All Music Guide (allmusic.com) - Pros & Cons

Hi Buzzcat,

Do you have dial up connection? I used to have a dial up, and, yes, it was
painfully slow. Switched over to wireless recently and the All Music site
is very fast now. Everything loads quickly with no quirks.

 

Agreed. That's a pretty stupid review. It's like they picked somebody that hated the band to write a review. They seem to do that all too often.

Griggs should of critiqued the album, not the band, especially because it is a live album. It should of been reviewed on how it compares to the studio versions, sound quality, intensity of the performance, etc...Not whether or not the band deserved to exist or not.

 

Perhaps the problem is that every album gets just ONE review - if the reviewer hates the album....

 

Nope. Cable at home, dsl at work. All lightning fast. Except on the All Music site.

 

Used to visit every day, in the early days, when it loaded quickly and searching was a breeze - that was then.

Besides being slow, the search function is clumsy and frustrating.

 

I never could believe they offered their website to the general public for free. In the days before the interweb, I knew of AMG from their books...and I LOVED those books. Still do. For the most part, all of the information in those books is now on their website for free.

I don't care if its slow....I don't care if there is the occassional hiccup in information....AMG is one of the BEST music-resource sites there is. It is one site I would pay for access to if they were to have done that from the beginning.

 

I think you're onto something...They should work on adding multiple reviews. Though perhaps they should first work on adding reviews to more of the albums that don't have them.

Maybe they should offer a 5 star voting system for users to rate the quality/accuracy of the reviews. "How would you rate this review?" That sort of thing. Of course, often anybody that is reading a review is a fan of the band in question and won't like anything bad being said. But nothing is perfect...

 

I agree, thats why I tend to prefer Amazon.com for the reviews. I'll take a variety of amateur opinions any day over a singluar "expert" review.

 

I have this theory about All Music. Namely, that they allow several editors/reviewers to assign albums a star rating, and then only allow one reviewer to write up an article about it. Which might explain the difference in rating and review.

 

I use it a lot. I think it's a really useful repository on information. I will say that th reviews are hit or miss.

 

Oh, no, the reviews are too opinionated!!

Pretty much all of the reviews I've read - and that's a lot - are positive to varying degrees, unless it's Bright Eyes.

 

Take those Amazon reviews with a grain of salt.

The Genesis 1976-1982 box set currently is rated at 4 1/2 stars from 31 reviewers.

 

For the past days, browsing allmusic occasionally opens up a pop-up ad site with a fake malware scanner. The built-in pop-up blocker did not prevent it from opeing, because the ad site replaced the allmsuic site within the browser tab.

The site is technically harmless but an obvious scam, because it makes it look like the user's PC is actually infected (the scan is just a silly animation on the website).

You can check the site with this link:

http://scanner2.malware-scan.com/9_..._10231_ao_&ed=2&tmn=null&mt_info=3958_0_10231

Shame on allmusic for being so careless about selecting their advertisement partners.

 

Money has no smell?

 

I've been a big Allmusic fan for years. Yes. The reviewers and reviews can be flawed but hey...I'm just looking for an opinion. I realize how subjective a music review can be. I've bought stuff anyway and found that I totally disagreed and other times found the reviewer was right on the money and I'd still have my money if I had heeded.

My humble opinion: There ain't never gonna be a music review or an album assessment that everyone agrees on.

And so it goes. And that's part of the beauty of this obsessive hobby/lifestyle of ours, isn't it? ...

Anyway. I used to buy those huge AMG books until I discovered the website. I find the website to be an invaluable reference source for the most part.

But I will agree that it has gotten way too slow. Even with my cable connection.

And speaking of pop ups. I will say that the current one they are running for "Dirty"...whatever that is...with those weird animation characters and the equally weird looking David Spade staring at me really creeps me out

 

I contacted AMG about this yesterday, and to their credit received a response in less than 24 hours...

 

Con: Stephen Thomas Erlewine gives ridiculously bad albums five star reviews!

 

The editing of AllMusic can be very weak. As hinted at earlier, there are drastic inconsistencies within the reviews of a particular artist because different reviewers are employed for individual albums by that artist. For example, one reviewer may say X album is the best set by the artist since Y album, while a review of an album released between X and Y may receive a higher rating than Y. To me, this is where a stronger editing hand is required...the reviews and ratings for a single artist should hang together, regardless of how many individual reviewers were employed.

On the pro side, the ambition to keep such a large resource up-to-date, functional, and as all-encompassing as it is is very admirable.

 

Has anyone experienced problems streaming audio with Windows Media Player on their site lately?

 

I just sampled their album of the day's 30 second clip and had no problem outside of the usual buffering issues.

I have Win 98 and WMP 7 on the computer I am typing on now. Haven't tried it with my other W2K computer.
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As far as AMG, I like reading their Overviews and reviews as a convenient all in one site. Like any information it is what it is to use for consideration. I also look at Amazon reviews.

I also use the track information as a source for my Access database of CDs and LPs. Sometimes it is incorrect or just CD instead of LP order, but it works for me.

 

I believe so.

All in all, allmusic is great for parsing discographies for albums to check out by unfamiliar artists.

 

Bingo. And the GUI needs work.

 

Allmusic frequently has sound samples not available elsewhere. Also, many times they have links to the lowest priced sellers. I love the site and try to click-through them to a seller whenever possible. I think they probably earn money from the click-through and I want the site to stay viable.

BTW, I use the Opera browser and never have issues with pop-ups.

 

Speaking of AMG, for reasons completely unknown, I have been unable to properly access allmusic Guide for the past week! When I click on any link to the site all I get is the AMG banner including the search box, menu bar, site menu and login box but the remainder of the page is completely blank? When I type in a url i get the same result. Every time I try to log in nothing happens!? Yesterday I received the regular allmusic blog via e-mail and when I attempted to access the site via a link in the email the same thing happened. I'm a little perplexed as this is the only site that I regularly visit that appears to have any problem? Does anybody have any ideas? Cheers!