eMusic conclusion
Just a brief follow-up (see first and second posts). I finished all my downloads. I looked in the Soundtracks section and found Charlie Brown Christmas. That's a good one so I downloaded the whole album. I also found Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. I remember liking the the different themes for each character so I downloaded the whole 20-minute track. Honestly it was disappointing, not really a complete work but just those few themes over and over again plus the narration of the story. Other than that I continued as before, downloading a few more Pixies B-sides, Peter Murphy, Pavement, Rancid, Charlatans UK, The Church, and NOFX. It's a challenge finding 100 songs you will like, but I was very pleased with discovering Pavement ("Grounded" "Cut Your Hair" and "Trigger Cut") and NOFX ("Bob" and "Linoleum") and I like some of the Peter Murphy tracks ("Cuts You Up" "Sweetest Drop" and "Low Room"), Pixies ("Manta Ray" "Dance the Manta Ray" and "Into the White"), and Rancid who have a strong Clash influence (especially on "Time Bomb"). If you're interested in trying the service out you don't have to buy Dockers. They offer a free month with 100 songs to anyone with a credit card.
When I cancelled, here is what I wrote as my reason:
I got this trial subscription from Dockers. Initially I was disappointed with the selection of artists I'd heard of, but after really digging I found a lot of music I am enjoying (or already own like The Pixies, Peter Murphy, and Rusted Root). The "popular tracks" that show up for each artist are misleading. They seem to be chosen at random or deliberately leave out things that are truly popular. For instance the Top 20 list had 3 songs by CCR, but none of them showed up in CCR's list of popular tracks. Also the top 20 list isn't sufficient. You should expand it to at least the top 50 for each genre. The All Music Guide reviews are good and I referred to their website a lot when trying to figure out which songs I should download. Because I have dial-up, listening first was out of the question. The download manager is very good, but I was disappointed that when I cancelled one download in the queue my account wasn't credited for it. Having "neighbors" with similar interests was good as it sent me looking at some artists I wasn't familiar with. I respect what you are trying to do with this service and by not having a lot of popular artists you force people to find new music, which is always a great thing. I may subscribe again sometime, but for now I thank you for the free trial and hope that you at least got some money from Dockers.
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