Arkivmusic

[Russ (not Martha)]

So what does everyone think of the refurbished Arkivmusic website?

Russ (not Martha)

[MiNe109]

On 3/13/21 10:39 AM, Russ (not Martha) wrote:
> So what does everyone think of the refurbished Arkivmusic website?

I worry about a website that suggests a tutorial video, but it looks
less cluttered and seems to load easily.

[Frank Berger]

On 3/13/2021 11:39 AM, Russ (not Martha) wrote:
> So what does everyone think of the refurbished Arkivmusic website?
>
> Russ (not Martha)
>

Like almost all web re-designs, it went live pre-maturely. When google something and try to connect to a arkiv "hit" you are redirected to their introductory new page. I let them know I thought that their implementation was less than acceptable.

Whether, once the bugs are worked out, there are any improvements, remains to be seen.

I've mentioned before, a phenomenon, nameless as far as I know, where new management over a function wants to make their mark, undertakes a redesign of the function, project, whatever it is, and makes it worse, or at best expends resources to no purpose.

[Frank Berger]

It's worse than I thought. It seems like recording dates have been eliminated from the listings, and not so important, artists are often listed multiple times. The Volodos transription album fro 1997 lists him as performer 9 times each work. Maybe they've been arranged as nonets.

[musicologist09]

disappointing too that one's past order history had to disappear --- something about the old data not being compatible with their new site

[Frank Berger]

On 3/14/2021 3:58 PM, musicologist09 wrote:
> disappointing too that one's past order history had to disappear --- something about the old data not being compatible with their new site
>

Web re-designers have been making these same blunders for years and years. I wonder if they had a single real customer try out the new site before they went live.

In my past life, I was often in charge of projects, functions, web apps and such. After several accidents of this type it became obvious to me that such things needed to be done as a team, the team consisting of the manager of the function, the programmer(s) and several representative customers. The functionality of the re-design had to be guided by the customers and they had to test it out before it went live. In the beginning it wasn't always easy to get customers to volunteer their time. I had to get senior management's buy in to the team approach to accomplish that. After a few years the idea of a re-design without customer input would have been unthinkable.

[Jerry]

Searching first by Conductors or Performers is listed alphabetically by last name, but then the
subsequent listing of Composers is alphabetized by first name.

Jerry

[Frank Berger]

Not to beat a dead horse, but chances are a customer actually using the new site would have notice and it would have been corrected before going into production.

[weary flake]

The new website keeps an annoying feature of the old web site:
the " ... " abbreviated list when there are several or more of
performers, conductors, etc, is not expandable, so there's no
way to see a simple list, but have to read through what could be
hundreds of tracks just to see a list of performers, one at a
time. *This* is something that could be changed, but hasn't.

It makes browsing harder by limiting the number of entries shown
in the catalog to 10 - 30. If I recall right the old website
allowed a customer to see 200 listings, easier to see an
entire small label's product, rather than forcing paging. I
used this many times at arkivmusic.com. Why diminish the
search by label or conductor, etc, feature?

There are less items per computer screen than before, also
making browsing harder. Broinc.com also reduced their items
per screen from 7-8 to 3-4 to 1-2, making it significantly
less efficient to browse, and if arkivmusic is following a
pattern to copy inefficient websites arkivmusic will redesign
again and reduce it to 1 item per computer screen.

Are there any items that still have recording dates or have
they been entirely removed?

[Frank Berger]

i've quoted Berger's law before: All web site re-designs are the worse.

I e-mailed them and strongly urged then to restore the old site, to fix the specific problems we've discovered so far, and not to go live with the new site again until it has been tested by actual customers over a period of a week or two. There is zero chance they will take my advice, I suppose. This is the sort of thing that can (and should) cost people their jobs. This not 1985 or 1990. Web design and Web re-design is not some new mystical art known only to a few.

[Frank Berger]

On 3/14/2021 3:58 PM, musicologist09 wrote:

> disappointing too that one's past order history had to disappear --- something about the old data not being compatible with their new site
>

This is basically a lie that web owners give as an excuse. What really happened was that they didn't specify carrying over the order history into the new site as a requirement, so the programmer didn't. It can not be impossible to export the order history in a format that can be input into the new site. I don't care what the format is or the software is. It's laziness or a failure to understand what matters to customers (like recording dates). They don't know what matter to customers because they can't be bothered to ask them (us).

[stephe...@yahoo.com]

On Saturday, March 13, 2021 at 10:39:09 AM UTC-6, Russ (not Martha) wrote:
> So what does everyone think of the refurbished Arkivmusic website?
>
> Russ (not Martha)

As a professional librarian, I use a lot of search tools (e.g., online library catalogs, Google, online periodical indices, etc.), and I'm addicted to using "advanced search" on these systems. On most of these other systems, the "advanced search" will allow the end user to combine terms (i.e., Boolean searching). ArkivMusic's search engine does not support this type of search. For example, I know that Toscanini recorded with Horowitz, but when I searched these terms together, ArkivMusic was unable to locate any recordings that satisfied this search.

I searched Leonard Bernstein and saw a lengthy list of composers. That makes sense, as Bernstein had a long career in the recording studio and the concert hall. If I know that there is a Bernstein collection with composers X,Y, and Z, I'd rather not have to wade through a lot of entries to find this particular compilation. Hopefully, ArkivMusic may add additional search options in the future.

Steve

[Al Eisner]

I'm not all that familiar with Arkiv, but Broinc tyically has 10 to 20
items per page. They are very degailed, so only a couple might fit
on a single "screen" (depending on your browser font size), but it's
very easy to scroll.
--
Al Eisner

[Sol L. Siegel]

The latest: It comes up blank, and the tab reads "Site Under Construction".

- Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA USA

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Frank Berger]

On 3/22/2021 9:06 PM, Sol L. Siegel wrote:
> The latest: It comes up blank, and the tab reads "Site Under Construction".
>
> - Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA USA
>

Yes. Links, for instance the results of a Google search, are not coming up as "site under construction." But you can still go to their home page. They screwed this think up royally. No one will acknowledge my comments.

[stephe...@yahoo.com]

On Saturday, March 13, 2021 at 10:39:09 AM UTC-6, Russ (not Martha) wrote:

> So what does everyone think of the refurbished Arkivmusic website?
>
> Russ (not Martha)

A few minutes ago, I used the drop down menu and selected "label." I typed in "Naxos," and my search retrieved zero results. I searched Naxos again using the "search all" option, and I received positive results. I repeated the same type of search using "Sony" instead. Again, the "label" search option yielded no results, but "search all" option was successful. WTH? Why include a search option that doesn't work?

Steve

[Frank Berger]

Why ask the question like that? You don't think it was done on purpose, do you? It is due to human error. I would guess the majority of the blame for the incompetent, even disastrous, roll-out belongs with management - for not properly specifying the desired results and not properly supervising the work as it progressed. Developers will make errors. It is unavoidable. But their work must be supervised and thoroughly tested (by actual customers, not just management) before it goes live. This project seems to have failed on all counts.

Years ago, we embarked on a major project to transition our statistical computing from the corporate mainframe to our own departmental RISC machine. The transition team consisted of customers (me and and a couple of other economists in our department), IBM staff, security experts, and IT people. I requested that we have weekly team meetings. Almost everyone thought that was unneccsarily frequent and a waste of time. And they were not shy about saying so. I insisted (I did allow some meetings to be canceled if it seemed appropriate). Because of these weekly meetings no aspect of the project ever got far off track. No irrevacable wrong decisions were made, no major re-dos happened. We were so well-prepared in terms of the hardware, software and training, that when we did our test migration over Thanksgiving weekend, on Monday morning I surprised everyone by declaring that the test migration was the final one. We never looked back.

This success (for which I won a $4,000 bonus) came after some not-so-successful projects during which I learned, the hard way, how to run a project like this. There are books and standards for this sort of thing now. You just have to look at them and pay attention.

[Sol L. Siegel]

Frank Berger <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:DdidncyhiOZBxMT9...@supernews.com:

It's back. And it still sucks large rancid eggs.

- Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA USA

[Sol L. Siegel]

"stephe...@yahoo.com" <stephe...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:50afc910-bf46-45f2...@googlegroups.com:

Same with composers. You need to type one in through the general search.

These people are acting like they have a death wish.

[Frank Berger]

On 3/23/2021 8:55 PM, Sol L. Siegel wrote:
> "stephe...@yahoo.com" <stephe...@yahoo.com> wrote in
> news:50afc910-bf46-45f2...@googlegroups.com:
>
>> On Saturday, March 13, 2021 at 10:39:09 AM UTC-6, Russ (not Martha)
>> wrote:
>>> So what does everyone think of the refurbished Arkivmusic website?
>>>
>>> Russ (not Martha)
>> A few minutes ago, I used the drop down menu and selected "label." I
>> typed in "Naxos," and my search retrieved zero results. I searched
>> Naxos again using the "search all" option, and I received positive
>> results. I repeated the same type of search using "Sony" instead.
>> Again, the "label" search option yielded no results, but "search all"
>> option was successful. WTH? Why include a search option that doesn't
>> work?
>>
>> Steve
>>
>
> Same with composers. You need to type one in through the general search.
>
> These people are acting like they have a death wish.
>
> - Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA USA
>

I've given them constructive criticism and received no reply. I've told them that I would not be visiting the site again until I hear (in RMCR) that it has been fixed. I have spent probably a couple of thousand dollars with them over the years, so you would think the should care. No response.

[Néstor Castiglione]

Agree completely.

The Arkiv redesign is cumbersome enough on desktop, but on mobile it's a bit of a nightmare. This is worse than the BROINC website redesign of a few years back. In both cases, I'll take a dated appearance (actually, I thought Arkiv at least looked just fine) if it means better functionality. But inn this case, it's almost as if the site was redesigned by somebody who doesn't know classical music and doesn't know what classical music buyers want.

[Sol L. Siegel]

=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Castiglione?= <castiglio...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The Arkiv redesign is cumbersome enough on desktop, but on mobile it's
> a bit of a nightmare. This is worse than the BROINC website redesign
> of a few years back. In both cases, I'll take a dated appearance
> (actually, I thought Arkiv at least looked just fine) if it means
> better functionality. But inn this case, it's almost as if the site
> was redesigned by somebody who doesn't know classical music and
> doesn't know what classical music buyers want.

Almost?

- Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA USA