RE: AMG

ugh. there have been lots of complaints, but thanks for being patient up front, Efren (and anyone else). here is the official company line, for anyone interested: GENERAL COMMENTS We’ve been on the net since 1995 providing a free music reference resource. We would hope that we’ve earned a little patience from our users as we work through the transition to the new site and some of the difficulties we’re experiencing. We’re a small company with small company resources. While we’ re flattered by our users’ expectations, we are not Amazon or Yahoo! We’re a small company from Ann Arbor, MI, trying to provide a great resource for music fans. SLOW RESPONSE TIMES We are experiencing some response time delays as we work to get all of our servers properly balanced. Additionally, we will be adding server capacity over the next week which will further improve response times. While this site is bigger and more complex than and will be somewhat slower than the old site, the difference once we get everything at peak form won't be very noticeable. SUPPORT OF NON-IE FOR WINDOWS BROWSERS Optimizing a site of allmusic’s complexity and size for all browsers and operating systems is no small feat. This isn’t a simple “brochure-ware” site of static pages. 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. Despite some users flattering comparison of our site with that of Google, Amazon and Yahoo!, we are a small company with limited resources. So, we had to pick the most widely used browser by our users (over 87%) to optimize the site for and then work on compatibility issues with the other major browsers as we go forward. We are first concentrating on fixing some compatibility issues with the Mozilla browsers, which are mainly visual, not functional. The main Mozilla problem is a glitch in how tables are displayed. We’re hoping to have this fixed in the near future. We will also be working to fix some compatibility problems with Safari (Mac). We ask for your patience as we work on these issues. REGISTRATION The allmusic site remains totally FREE to our users and only requires registration for access to new Premium Content. If you are uncomfortable registering, we understand and invite you to continue to use the portion of the site (roughly equivalent to the former site) that does not require registration. But we would like to take a moment to explain why we have introduced registration for Premium Content. The AMG websites are FREE sites that are marginally supported by only advertising and product sales. To attract advertisers and retailers, we need to provide them with basic demographic information of our users so they can determine if our site is a fit for their products. We provide this information only in the aggregate (i.e. 60% of our users are male) and never pass on any individual user information. Please read our privacy policy for more information. Without these advertisers and retailers, the AMG websites would be out of business. Registration is a common practice among free publishing sites such as the AMG sites (i.e. NY Times, etc.) that fund their enterprise through advertising and product sales. AMG is in line with common Internet practices and, as a good Internet citizen, zealously protects the privacy of our users. TAB FORMAT 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. That design approach (one page) just doesn't scale as we expand content. And it's a real problem with artists with extensive discographies. We think that once folks take some more time on the site, they'll see that there is much more information available now than there was on the old site. The addition of the Songs and Credits tabs are both good examples of information that just wouldn’t be possible in a one page format. so there ya go. and just for the record, i was not a part of the actual design team. i'm just a content editor. sean Hi, Maybe we still have to get used to the new AMG layout, but I've already heard lots of complaints. There are lots of access problems with the password (I still couldn't enter the site actually), you get easily lost (are the discographies no longer including the recordings as sidemen?),... it's very strange. It has always been a reference-site for me, always checked before buying stuff, but some of the new features are a bit annoying. Not to critizise, just my first impressions. I guess it's all in a re-start phase, so perhaps there's no reason to panic! Best, Efrén del Valle --- Peter Gannushkin <shkin@shkin.com> escribió: > Hi William,

Speaking about the AMG, it is nice that they added the sound clips but altogether the site became just horribly heavy and user unfriendly. Tons of javascript, windows media only, lots of extra clicks to get the same information and a gazillion of bugs, which I hope they will fix soon.