Amie Street Also Takes Away Features... But At Least Is Honest And Upfront About How They Hate Having To

from the take-a-lesson,-emusic dept

We've covered how eMusic (which had a fantastic reputation for a while) totally failed in communicating changes to its service, which involved increasing prices and taking away many valued features. The company tried to bury that news along with the fact that Sony Music would now be included, not recognizing that many of its users didn't care, and were pissed off at the way eMusic presented this as a good thing. At least some others may be learning. Ragaboo alerts us that online music site Amie Street is also removing some features (such as the ability to redownload tracks -- just like eMusic has done), but did so by admitting that it sucked and apologizing, but basically saying its hands were tied. They also gave advance warning of the changes. While Ragaboo isn't thrilled about he, notes that he appreciated the honesty from the company. Here's the email that he received:

"In several weeks we're going to be making a change to how Amie Street handles downloads, and we want to be certain you are fully informed in advance about this change. In brief, starting on August 5th we'll only be able to offer a single download of your purchased music unless you've encountered a technical problem.

Although most people only download their music one time, we've noticed that you have done so more than once on occasion. We realize that the ability to re-download files has been important to you, so it's understandable that you might be disappointed to see this no longer available. Unfortunately a number of factors beyond our control, including legal and royalty concerns, have made this impossible going forward.

We're very happy to say, however, that you can continue to stream all of the music you've purchased on Amie Street. That means wherever you have access to the internet, you also have immediate and unrestricted access to stream the entirety of your Amie Street music collection from your Library.

To make sure that downloading music continues to be as easy as possible, we'll be keeping a close eye on the user experience and making updates to the site as needed. The primary voice that directs any such changes will be yours, so if you have suggestions based on your experiences using the site, we'd love to hear from you. Tell us exactly what you like and don't like, and we can make Amie Street even better!

Peace,

The Amie Street Team""

Of course, the fact that both Amie Street and eMusic have removed the ability to redownload tracks over royalty issues makes you wonder what exactly is the issue here. Are record labels really demanding a royalty payment every time people redownload a song?

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Blizzard The Latest To Kill Features, Call It An Upgrade

from the yeah,-that-doesn't-work dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in variations on the news that Blizzard has killed off LAN support for StarCraft II. The Buzz Saw points out that Blizzard seems to be taking the same old tactic of claiming that this removal of a feature is for the benefit of users, noting that this is "the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience." However, the company also does admit that it was a "difficult decision" and that a larger part of the reason may have been to "safeguard against piracy."

Either way, this seems like a move that's designed to backfire badly. It's all about taking away value, rather than adding value (or a reason to buy). LAN parties using StarCraft were a huge part of the appeal of the game -- and even though there were many pirated versions out there, it's part of what drove more people to buy the legitimate version. One thing that we've seen over and over again is that any business that focuses on "safeguarding against piracy" isn't focusing enough on providing unique value to customers. It's amazing that it still needs to be explained in this day and age, but you succeed in business by providing more positive value to customers, not in taking it away just because it doesn't fit with your business model.

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Even More eMusic Features Disabled?

from the anti-fan-is-not-a-good-thing dept

This is really unfortunate. eMusic used to be a great example of how treating customers right and with respect and trust could win over more customers -- but in the last month or so, it seems like the company is throwing all that out the window and pissing off customers left and right. Beyond the big price increase at the same time as signing its first major record label (bad PR to announce both together), the company has censored critics and removed the feature that let you redownload songs you'd purchased before, at your convenience. However, now we're hearing that there were a bunch of other features that were removed as well. An anonymous reader notes:

"July 1 was the first day in the Sony era over at eMusic. Despite published interviews with eMusic executives, FAQs on the eMusic web site and messages from eMusic employees on the eMusic forums attempting to clarify the new pricing structure, there were quite a few surprises. Some of the changes I've noticed (or read about in the forums) include:

• Certain tracks can only be downloaded with "paid" credits, not the free credits eMusic hands out for trial memberships.
• Individual track downloads disabled for tracks longer than 10 minutes - you must download the entire album
• Certain (popular) sub-10-minute tracks disabled for individual download
• No downloading individual discs in multi-disc sets
• Most new albums use 12-credit album pricing (very few reports of 6 or 9 credit album pricing)
• Many (a significant portion in the classical section at least) albums with fewer than 12 tracks cost 12 credits
• Many albums previously available on eMusic have been re-priced (in some cases, tracks available for 1 credit on June 30 now require 12 credits)

IMO, the fact that eMusic did such a poor job communicating these important changes suggests that they deliberately withheld (or downplayed) this information, possibly to keep from fueling the outrage generated from last month's Sony/pricing announcement."

This seems like an increasing disaster. Hopefully some of these changes are mistakes, rather than permanent. But the way this whole situation has been handled is going to make a terrific case study in how not to do PR. eMusic has turned from a company that customers really loved into one that many seem to hate... and it's happened in an incredibly short time frame. That's really unfortunate.

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If You're Taking Away Features From Users, Don't Tell Them It's For Their Own Benefit

from the that's-called-lying dept

Sometimes, I really wonder if companies think their users are stupid. There are times when they treat them that way. My favorite examples are when companies are taking away features or raising prices, and claiming (somehow) that it's for the benefit of those customers/users. For example, when eMusic raised prices and disabled features it put up a blog post trying to spin it as a positive, claiming "more of the good stuff!" Yes, at a higher price, with fewer features, but why let that get in the way of claiming good news?

The latest example is online music streaming site imeem. The company has struggled of late under absolutely draconian terms forced on it by the record labels. Rumors held that the company came close to going out of business until Warner Music agreed to renegotiate its suffocating deal. Still, there are many who question how the company can survive without a drastic change in business models. But, taking away features from customers with little warning and pretending it's a good thing isn't exactly the best way to go about things. Clay Shirky points us to the news that imeem is removing features for users to upload videos or pictures without even offering a "download to save" option. But, even worse, the blog post announcing the change tries to play this up as good news again, saying that it's all about "simplifying imeem" as part of an effort to enhance the site.

Sure, simplifying a site can be a good thing -- but unilaterally removing features that people use, with little warning, isn't really simplifying. You can simplify without removing features. If you have to remove features, for whatever reason, why not at least admit the truth: it's not for consumer's benefit, but for some other reason, and you realize it sucks for many users.

In other words, sound human, rather acting like your users are morons. If you want to see a company that's actually done a good job of this, look at Hulu. While we think it's ridiculous that the company caved in to content providers and tried (and failed) to block a specific browser (Boxee) from viewing its content, at least Hulu's CEO was upfront and honest about the fact that it sucked:

The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time. We embrace this activity in ways that respect content owners' -- and even the entire industry's -- challenges to create great content that users love. Yes, it's a complex matter. A tough mission, and a never-ending one, but one we are passionately committed to.

For those Boxee users reading this post, we understand and appreciate that you're likely to tell us that we're nuts. Please know that we do share the same interests and won't stop innovating in support of the bigger mission.

eMusic, imeem and others would be wise to take note. Taking features away and pretending your customers are stupid enough to believe it's for their benefit isn't likely to fly.

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One More Reminder That You Don't Own The Books On Your Kindle

from the ownership:-how-20th-century-of-you... dept

Lots of people have pointed out that one of the massive downsides of an eBook device like the Kindle is that you don't actually own the books you bought. Unlike a real book, you can't share it with a friend, resell it or donate it to the local library. And, in some cases, you can lose access to books you thought you "owned," based on the whims of employees at Amazon deciding you somehow abused their system. One of the big controversies over the Kindle was the TTS feature, which the Authors Guild claimed (without a shred of legal evidence) violated its rights. The Authors Guild had no claim here. It doesn't violate performance rights, because reading aloud isn't a performance. It doesn't violate copyright, because there's no fixed copy made -- and if it did violate copyright, so would reading a book aloud. Yet, for no clear reason, Amazon caved in and agreed to take away this feature.

Mark alerts us to the news that, as of May 13th, Amazon began remotely disabling the feature for certain eBooks, including many popular titles. In other words, Amazon remotely took away a feature that you used to have. That doesn't happen with a physical book. Random House doesn't get to say "oh, wait, we're now taking away the ability to dog ear pages." I love the concept of eBooks, but it's quite troubling that you don't actually get ownership of the eBooks you're buying -- and that Amazon can, at its own discretion, suddenly take away valuable features from books you had already purchased.

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YouTube Taking Feature Advice From XKCD

from the ok,-that's-just-awesome dept

While any open online forum has its share of trolls and poorly written comments, YouTube is infamous for having a quality level below pretty much everywhere else. The (absolutely worth reading) online comic strip, xkcd ran a strip recently joking about one possible "cure" for this: having a virus written that would read a YouTuber's comment outloud before requesting final approval to post it. The idea was that any sane person would recognize how idiotic their comments sounded:

Apparently, the folks at YouTube/Google thought it was such a good idea that they've actually created just such a button. Of course, those who need to use it most probably won't do so. At least with the xkcd version, the virus forced people to listen to their comments.

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How Does Taking Away A Popular Feature 'Improve Netflix'?

from the please-explain dept

I am not currently a Netflix customer, but one of the features of the service that I thought was quite useful (and I know plenty of people who use it actively) was the "profiles" feature that let a single family/household set up separate queues of movies they wanted. So, for example, a husband, wife and kids could each get their own list of movies with separate logins, rather than having to manage a single queue. This made the service a lot more useful for a household. And yet... Netflix is eliminating the feature, and doing so with the bizarre Orwellian explanation:

Why? While it may be disappointing to see this feature go away, this change will help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

Can someone explain how eliminating a feature that many people use improves the Netflix website? You see, Netflix, if you're going to remove a feature and say that the website is better because of it, it would actually help if you explained how or why it's better (i.e., you're replacing that feature with something better). To simply say that removing a well-liked feature makes the website better without any further explanation, you're basically calling your customers stupid because you think they'll believe what's clearly bogus.

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