bands. The easy navigability would lead to from discovery to discovery. Now, gee, there’s a revenue generator for their biz partners! Now, well, it takes not just a little longer to navigate, but an exponential extra amount of time.

If they can not change this to reduce the extra activity, I may be forced to use them to find specific information that i am looking for, but my goal will be to get off the site ASAP and there will be no more hours of exploration (and the discovery of new bands that could lead to purchases at the partners sites). I suspect others feel the same way and i cant imagine why anyone would redesign a site such that it makes people want to get the hell of as soon as humanly possible.

You’ve given me a thought. If the business model has revenue coming from the business partners, e-mailing AMG might not have the intended effect. For example, I think we need to start letting Barnes & Noble know that we used to surf AMG to discover new bands and potentially purchase them through the buy link.... but now, well forget it, its just too much work
thoughts?

Apparently some of you are actually able to USE the new site, albeit very slowly. I haven't been able to search, select an album to get info on it, or listen to any clips since the new site was installed. And yes, I do have the latest WMP. For the first few days I would get time out errors, now I get nothing at all even after waiting for several minutes.

I'm curious as to how anybody is getting any use out of this site at all. BTW, I have broadband and a fast PC - apparently I also need brown eyes and the ability to make sushi.

Dear Nipsey

RE: "letting Barnes & Noble know"
I'm not sure, I never really dealt with the client side of things. My guess is that Barnes and Noble has enough of their own thing going on to really care all that much what one of their content provider's sites looks like. Might be worth a shot though (but again, they might not give a rat's behind).

RE: "the discovery of new bands that could lead to purchases at the partners sites"
I don't know that I necessarily agree. I think the re-designed site could open peoples eyes to new music. Say you check out the "Themes" section looking at...oh I don't know..."Rainy Day." The forecast says it's going to rain all weekend and you're sick of all the stuff you have to listen to, so you look it up, and it list a bunch of your favourite gloomy music (Galaxie 500, Yo La Tengo, Massive Attack, etc) but then you see Red House Painters or Lisa Germano and you check out some of the samples, get into it, and buy it from Barnes and Noble ...or download MP3s from Kazaa...either way you've been turned on to some new music in a way that the old site could have never done.

I don't want to sound like AMG's biggest cheerleader (there are some totally bone-headed things on that site, and, like I said, I am an ex-employee, so some of this grumpiness toward my ex-company has been selfishly fun for me ;) ...childish, I know, but there you have it), but overall I believe in what AllMusic has always had to offer and I don't think that the new site is the abomination that people are making it out to be.

Beware: hard-to-follow analogy rapidly approaching!
This is how I look at it:
Say the branch of your local bank moves from being around the corner to being halfway across town. Now you go there, and the tellers are the same, and they still have your money in your checking account, but the lines are different, and they changed the color of the logo on the sign. Sure, some things are an inconvenience (takes longer to get there, you needed to get a new ATM card, you're not already familiar with where they keep the deposit slips), but maybe the old building was falling down, and there was no parking, and while it was close to you and what you were familiar with, it was turning some other people away because it looked so junky.

Now when they first opened the doors they promised cookies and punch, and a new toaster to the first 25 people, but when they opened the doors, there were a thousand people who ate all the cookies and wanted travelers checks! The bank is astounded! They had no idea all those people would show up on the first day! And travelers checks? The bank thought everybody used credit cards nowadays! So they order more cookies, and get stacks of travelers checks ready, and finally, when the flow of traffic has slowed a little bit, and they are providing enough of what people (unexpectedly) wanted, then maybe the bank is OK...maybe it's not so far out of your way. Maybe the new lines to get to the tellers (while different) still get you to the front of the line. Maybe you meet a nice girl who works there? (OK maybe that's just me...)

Bottom line: My guess is that AMG didn't realize so many people would want to get in the door on the first day, and they must have foolishly underestimated the need to give people using other browsers what they want, but soon (not yet, the site is still infuriatingly slow at times) there will be time to poke around the site, check out the new features (Themes, Moods, Instrument, Editors Picks, I don't know...whatever other junk they put in there). While it is differnt than the old site, and you do have to click more times to get to the specific content you want, I still think the new version has a lot to offer (once I figure out a way to shut that spinning flash tree off).

I still can't ever get the site to do a basic search. I even registered for the extra features. This is terrible.

AMG's Ex (fyi I am an ex-AMG-cheerleader myself):

RE: "the discovery of new bands that could lead to purchases at the partners sites" -see, i agree that all of these things will lead to the discovery of new bands...i would love to explore rainy days, but its just not worth my time NOW...with the new design, which 9 out of 10 seem to feel IS an abomination that takes way too much time to navigate.

Per your analogy, guess what, my bank currently is about 500 yards away from my house. IF they moved "halfway across town", a trip to the bank would go from a 10-minute errand to a 60 minute errand. I could care less if they have cookies and punch (or a little animated spinny thing to navigate from checking to savings) because I go to a bank to get my money. I go to the market that is also near by to get my cookies and punch. Thus, if my bank makes it less convenient to use them: i don’t use them.

AMG's ex wrote:
"My guess is that AMG didn't realize so many people would want to get in the door on the first day."

There's no reason why re-launch day would have had a higher, much higher number of people trying to come through on the first day.

What it would, and did, have is people accustomed to getting the main sheet in one click versus having to crawl around all over the place to find what they're looking for. That's what is creating the slow response time. Not more peple.

Somewhere at AMG there's an MBA who needs to have their ass canned for this. I refuse to believe that someone who has a real understanding of web architecture and user behavior was responsible for dreaming up and greenlighting this overhaul.

xp, IE6, still can't search or access any artist content links

Personally I think the main problem with this make-over was they tried to do everything at once. Why not roll back, apply the new look (without changing the mechanics) and implement ONE change at a time. It seems this overhaul has had one of two effects on people. Either they cannot access any content at all or if they are lucky their AMG experience has simply become very cumbersome. How is this an improvement? I am happy to register to give them the demographics they need to increase their ad revenue. I have been anxious for a new look for the site as I'm sure everyone else was. AMG has unfortunately taken away the real reason they created such a devoted fan base - easy access to excellent artist information (all on one page) in a timely fasion.

Let us pray...

was my post deleted because i used the word 'damn'?

can anybody out there help me? i am looking for the correct steps to find out who played what instruments on a certain album for a certain group or performer. i have tried many ways and keep on getting the same logon screen which i have already inputted this information on the top right of the screen. help!!!!! thanks.

does anybody know of a web site other than ubl that will you give you the same information that the old style allmusic.com did? i am really disapointed in the new format. it definately is not user friendly. thanks.

Dear "Confused"
It sounds like you never really get logged in all the way.
It might not be recognizing your password on the login screen.
I also had problems with this.

one thing you can do is go into the "Change your Password" page: Here

(you can acccess it without being logged in)

Once I changed my password it solved the problem for me.

I saw at least one other person had my same problem running XP & IE6 with no ability to search or click on content links.

Fix for me was to configure Ad Blocking in Norton to permit "http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll". You do not have to disable Ad Blocking entirely as directed in the AMG FAQ.

I still can't get the site to work. Now, after registering once and checking the "login automatically" box, it won't log me in or allow me to do it manually because the boxes and enter tabs are covered by mis-aligned screens. Running explorer for Mac 5.1 and am missing the H out of the old workable, reliable site.

hey tony, thanks for solving my (confused)log-in problem. i tried several times to change my password but it wouldn't let me. so i had to have my old password email to me which i have no idea how they got that password. once i used the password they (allmusic)had for me, it let me change my password and it now works. thanks again for your help.......confused.

Dear Andy, can we have another post please. Finding the same post on the top every day is very frustrating.

can someone help me? i really just don't know what else to do. i use windows XP and i have the latest IE but i cannot get allmusic.com's search feature to work. i type in an artist in search, click Go and nothing happens. to this day i haven't gotten past the main page. help?

w/ regard to what matt.oor posted on 15 july
perhaps, this is like the whole new coke v.
classic coke marketing strategy, whereby this
defective version is foisted upon an
unsuspecting community of users, and, in a
couple of months the company brings back the
old version, possibly as a pay-to-use site.
given the newer version as an alternative,
everyone rushes to pay a nominal fee than be
stuck w/ the so-called upgrade.

I know little about computers, don't own one, use one only at work (WBGO, Newark), but have used the guide often for years, even quoting the guide (like "According to the Allmusic Guide, 543 recordings of "Send in the Clowns" and here's 544") ... I've read comments from users, and the cyber-savvy talk about things I know nothing about (javascript?) ... but what I need most you seem not to have in the guide anymore even if it were not so complicated: Appears On & Songs Appear On. I was doing a tribute to John Lee Hooker this week and needed a list of artists who've recorded his songs, but all I could get from the guide was a list of his own albums. Allmusic Guide as it used to be was invaluable to me. The service that you now offer is virtually valueless to me.
MBourne

As a music writer for a small daily newspaper, I once depended on AMG for a universe of music trivia: release dates, correct spellings of album titles, who is on what label ... on and on and on.
Now, I find the site nearly useless. I'm always on deadline and I find it difficult or impossible to wait for the pages to load. It's just to clunky and slow.
Trouble is, I have had trouble finding the same information elsewhere on the web.
So I find myself angry that I've lost a great tool, but ashamed that I'd come to depend so heavily on a free service.
AMG, if you're listening, please get well soon! The music community misses you!

I have waited paitiently through July and August for AMG to improve and sort out the speed issues. Still, September 2004 now and the site is impossibly slow. It is essentially useless, taking minutes to load a single page if I ever reach the index page at all. I have switched to using mp3.com, such a great pitty that an amazing resource has been 'lost'. I would not mind having to login and give some info for an account but it takes minutes just to do a single operation. That is on 750kbps broadband from the UK BTW. Hope the US people are fairing better than us Brits.

The site is trash. I can't even get in today. When it does load it is beyond slow. What a waste of a great music database.

Has anyone been able to access the Amg site this month or it undegoing reconstruction?

I wish AllMusic would just start from scratch. The only thing that they need is their database. The UI should be a thin and lightweight layer. Moreover, AllMusic should offer an API to promote even more traffic.

how do i listen to the music on a mac

AllMusic's Search Engine is useless as of 7/2007. What happened to this once-great site?

I can't believe how much All Music Guide sucks now. It used to be one of the best sites on the Net.

Well, almost four years now since this was posted and allmusic is still more or less unusable. I get timeout too often to use the site. Just waiting for SOMEONE to create a more efficient music site (I'm looking at you IMDB).

Allmusic still sucks! They still have not fixed the speed for page loading and timeout issues.

I use discogs all the time now. Soo much more user-friendly and plenty of info - tho not complete.

While allmusic is more complete - there are sooo many errors in their database. Yes another reason not to use it.