Music Discussions

As many of you probably know from previous posts, I have had an eMusic account for around two years. I have always found their service to be a good value and easy to use, but lately I have been having issues due to their recent site changes.

Some of the problems are, admittedly, on my end. As with any change, there is a learning curve. I am not the quickest adapter when it comes to adjusting to a new interface for a product that I have used for years. This has led me to spend more time than it probably should have taken to find my saved lists and figure out how to add albums to these lists. However, most of the problems that I have encountered are not directly attributable to my ability – of difficulty – to adapt to change.

The biggest issue I have encountered for instance was with downloading an album. On Tuesday I received my monthly credit in my account and went to download an album. The interface said that there was an issue and presented me with a retry button; this is a normal occurrence and can happen under typical circumstances not related to the site redesign such as problems with a user’s network connection. However, what happened next is definitely not normal. When I clicked on the retry button, I did receive my album, but I was also charged again for it. Also, I received retry notices almost every time I tried to download a song or album (repeatedly on the same item in many cases). Fortunately, I was only charged a second time for one of the items.

Another issue that I have encountered is related to which browser I use. I normally use Firefox for downloading tracks and Chrome for almost everything else. I can no longer download tracks in Firefox; when I try, I am taken back to the login page. I figured that is not a big deal, and that I would just use Chrome for this as well in the future since I’ve almost stopped using Firefox anyway. It turns out that I have the same issue in Chrome. I had to resort to using Internet Explorer to download tracks. While this works, it forces me to use a slow, bloated browser that I have to open for the sole purpose of downloading songs (since I do not use if for anything else).

Sometimes, I’ve even had issues with Internet Explorer. For example, off and on over the last week I have had to come back several times over the day to download the free track of the day. And this is using Internet Explorer, which is the only browser that even works for me at all most of the time.

I had e-mailed eMusic’s support address about the double-billing issue not long after the incident. Shortly thereafter, I received an automated response stating that it would take 3-5 business days for a support agent to contact me due to the high-volume of e-mails that they are receiving. In light of this, I am pleased to announce that I heard back from eMusic’s technical support after a little over a day. They credited my account, said that they are looking into the issues that caused this problem, and advised me not to download anything else for a until fixes can be put into place.

Even though there are currently issues with the site, it is nice to see that eMusic cares about their customers enough to respond quickly and rectify situations that arise. The best advice that I can give right now if what tech support told me – hold off on downloading anything for a few days. If you feel that you must download a particular song or album right now, Internet Explorer (for Windows users) seems to be the best option for now. Finally, if you do encounter a serious problem, e-mail technical support they are prompt and helpful.