First and foremost, I really love eMusic. I’ve had a subscription to the site for over two years. At connoisseur level, that means over 2400 tracks downloaded from the site. Roughly 240 albums. Good times. Some of the highlights include discovering The National, expanding my Keith Jarrett collection and dipping my toe into whatever kind of music I was interested in week-to-week for the past 2 years.

But, that said, I’ve decided to cancel my membership to the site. This post reminds me of breaking up with a girlfriend. Trying to show reason and logic you let them down gently using phrases like “but the magic has gone” or “can’t you see it too?”.

Reason Number 1

Ok, in true love/hate style I actually really love the usability of your download application. It runs like a wet dream – vaguely pleasurable and doesn’t take up any of your time (waking time at least – I actually had a dream about the emusic downloader once. But that’s another story…). BUT. Oh, the humanity of the usability of your website. Since I have had like a gazillion downloads to use each month I spent the majority of my time on the your site browsing around various artists/albums and I lost count (after 17 – I can’t count over 17. Fact.) of the number of times that I came across this error.

Reason Number 2

Ok, I’ll admit it. I hold my hands up. Guilty as charged your honour – reason number 2 is the same as reason number 1. It just really annoys me when not only is the site riddled with “pages not found” but emusic keeps telling me to visit them.

Reason Number 3

Consider the following scenario, I’m browsing the emusic site looking for my next favourite album to download and I follow one of the many links to a list created by a fellow emusic user: my emusic dozen x2 by that caring soul rednano74.

Drinking in the musical gems contained within the list I stumble across Bon Iver and I eagerly click through – I think I might just like Bon Iver! Only to be greeted with a new error message.

Take a look at the above error message: “We’re sorry. This album is unavailable for download in your country (United Kingdom) at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”. Sure, that error message might sound convincing but that dirty harlot emusic has been cheating on me behind my back. Compare these two pages, the first one linked to from the user list, the second found via the search function:

I take you on your word emusic, you’re one of those girls I can trust.

But wait! What treachery is this?! Look at all the other boys who get to download the album.

You do this again and again emusic you cheating whimsical harlot. (Yes, I’m sure there are ‘reasons’ that you need to do this probably because it’s released on different labels in the UK and US or something but why do I care as a user? Give the page a single URL dammit.)

Conclusion

So, in conclusion I think we should take a break emusic. You even have a handy function on the site which lets me do exactly that. It’s got nothing to do with spotify, even though we flirt a lot we’re just friends, I hope you can see that (spotify can’t keep me warm in the middle of the night like you can my dear). Here’s hoping that after I’ve spent some time away from you (and slept with a lot of other music download sites like 7digital and boomkat) things will have changed and I’ll come back to you but until that time, so long emusic and thanks for all the fish.

Recently I’ve been getting in a few fights with people about how bad iTunes and iPods are so I thought I’d spell it out for people so I can refer back to this post later. If anyone has anything to add please feel free to add things in the comments.

Let me preface this rant by saying that I’m never buying an apple product ever again.

edit – I couldn’t be arsed typing out my long rant again so I just copied and pasted from a facebook wall conversation I had. I’ve edited out the really offensive stuff but it’s probably still a little offensive so please use reading discretion. Or something.

iPods – the cheap and nasty mp3 player

Dear god let the horror please stop. Are you really truly honestly trying to tell me that I have to scroll through 80gb of music by starting at A and spinning my thumb like a teenager confronted with a clitoris for the first time? Blindly hoping it’ll give me what we both want but in fact causing deep emotional scaring (and a little friction burn).

HOW ABOUT LETTING ME USE SOME MANNER OF FUCKING DIRECTORY NAVIGATION. Did microsoft’s invention of windows pass you by? Too busy shaving your balls I imagine to pay attention to such things as usability.

And how about being able to scroll from A to Z, like without having to go through all those other letters in between. It is a click-WHEEL after all. a WHEEL. That’s a round object that spins freely in EITHER DIRECTION. I don’t buy a wheel for my car and get asked “which direction of wheel would you like sir?”.

And how about the ‘Album’ list. One might think it’s a list of all the albums in my music collection.

…But you’d be fucking wrong. Instead it’s a list of all the albums, that all the songs in my collection belong to. So let’s say for example I’m not 12. Or a flea ridden fucking designer who shaves his armpits. Assuming I’m not ENTIRELY a sheep I’m going to have music (yes, Apple, that probably belongs to an album) WITHOUT THE REST OF THE ALBUM. Dear heaven’s watson what on earth are we going to do with them? Apple: SHIT, I’m scared by this free thinking, let’s just ignore them.

Again – the cover flow. Nice idea apple except when I have 80gb of music. You really expect me to scroll through several months worth of music by looking at pictures. Only if all the albums had a picture of steve jobs dead on them.

Oh yeah – and if you’re GOING to have a database, allow me to create one to many relationships, like assigning a song to more than one artist so that when I’m browsing by artist I can find the song numerous different ways. But that’s like a nice to have. Make it USABLE first.

Then there’s the little things – and I could go on a long time here, but things like allowing me to play an individual folder in shuffle. OH NO FUCKING WAIT YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN FOLDERS. THEY MUST BE THE FUCKING ANTI CHRIST OR SOMETHING. Cos I swear to god apple are pissing me off about as much as c********s right now. The ignorant irrational stupid idiots.

Or what about allowing me to change the size of the text on the screen? So if, for example, I’m not blinded by my own stupidity and can actually READ then let me fit a few more lines on each screen. That way it might take me a little less time to scroll through my entire music collection each time.

There’s an ending involving grease fires and dying and alters and crosses and c********s and apple fans somewhere in there but I’m worried it’s offensive so I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

And don’t even get me started on iTunes.