You know what sucks about AMG?

Also, AMG being an advertisement for a database... wow, considering AMG has come out with a book and seems to be doing fairly well financially, that's amazing.

Well, I could be wrong, but again that's how I was understanding its origins. It's currently part of this company, so there ya are.

I don't think AMG is too bad because they have Ned and Andy Kellman writing for them, and they seem like a couple of fairly intelligent individuals.

What currently sucks is it hasn't been working for the last 2 days. Yesterday I was somehow logged in as someone else ("Welcome back, axel"), and I haven't been able to search successfully for anything. E.g. I just searched for "Beatles" and it brings up Kim Battles. Searching for most bands just gets no results :(

Yeah I've experienced that too. Album search works for me and I can get to artist pages through that.

it's been slow as shit for a long time. I hate using it. I avoid it when I can.

It's stuck on classical. Sexcellent.

I like AMG a lot mostly, but being stck on classical reminds me how much I hate that section's structure, it's a WEBSITE, mostly read by youngish people, let us look up records! I wanna see what they make of Bernstein's "Rhapsody/American", y'know? Or a specific Steve Reich thing, blah blah. Considering how impt various versions are to BUFFS I don't think this approach'd really piss off most classical gassers anyways nohow

I mean it's a good thing to have as an option, don't get me wrong (Ned)

I have used Allmusic a bit for discography into, but lately I have discovered that, at least in the case of major acts, Wikipedia is just as helpful. And way faster.

Yeah? Ta!

I mean it's a good thing to have as an option, don't get me wrong (Ned)

Astounding. I actually had similar troubles with access the past couple of days, but my solution was to use google for the search terms while limiting the domain to allmusic.com. Quite why that worked when the direct approach didn't is a mystery.

Ever since they put up that new fancy frontpage Allmusic has been ridiculously slow. Since the site works mainly as a search directory, I can't see why they thought appereance would outbalance functionality.

Yeah, I'm still stuck on classical. In order to get to anyone non-classical I have to plow through their rough guide type sections and hope the artist I'm looking for comes up.

If AMG is still functioning as an advertisement for a database I can't imagine many people are buying it. Since the redesign a couple of years ago I've been using it less and less; I find it awkward to navigate, unintuitive, and occasionally unreliable too (such as the last two days). The content is fantastic, but the interface is really not.

otm

I remember the format changed when ILX was down and everyone was posting on some other weird non-sandbox board. It was a tragic day.

Quite why that worked when the direct approach didn't is a mystery.

AMG is so slow it's just not worth the hassle anymore. Fuck them!

yeah, they've ruined their core business big time. how hard can it be cutting the page-load times?

I remember being annoyed when I had to click again to get the artist's full bio. I mean, when I look up an artist, obviously I want to know about them. And I'm willing to wait the extra 1 second it would take to load all of the bio text at once instead of having to wait way longer to click "read more" and let the whole fucking page load again.

Oh hello,
As a long time ILX lurker and an AMG employee I figured I'd come out and address some of the things you guys are posting about.

Search Engine XXX-plosion:
Yes, late on Tuesday night, our internet provider (who shall remain nameless, but I will say that they have forever ruined Oasis' "All Around the World" for me and we'll leave it at that) had some kind of malfunction. The internal search engine files that we generate every week did not copy out from home base to our co-locations around the U.S. This meant that for some reason if you looked up Barclay James Harvest on AllMusic you got sent to some random Classical page. We worked on resurrecting our network connection and had it repaired and the search files updated by mid-morning Wednesday. That data propogated out to all of our servers throughout the day and I think it is all fixed now.

Sorry 'bout that.

I'd like to say it won't happen again, but it was largely out of our control.

Sloooow performance.
We know. Believe me. Everybody that works in this building uses AllMusic.com even more than you do and it can be a real drag waiting for the pages to load. In all honesty, a lot of the lag time that you're seeing is from our advertisers' ads loading on the page (which, I'm sure is another sore spot with the ILX crowd, but I can't really bitch about it because it keeps the site free for all of our users). If you are ultra-geeky and have Firefox's Web Developer console installed as a plug-in (available here: http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/ ), you can disable JavaScript and see how quickly the page loads. This should be something that we can improve as time and resources allow.

That being said, we are working on some architecture things on the back end that should (hopefully) show improvement within the next 4-6 months. The site might not look much different, but hopefully we'll all see performance improvements.

"Ruining" Our Core Business:
To be honest, the Allmusic.com website doesn't make up much of our overall revenue. The ads that assault all of our eyeballs don't really earn enough to keep 160 employees (plus hundreds of freelance writers) in Bentleys and Caviar. We get our Bentleys and Caviar from our Data Licensing business (Licensing this same music, movie and game data to Barnes & Noble.com, the iTunes Music Store, Microsoft, Borders.com, AOL Music, and a number of other places) as well as our Consumer Electronics Technology business (LASSO Media Recognition = http://contribute.allmediaguide.com/ and Tapestry Playlisting and Recommendation Technology http://amgtapestry.com/radio/).

We still love and cherish AllMusic.com, as it is the reason a lot of us get up in the morning (sad, isn't it) but prioritizing maintenance and upkeep resources for a part of our company that (while a great resource and tool) doesn't really pay to keep the lights on is often a struggle.

Ned, your Bentley is in the mail.
Andy, yours is going to take longer because the factory doesn't make one with a turntable standard, so they had to order it custom.

Hope this helps to clear *some* things up.
I do apologize for the general chaos that happened over the past couple days.
I hope everybody is able to look up Barclay James Harvest with reckless abandon now.

Zac Johnson
AllMusic.com

Ned, your Bentley is in the mail.

Thanks -- do I just have to add water?

http://images.wikia.com/muppet/images/9/94/Paulbenedict.jpg

thanks for the answer Zac, and i'm sorry for sounding surly earlier: i should have added that i think AMG is one of the best websites there is.

<i>In all honesty, a lot of the lag time that you're seeing is from our advertisers' ads loading on the page</i>

Except, I know of a website or two that have ads and don't take forever to load. They're called "Every Other Site On The Internet". But thanks for the javascript trick.

Ahhh, gotta love the "being a dick" factor on ILM. Was it really necessary to post a dickish reply to a guy being nice enough to take the time to calmly respond to our thread bitching about his website?

Except, I know of a website or two that have ads and don't take forever to load.

Hey, I ain't saying it ain't broke, I'm just saying it isn't as simple as AMG turning up the "Make Website Fast" knob.

How come AMG got rid of its links for albums? There used to be a menu on the main page for each artist. Now they're gone.

Ah, now I see it. But on my browser (Safari), it's hard to find. Not a change for the better.

Isn't there a lot that sucks about AMG?

I used to use AMG for discography information (track listings etc), but nowadays I prefer Wikipedia.

SCIK IN AGREEMENT WITH GEIR SHOCK

I use Wiki or Amazon. AMG takes so fucking long. It's a joke.

It's like using dial-up.

I actually like AMG's reviews, but their site takes so long to navigate that I usually look up an album through wikipedia which generally has a link to the AMG review. That way I can skip through 17 slow loading AMG clicks and get straight to my info.

I am just shocked that AMG has been such a crapfest for as long as it has. You'd have thought at some point this widely-used web tool would have been fixed.

i haven't looked at amg in years.

i used to use AMG for sound samples and shit. now i don't use AMG at all.

> keep in mind that the AMG, at least at the outset and I believe still today, functions in large part as an advertisment for a database program.

WORST ADVERTISEMENT EVER!

Wikipedia is 10 times faster, more comprehensive than AMG, not to mention more up to date. AMG has a time lag of about 5 years.

> more comprehensive than AMG

this really isn't true, esp. for older material

if wiki had reviews of more albums like amg, it would be ovah

Complaints complaints. (As was noted, a LOT of AMG reviews are linked from the respective album Wikipedia pages, and the content gets out there somehow. And hey, I'm still on there. Bit by bit.)

if wiki had reviews of more albums like amg, it would be ovah

Never mind that an encyclopedia should strive to be a bit impartial -- have you actually READ Wiki music entries?

can you stage a coup?
xpost

> more comprehensive than AMG

this really isn't true, esp. for older material

What I mean here is that in Wikipedia you'll find at least an overview on a lot more artists. Especially more obscure/least known ones, and non-anglophones.

I've tried using Wikipedia for information when working on articles, and I've found that their entries, at least as far as metal bands go, tend to range from alright, to poorly written, to dubious, to wildly inaccurate. AMG is usually much more useful, and they don't make the same claims towards objectivity.

Using Wikipedia for information -- BAD IDEA.

Following links provided in reasonably good Wikipedia pages to primary sources/interviews/details about things like bands -- very good idea. Wish more people would do that.

Ha ha, I use Wikipedia for research for my screenplays. Of course, I write stories in which things that normally do not explode explode rather spectacularly, so strict realism is not really a requirement.