AMG : R.I.P. ?

I thought this was going to be a rumor based on the recent Fixxers concert where AMG didn't show up and Quik performed solo and said that AMG "got gonorrhea of the teeth."

for the love of god someone lock this thread, that is an outstanding note to end on

Bitch Betta Have Ned's Money

NEVER FORGET ;_;

http://hometown.aol.com/aliveoasis/fan/ned.jpg

i always loved how that sweater fits ned

NED CAN YOU SPEAK TO THIS, PLEASE?

^

I have nothing to say, honestly. This is the first I'd heard about Eugene leaving, and personally I'm still plugging away quite a bit, still regularly encourage folks to submit their stuff to the central offices and still regularly review some fairly low-key releases as I go. But I don't pretend to have Eugene's quite remarkable depth and range of musical knowledge, nor do I work in the equally intriguing and as he says quite obscure fields he does in terms of AMG reviewing.

http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/6818/nedbigpac2al3.jpg

as long as
http://www.answers.com/topic/heather-phares?cat=entertainment

and
http://www.answers.com/topic/stephen-thomas-erlewine?cat=entertainment

are there,i'm ok with AMG

And they are.

AMG is very far from a state of rest.

Jason "AMG" Lewis: get well soon.

so what's the big change then? there's got to be more to it than the simple fact that cd-rs won't be eligible for review.

My understanding -- and Andy or others can correct me if I am wrong -- is that it's not so much whether it's a CDR or not, but whether it is specifically for sale. Thus, from the current Product Submissions page:

How can I have my CD, DVD, or game added to the AMG database?

AMG will add any product submissions we receive to the database as long as they are commercially available in their country of release.

As I've pointed out to folks, and as that page explains, this does not guarantee a *review* -- that is different from the creation of an entry in the database.

phew.
that thread title had me concerned there for a minute.
life without AMG would be a tough one to handle.

I have a crush on Amy Hanson for her Chameleons reviews. (nb I don't actually know who she is or what she looks like)

The lay-out and poor organization of the AMG site often makes reading the reviews a hassle. I'd prefer to read all of Eugene's reviews together on a separate site entirely, though of course I understand why he was working for them. It has indeed always been a pleasant surprise to come across a review by him (or some of the other writers who cover experimental music - Thom Jurek, e.g.) on an artist whom it is difficult to find any information on at all. But these writers are the exception, and overall AMG ideally would focus less on invidual reviews by individual writers, more on getting basic discographical data organized in a useful way.

I have a crush on Amy Hanson for her Chameleons reviews.

Oh? Which albums? (I should know this...)

The lay-out and poor organization of the AMG site often makes reading the reviews a hassle

If I'm just looking for something like a song title or the label that an album was released on, I usually go for discogs.com. It's layout isn't nearly so clunky, and it's much faster.

weird, i don't find the AMG difficult to navigate at all...

You're the only one then. I find the site slow, clunky and occassionally broken (not to mention gaudy.)

she's reviewed several songs on the albums you've reviewed, Ned

:-) Good. (I mean, I would have loved to have talked about those myself but I always like having more opinions around on similar subjects -- not just for different takes, but for the variety in writing styles, etc.)

wait. so will new reviews of weird-o, out-of-print releases still go up, that ned or whomever stumbles upon?

("Ah My God!")

I don't find AMG difficult to navigate at all, I just find it slow as hell, no matter what computer I'm using. If it was fast, I wouldn't ever use anything else.

To be more particular, here's some problems I've had with AMG:

for Jazz artists, they follow what is after all the preference of most Jazz historians and publications in listing records by their recording date. But then, they often do not list the release date for records at all. Even as, within the same site, if you go to a "popular" music artist, records are listed by their release date, often with no information regarding recording date;

personally, I'd like live albums to listed separately from studio albums; and yet compilations will be listed with studio albums, though there is a separate category for them; sometimes, you'll find comps of the K-tel variety listed alongside the band's studio albums.

In short, I find that the desire to be a definitive, "complete" resource is the problem. In that mindset, you'll dump whatever information you can get in there, with not enough editing. You have a bizarre mix of uninteresting writers (with exceptions, as I noted above) given lee-way to write pithy reviews while the seemingly more basic task of providing a music reference is not given the attention it needs. I don't think there's enough thought given to just how mind-numbindly complex discographies can be. Where are the record geeks, with their talk of vinyl etchings and obscure foreign versions?

the ravi shankar reviews suck.

All Music Guide Still Sucks

Technical problems complaints circa 2004 (when they did a redesign). Are the folks in charge of AMG stubborn in response to technical problem complaints or have they ever tried to address them, or do they think such complaints are just from a small percentage of the folks who utilize the site?

My problem w/ the site is the oddness of the search engine, particularly if I'm trying to look something up without an exact artist or album name. For instance, I'm looking for music recorded or released in 1948. There's no function to look things up by year so I figure at least if I enter 1948 as an Album Title (since there's also no Keyword option) I'll at least get all those Chronological CDs with 1948 in the title. But of the top ten "relevant" results that appear only 4 have "1948" in the title, only 7 in the top 20 and so on. The Very Best of UB40 1980-2000 is the 10th result.

*SIGH*

More later. But a lot of friends just got hit hard. One word: restructuring.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine on FB -- not the full note, but the key initial part:

Filling in the vaguebooking from earlier today:
Today, the company where I work announced that they're reorganizing so they can best respond to our customers' needs and innovations. As part of the reorganization, the company is eliminating dozens of positions, including a sizable chunk of the employees who work in the Ann Arbor office.

I can't and won't speak to the business reasons behind this decision--that is most certainly not my area of expertise--and I still have my job but I will say that this feels like losing a family.

Sad what has become of AMG and especially sad for those being restructured out of a job.

ooof

I just hope the reviews are archived somewhere. It's still a useful site.

It's still a useful site.

Understatement.

As much bitching as I've done about the place through the years, I still have the AMG toolbar installed in my browser and use it constantly.

it's a great site. I dig all the "AMG loves (year)" features & such.

still a useful site based on reviews written long ago, though i can't see that anything useful has come of it for almost a decade

pretty useless for discographical data though

i feel bad for the employees except for stephen thomas erlewine who is such a terrible writer and should have been fired years and years ago

Wasn't STE the nephew of AMG's owner? It has changed hands, hasn't it?

I think STE's an okay writer! Or at least, he seems the right sort of writer for that sort of site.

STE is the nephew of the original founder, correct. Also I would like to quite disagree with amateurist's opinion of him, thank you.

As for said original founder, he's a character in his own right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Erlewine

Happy Stephen's OK but sad for the rest of the staff.

Won't love this website unreservedly until every Dean Carlson review has been deleted

Jurek, Raggett and a few others are gr8 tho

I hit up AMG almost every day

hey amateurist, did you know that STE now lives in the same town as you/me?

Allmusic was pretty indispensable to me 10 year ago, but I very rarely check it these days, Discogs has pretty much replaced it... I never really cared about the AMG reviews, finding out about obscure artists and records was the main thing for me in an all-inclusive database like that, and these days Discogs is just better and easier to use for that purpose. (Though when it comes to classical music Allmusic is still waayyy better than Discogs, but there are other comperehensive classical music sites around too, like ArkivMusic.)

hey amateurist, did you know that STE now lives in the same town as you/me?

― festival culture (Jordan), Friday, October 3, 2014 11:17 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? well, good for him.

sorry, that sounded really snotty. i didn't mean it that way! this is a nice place to live! i'm sure he's a cool guy, he's just a terrible writer about music. :(

i still like going on AMG and finding a eugene chadbourne review from back in the day, esp. if i haven't read it before. i like when he reviews mid-period dolly parton or tom t. hall records.

you ok andy k?

i'm generally a fan of the super long and wordy thom jurek reviews

isn't andy k well gone from amg?

AMG in the early '00s was pretty essential for my learning about jazz, via clicking on the credits and learning who played on what records, and that in turn was pretty essential for my not getting kicked out of Richard Davis's classes (i assume because caring about that sort of thing made up for my musical shortcomings).

You mean he didn't like the scales you sang on his answering machine?

well there was that (stubbornness) too.

Everyone hating on current Amg is a dum dum Andy k is one of the game's most essential voices

Andy K is the first person I read for R&B.

cosine last two posts

Before Wikipedia, it was the one of the few if not only site with chart positions of singles and albums, which meant I used it obsessively 2000-2006 despite its unwieldy and ponderous database.

i still hit it up almost every day

Tbh there are certain kinds of records, especially r&b, where that is literally the only place to read a decent review.

Some clarification: Seven years back, AMG -- the site, the archive, metadata, editorial content, etc. -- was acquired by Macrovision (now Rovi). Last year, Rovi sold the web properties, including www.allmusic.com, to the then-new All Media Network. The music editors remained and continue to be Rovi employees. The website continues to use Rovi metadata and editorial content.

Thanks for the kind words. They mean a lot.

So All Media Network is laying off people, but not Rovi (and what does Rovi do now?). I am confused. Sorry

All Media Network is laying off people, but not Rovi

Other way around.

shit man, this is confusing, do you have a job or not

Yes:

The music editors remained and continue to be Rovi employees.

whew

I hope that means that Rovi employed music editors still get work on the All Media Network owned All Music Guide

AMG was a fantastic reference site for me (it still is, I just don't use as much as before). I got most of my musical education 10 years ago from browsing the site from days on end. I really hope it stays afloat. Feel like Andy K, STE and Heather Phares are old acquaintances at this point.

I wrote a bunch of reviews for them back in the day. The one I see most mentioned is the first Mastodon record. I still reference it.

Any of you authors wish you could change one of your reviews?

I used to struggle a lot with how equivocal and self-contradictory STE's reviews could be - so many of them are very "on the one hand... on the other hand" about four times over. But I feel a lot closer to him now, maybe because I tend to be much more equivocal myself. He seems to follow each of the mixed signals that a particular album can give off in this staged, deliberately laborious display of tracing the distance between what the music imagines itself as being and what it actually is.

I really enjoy his reviews of Jewel albums for this reason.

I used to struggle a lot with how equivocal and self-contradictory STE's reviews could be - so many of them are very "on the one hand... on the other hand" about four times over. But I...

Any of you authors wish you could change one of your reviews?

I'm sure I feel differently about some albums -- guessing at least 80% of the 11,000 pieces I've written are reviews -- but I've changed text only for the sake of clean-up. Haven't felt the need to change an opinion.

]I used to struggle a lot with how equivocal and self-contradictory STE's reviews could be - so many of them are very "on the one hand... on the other hand" about four times over. But I...

― j., Friday, 10 October 2014 12:40 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Well, exactly.

My main use for AMG: when I want to check out a band that's been around for a long time but I've never actually listened before and I want to find out what their canonical "best" album(s) are to listen to first

Sgt. Pepper

xp yeah that's about right

yeah i have been listening to a lot of unfamiliar metal in the past few years, and i find that they are better for that than say reading metal-archives reviews, where the in-scene fannishness just makes the opinions go all over the place and find expression in really extreme and uncompromising forms

I used to struggle a lot with how equivocal and self-contradictory STE's reviews could be - so many of them are very "on the one hand... on the other hand" about four times over. But I feel a lot closer to him now, maybe because I tend to be much more equivocal myself.

i don't think the "on the one hand... one the other hand" approach is bad at all. i think more reviews could probably stand to be more equivocal, less hyperbolic.

but that said, STE's reviews never read like sincere, intelligent grapplings with a piece of music. instead, they seemed like a kind of embarrassed and lily-livered attempt to kind of take the average of the range of conventional wisdom without settling on an actual opinion. like, "this replacements album is a really interesting comeback for the band, despite that the fact that it doesn't have the energy of the earlier albums. on the other hand, it's really a sad attempt to revive their fortunes." it's not so much equivocal as incoherent. and each individual sentence, phrase, or statement feels very derivative, unoriginal, even plagiaristic.

i'm sorry to come back to this, i don't mean to beat up on the guy, but like a lot of people here i used AMG as a resource for learning about new music for a long time (not so much these days), and as I became attached to certain reviewers and learned from them i also became more and more suspicious and eventually kind of contemptuous of STE, who seemed to grab the lions' share of reviews of high-profile albums. if i go to AMG and see a STE review i just skip past it.

sad. i still use AMG, but in a kind of weird way. when i'm at work, listening to rdio, i use the "related albums" tabs to guide my listening. it can be a great way to find new stuff, but sometimes the "related" picks are way off and it's not as good.

that said, i also enjoy looking through jurek's writing on the site, though redesign after redesign has made it pretty difficult for anyone interested in a specific writer to skim through their collected works.

Oh man, I was so excited when they brought back the "related albums" feature. You have no idea how useful I find it. If I were to pick one single thing about the site that I find most beneficial, it's that feature.

I like it, too.