Green Tee Readings

As noted via Twitter, I’m less than impressed with two changes in web services I use a decent bit.

I’ll have to deal with the alterations to Gmail’s label functionality. The more I think about it, with regards to how I usually use labels, the less of a problem I have with the changes. Primarily I use labels along with filters to preemptively de-clutter my inbox. I don’t get that much email, but never seeing the six music, couple of SF, many slightly interesting advertisement mailings, and political newsletters show up as inbox emails has been a thing of beauty. I also use labels as a prescreening device for the real emails I get. Certain friends and family members have their own label so I can check the notifier to see if one of them is responsible and better decide if that little blue number in the lower right corner of my inbox needs attention. The changes to labels alter these habits not at all, as both of them are Gmail notifier based. In a few weeks, this will probably be a big sigh. whatever., certainly so if the content boxes reappear. Chat still gets one, why not the inbox & labels groupings?

eMusic, the indie label digital superstore, just opened their catalog to small labels like Sony, BMG, and Columbia and because of this, or at least partially so, the effective subscription rates jumped. I wanted to wait to get totally indignant about it until I saw who was going to be available now, and I’m ready to start yelling at people to get of my damn lawn. I probably shouldn’t have felt a need to wait, since every change they’ve made in the last year or so has come at the cost of reduced functionality. This latest change, the addition of a massive amount of albums, some of them by obscure artists like Bob Dylan and Britney Spears, makes the whole enterprise less efficient and, to me, goes against the point of the service.

I signed up for eMusic because they were DRM free and because they were an indie operation. Bands I’d almost never see in record stores were here, and not lost in the vastness of iTunes or, now, Amazon’s mp3 store. The editor selected eMusic Dozens features highlighted things I’d probably never run across, and the lists of other users did similarly. I was totally fine with being unable to get Decemberists albums from Columbia (although I still can’t get them, but I can get Destiny’s Child and Neil Diamond from eMusic. The hell?), because I got their pre-Columbia stuff, and I got neat bands like The National Lights, School of the Seven Bells, and Au Revoir Simone.

This might be a momentary thing, and they might again focus on small, nearly unknown but very awesome bands, but I see a future of DMB, Leonard Cohen and Usher on eMusic Dozens and it being harder to find the gems. With the fewer downloads I get a month, it’ll certainly be harder to try out things I’m not sure about, and since my archaic plan that wasn’t offered for more than a year won’t exist at all anymore, I have no reason to keep up a monthly subscription. Maybe I’ll duck in and out a few times a year, but that’s starting to look unlikely, it’ll be too much of a hassle making sure that I use up all the months downloads and cancel quickly. It’s a shame, because eMusic was great.

No Comments yet »