A Review of Five Sites to Place Your Song
[ No. 35 - September 1999 ]
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Hello. This month we break all the rules, act like we don't
know what we're doing and try placing songs on a bunch of
different websites. We pretend we're coming at Internet audio
for the first time. Is it a kinder, gentler and leveled playing
field of a World Wide Web, or are things as complex and obtuse
as the business of business typically make them?
We chose five mainstream sites:
<www.iuma.com>,
<www.mp3.com>,
<www.rollingstone.com>,
<www.ubl.com>,
and <www.riffage.com>.
We encoded a three minute and thirty-three second song called
"Diamond Mine" (bandname: Doormouse, co-produced by one of us
FezGuys) to an MP3 file using Xing's Audiocatalyst. With wide
eyes and hearts full of hope we fired up the modem...
Our first visit takes us to IUMA (the Internet Underground
Music Archive). Created in 1993 by some charming and unwashed
geeks with too much access to computers at the University of
California at Santa Cruz, it's the oldest and most venerable
of the independent music databases. Upon arriving at the
space-age/jazzbo site we locate "Artist Uplink." Purporting
to "offer you the ability to create, maintain and customize
your own website" this is IUMA's entry (now that they are owned
by bigger fish E-Music) into free web site hosting. It's
deja-vu all over again as this is what IUMA was about when it
began.
This site requires a javascript-enabled browser (Netscape 4.0 or
MSIE 4.0). Clicking on the Artist Uplink area gets us to a sign-up
sheet. It's clearly detailed and the popup window help function
is well-designed.
We fill out the rather long entry form. They want to know
everything and we don't want to tell them everything, especially
our phone number. It says we must so we lie. We are assigned
our own mini-domain name in the form of: .
This is better than a confusing URL you might get by hosting
with a local ISP, though not as good as registering <doormouse.com>
(which, sadly, is already taken). There are two identical
contact info areas and, as we finish one and click through to
the next we find that the info must be completely filled out
again. It would be easy to write a piece of script to copy
this info for us.
Finally we are uploading our image and song and, unfortunately,
there's no status indicator in the uplink window. This would
be a very useful function to have so we know how long we have
to wait. Since there are always long pauses between mouse
clicks it is often hard to tell if anything is happening (i.e.:
did my click take?). IUMA automatically creates a RealAudio
file from our mp3 file (which is nice) but the dialog info on
the RealPlayer doesn't automatically make use of the author,
title and copyright fields. A simple fix at IUMA would configure
their RealAudio conversion process for this.
Finally we're alerted to successful uploads and offered a template
from which to choose the design of our little area. The templates
are relatively inoffensive and, as we have a password, we can go back
anytime and change anything.
We are asked to wait "up to 24 hours" to see the completed page
but receive an email mere hours later from "Arti Shtuplink"
(cute) announcing our area is ready. Everything works. We
make a couple minor changes to the bio text and we're done.
All in all IUMA's site, directions and presentation are very
straightforward and reasonably simple. The finished product
looks good. The audio is clean. This site is recommended.
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ease of use
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easy
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design
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groovy
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tech support
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undetermined
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expected consumer experience
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airport lounge, all planes running on time
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overall
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recommended
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This is a very busy but well-organized frontpage of links,
resources and data. We find the link to add our song well
hidden at the bottom right under the name: "Artists Only."
The font is tiny. We login and get a password. Again, lots
of forms to fill out and a phone number or two to falsify.
After the contact sheets we're snowed by the "terms of service"
agreement which, going well beyond mere legalese, pitches us
on mp3.com as *the* site for Internet audio music downloads.
We're already taking advantage of their services and don't need
to be sold. Unlike IUMA mp3.com puts our previously entered
info directly into the next contact form, saving a few minutes.
When we first upload our little picture we receive an error
message stating our JPEG image was "not an image file". The
site vaguely warned of problems like this but offered no
solution. We change the image from a "progressive" JPEG to a
"standard" JPEG and the upload takes. The site (like IUMA)
automatically sizes images, saving us that step.
We hit the song upload button and wait. It's not mp3.com's
fault. 56k modems routinely provide for data transfer speeds
of 40kbps and down, depending on your connection. Again, it
would be extremely useful if there were a way to know how long
the upload is taking and how long there is to go. After about
twenty-five minutes we receive an alert. The song has been
successfully uploaded.
As with IUMA, mp3.com automatically creates a RealAudio version
from our uploaded mp3 file. There is a product recommendation
to use the MusicMatch mp3 encoder on the site. It would be
interesting to know if that recommendation was because of a
technical preference or a business alignment. MusicMatch is
not our encoder of choice but it doesn't suck.
The Doormouse mp3.com site is up and running almost immediately
after uploading the audio. Overall our experience with mp3.com
is positive, if time-consuming. Changes are easy to make and
the downloads tracking section is a big bonus. It's easy to
see just how invisible you really are on the pop radar! The
site is recommended.
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ease of use
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good
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design
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form follows content
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tech support
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undetermined
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expected consumer experience
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day trading in a bull market
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overall
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recommended
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The Rolling Stone magazine site () takes
forever to load. It's busy, confusing and unclear on where to
upload music. Unnecessary animations slow the process down.
Whoever thinks they need 'em, well, you're wrong. We follow
a link that squawks: "New Stars Wanted!" How lame is that?
Everytime we change a window on this site it takes about a
minute to load. This site is too slow.
First we are told to register as members. They require our
date of birth. That's weird. We lie about that of course.
After all, if we want to be "new stars" we don't want anybody
to know how old we are. It's confusing to first sign up for
a "member account" and then be required to sign up again as an
"artist account." The contact info isn't repeated between
member and artist forms. We fill it out all over again.
We upload our graphic image (sized to the required 200 by 200
pixels) and receive this puzzling alert:
File doormouse%20200x200.jpg posted successfully. Reposting to URL
'http://real1.jamtv.com/scripts/repostimage.asp' failed.
Does that mean the image is there but, somehow, not there? We
go back to the Doormouse area to look. It's not there.
We attempt to upload our song. We fill out track name, running
time, creation date and then press "Create Track." We are sent
to a page that says: "Track created successfully." We haven't
even uploaded the damn song yet! Where the hell do you actually
upload the music? Scrolling down this window we find, buried
in a list of fine print, the words: "Upload new song." Eureka!
We follow directions and upload the song. Again, it would be
swell to know how long the upload is taking. When we all have
broadband access, this won't be an issue. Our three-plus minute
song will upload in four seconds. But for now, it's about
forty minutes. We finally receive another puzzling alert:
File DiamondMine.mp3 posted successfully. Reposting to URL
'http://real1.jamtv.com/scripts/repostrecording.asp' failed.
These conflicting messages without further explanation are
maddening. Is it there or not? We go back to the Doormouse
area to check. The audio file is not there. This is very
confusing. In the so-called "Artist Area" (where we're supposed
to make edits, changes, upload material and preview) there are
two locations to upload either graphic and music files. All
four links give the same error message. Is anybody there? If
the files were transferred successfully, as the dialog box
states, why the failure message? And where are the files?
Perhaps the new music editors at Rolling Stone simplify their
job by preventing people from uploading music in the first
place. After several hours of trying different methods we give
up. This site is not recommended.
Just as we went to press we received this polite email from an
associate editor at <rollingstone.com>:
"We thought we had that error fixed on Monday...feel free to
email me your image(s) and I'll be glad to upload them for you.
Sorry about the frustration."
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ease of use
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frustrating
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design
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Tina Brown takes over at Seventeen magazine
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tech support
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helpful
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expected consumer experience
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voicemail hell
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overall
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needs streamlining
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Placing our song on the "Ultimate Band List" is long, involved
and very frustrating. We wonder who designs these interfaces
and whether or not they actually use them. Again the audio
uploads are painfully slow and we're just hanging out on the
line, not knowing how long it's going to leave us here.
We finally get the song file uploaded but the site shuts the
door in our face. After attempting to upload the bio and image
file we receive this helpful little prompt:
An error occurred on the server when processing the URL.
Please contact the system administrator.
Upon emailing a request for help we receive this reply:
"Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing a problem with
the Bio upload field and Bio Image upload field. Our programmers
are working hard to fix this bug and we are making progress
each and every day."
Each and every day. Hopefully by next year it might work. So
there it sits. The songfile sounds fine but without graphics
or bio info it's just another name on a list. Maybe it will
sit there for all eternity, or as long as UBL's server
infrastructure exists. And, almost immediately the site spams
us with a retail/vacation offer email. The big question is:
what business, exactly, is ubl.com in? You'll need to bring
extra patience pillows to this site. There's a huge amount of
information and ubl.com remains a popular Web destination.
The FezGuys say: check it out, but don't waste too much time
on it.
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ease of use
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confusing
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design
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candy raver
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tech support
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optimistic but ineffectual
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expected consumer experience
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sitting in a gridlock
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overall
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ubl.com has a long way to go
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The design of riffage.com is thouroughly messed up. It looks
like it's optimized for a mutant Atari-based browser. To upload
a song we must click on "musicians only", feeling vaguely
manipulated (as if it's supposed to make us feel special in
some way).
Our attempts to upload "Diamond Mine" and our graphic image
are continuously rebuffed. A dialog box says "a song by that
name already exists." When we search riffage.com for "Diamond
Mine" we come up empty-handed. It's odd that a site should
limit an artist's right to use a song title. We notice yet
another helpful little message stating that:
"Some people have reported trouble saving to the bio page."
The message goes on to recommend continued reposting until the
site accepts your file. Again, very time-consuming. We keep
trying. We're the FezGuys, after all. After fending us off
again and again we're ready to throw in the towel. Suddenly
it appears that we may be well on our way, after all. Apparently,
the "submit" page was patiently waiting for us to electronically
sign a "terms of service agreement." We finally get a message
promising "approval and posting in 72 hours."
After several days, we receive this email: "it appears that
("Diamond Mine") did not upload correctly so we have no file
for it. Unfortunately, we had to reject your song. If you
could please upload the song again we could then approve it."
We try again. Again we receive the 72 hour wait message.
We're still waiting.
The FezGuys say: these lovelies need to go back to the drawing
board.
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ease of use
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not easy
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design
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late seventies metalhead
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tech support
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present and accounted for
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expected consumer experience
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unemployment waiting room
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overall
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needs more duct tape
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The FezGuys recommend you have a 200x200 pixel image prepared.
Also: have your bio, lyric sheet, and credits ready for cutting
and pasting. You'll appreciate not having to type the same
200-word biography into each site. Allow roughly 10-15 minutes
to fill out forms, and an additional 20 and 40 minutes per song
upload (56k modem dialup), depending on traffic, weather and
the mood of the servers at your ISP. This entire exercise can
be viewed as time-consuming, frustrating and possibly pointless.
Of course, if you have the time, there's nothing but time to
lose and, who knows, you might get noticed. When you're done
go to , a portal site that reviews music online.
Go to the "submit music" link.
It's likely that a musician's chances of getting noticed by
popular culture using the World Wide Web are about as hopeful
as getting "signed" by a major label. Not quitters though,
your FezGuys, oh no. Where the good stuff exists we'll find
it and bring it to you.
The FezGuys never say "whatever." We care a lot!
