Review of Magnatune Store

[Nikolaj Hald Nielsen]

Its late and I just got in, so my in depth reply will have to wait
untill tomorrow. Just want to say however that I agree with many of
the points you raise. Some of them have already been discussed on irc,
such as adding more information (such as the secure connection shield
from konq. ) to the purchase dialog.

I think I can stay awake long enough to leave quick remark about your
point no. 3

> (3) Amarok doesn't know about albums I have already purchased.  It would be
> nice if Amarok kept track of albums that I have purchased, that the buy
> button could become a re-download button, or maybe just offer to re-download
> if I attempt to buy it again.

Actually the version we released does store all the info needed to
redownload any album purchased (in the
.kde/share/apps/amarok/magnatune.com) folder. I did not have time to
finish the re-donwload manager before string freeze, but that is what
I am currently working on. This info could also be used to solve your
no. 1 point about aborted downloads. I had not thougt of having
anything you purchase checked agains previous purchases, but that
might be a nice (and easilly imnplemeted) feature.


- Nikolaj


On 11/4/06, Greg Meyer <greg at gkmweb.com> wrote:
> After using the Magnatune store and talking to a few people in irc, I thought
> it might make some sense to summarize the observations I have made, as well
> as their comments and suggestions, for further discussion.  I don't want to
> enter these all in bugzilla if others don't think them worthwile, so comments
> are welcome.
>
> (1) If a download is stopped for some reason, there is no way to restart it
> within Amarok.  Perhaps Amarok crashed or you needed to stop for some other
> reason. To continue the download, you have to go to the link provided in the
> confirmation e-mail with a web browser.  It would be nice to just resume from
> within Amarok.
>
> (2) Someone in the channel also reported that Amarok crashed when the stop
> button was pressed next to the status meter.  I could not reproduce this and
> he was a Gentoo user with pretty aggressive optimizations, which may be the
> problem, but if this can be reproduced by anybody else, I'll file a bug.
>
> (3) Amarok doesn't know about albums I have already purchased.  It would be
> nice if Amarok kept track of albums that I have purchased, that the buy
> button could become a re-download button, or maybe just offer to re-download
> if I attempt to buy it again.
>
> (4) If show info is disabled in the Magnatune collection browser, this does
> not stick when Amarok is re-started.
>
> (5) I think we need to be able to access and display the artist information
> available from the Magnatune website while previewing.  This obviously is
> synonymous with the artist tab in the context browser where data is retrieved
> from wikipedia when local music is played.  It would be nice, but I'm not
> sure how feasible, for artist info in the context browser to come from
> Magnatune instead of wikipedia if the local track was purchased from
> Magnatune, since many of the Magnatune artists don't have wikipedia pages.
> Maybe the better solution is for magnatune to just make sure each artist in
> the stable gets a wikipedia page.
>
> (6) It is my opinion that more information about how the transaction will be
> completed, i.e secure connection, you will receive an e-mail with
> instructions, etc. before the program asks for credit card information.
> Also, to make the transaction more secure, Magnatune should consider
> requiring the 3 digit security code on the back of most cards (I am pretty
> certain all Mastercard and VISA have this now).  In addition to making the
> transaction more secure from a customer service point of view, I believe the
> banks offer lower processing rates when this code is used because there are
> fewer fraudulent transactions, and therefore less cost for them.  This might
> make it less scary for people buying for the first time.
>
> (7) Album art cannot be easily retrieved.  I purchased the album Egg by a band
> called Zilla.  To try and re-create the crash described in (2), I aborted the
> download within Amarok.  To finish downloading the album, I used the link
> provided in the confirmation e-mail and downloaded the flac zip file.  There
> was no album art included in the zip file.  So I don't know if that downloads
> automatically if the download is completed within Amarok.  If it does, great,
> but obviously the Amazon lookup does not work for these artists and if I want
> to have album art show in the context browser for purchased tracks, I must go
> to the magnatune site and download it manually.
>
> Anyway, I know some of these are nit-picky, and if you made it this far I
> salute you, but I think they would contribute some overall polish.
> --
> Greg
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