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Site has become unusable

I’m a 20+ year user of this site. Your desire to induce people to sign up for memberships is killing what was once the best musical resource on the internet. Now, it’s literally unusable, with ads covering content. It’s sad. I’ve loved Steve Erlewine’s work. I’m sure this doesn’t make him happy. 

5 replies

VA

Hello , I can not obtain information in web site in my phone. Apearse error 400.

Please , help me to solve ir

 Thank you 

Hi Victor.

In the Chrome app

  1. On your Android phone, open the Chrome app Chrome.
  2. At the top right, tap More More.
  3. Tap History and then Clear browsing data.
  4. At the top, choose a time range. To delete everything, select All time.
  5. Next to "Cookies and site data" and "Cached images and files," check the boxes.
  6. Tap Clear data.
CT

Hi Zac and all:

I am a paying member and I've almost completely stopped using allmusic on my phone because it's not usable on that platform. On my desktop or laptop computers it's perfectly fine and I access it at least once per day and often much more often. But much less often on my phone. I get far too many ads to make the phone version usable. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the new situation makes the app *unstable* on my iphone because I get pop-ups and fake virus warnings and other unclean BS I don't see anywhere else. It's a pity.

I was going to blame it on me using the oldest iphone out there (7) but I think I'm up-to-IOS-date on it, and I see other remarks here about what I think are the same issue... gosh they can't All be on iphone 7s, can they?

Hi Cole,

If you are a paying subscriber you should not be getting ads on your phone.

Can you verify that you are logged in on your phone?

Can you tell us what this page says when you are on your iPhone?
https://www.allmusic.com/user/paid-subscription

DN

The strange thing about Zac's comment below Cole's is that while it is reasonable for ads to be present for non-paying subscribers, in no case should those ads make the site unusable. All Music keeps dodging the usability question.

F

I use RYM (rate your music) at this point and haven’t looked back. Bolted when the ads made the site unusable in the past. Allmusic has great music coverage of random niche’s of music and is a good alternative encyclopedia of music for other sources but I got fed up with its unreliability. Allmusic has better paid professional curators and reviewers/recommendations algorithms, but RYM has a better user interface and user base. 

@David Nelson

We're also working with our ad providers now to try to identify which ads may be causing those frankly shitty fake virus warnings and :"Congratulations! You Won" ripoff messages.

I hate them even more than you do. They make my job brutal and they are nearly impossible to track down.

Because of the economics of today, we need to work with multiple advertising partners who have hundreds (if not thousands) of ad services working under them. One bad actor can mess up the whole ecosystem and there isn't enough manpower to personally test and vet each ad coming through the ecosystem.

We're trying to re-create the issue and forwarding our troubleshooting findings on to our ad providers.

DN

@Zac

I appreciate everything you wrote. The same problems have been around for a very long time. Is there also some work being done to make sure that the popups etc. do not cover content on mobiles?

@David Nelson

If you are referring to the rectangular ads in the lower right corner on mobile that play a video ad over the content, those are functioning as expected.

Those kinds of ads provide a higher level of revenue that allows us to keep the site running. This page from a few years ago has an obnoxious level of detail about the current state of the digital advertising industry. https://allmedianetwork.helprace.com/i8-support-allmusic-and-go-ad-free

Again, as a user of the site, I would love to limit the number (and types) of ads on the site but at this time it is simply not possible.

DF

Totally agree.  AllMusic has been my go to site for all music information since it's inception and I would gladly pay a few dollars a year to keep it running without so many ads.  Like Wikipedia.  They have such a good thing and now it's just drifting away.

Good news David. We do have a subscription version where users can support AllMusic and get a faster ad-free experience. https://www.allmusic.com/subscribe

AO

I agree…. this has been getting worse and worse even though Allmusic said it was going to fixnit a year ago.  You are on the precipice of a major drop off in usage…. please don’t f-up this amazing encyclopedia of information to make a cheap buck on low budget advertising.  

Hi Adam,

We've needed to move to a more aggressive ad model for many reasons. Detailed here if you're interested: https://allmedianetwork.helprace.com/i8-support-allmusic-and-go-ad-free

 
We also have a subscription version where users can support AllMusic and get a faster ad-free experience. https://www.allmusic.com/subscribe

This is an error from our ad provider. They are publishing the wrong sized ads in these locations.

We are working with them to resolve this and ensure this does not happen again.

Thanks for your longtime support.