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[JimH]

We began offering the new Performer music store about a month ago.  Thanks for trying it.

For the first month, we've operated in "stealth" mode, just quietly shaking it down to make sure everything works.  We're grateful for your help in finding the problems.

We think it's ready for wider distribution now, and a little publicity, but I'd like to know what you think.  Is it ready?  Any advice on little things we can fix?

Best regards,

Jim Hillegass
CEO, JRiver

[KingSparta]

I like it, but at times I can't find a song and need to look it up on Rhapsody, and I hate Rhapsody.

[)p(]

pro:
-I like how stable it is. I have not had any dropouts.
-The search works really well.
-Browsing is ok for popular artists. (Classical uhm... )
So the basics are already in place and working ok

cons:
-The sound quality is ok for 128kbs, but I would really love to see lets say that to be doubled in the future to 256kbs. I see the subscription service as an extension of my library not just to discover new stuff. So sound quality is very very important to me.
-I really don't like that the service is not integrated in mc. I now have to use two players as the limitations of the pmc app force me to use both.
-Similar artists and genre specific playlists are not yet that well covered.


peter

[jkrzok]

Now that the log in thing seems fixed, I'm happy. But there are a few things that could use some improvement. I'm looking to see pmc become more browsable. There's not enough on the start page to help you find new music. Right now I sit with a music magazine on my lap and browse through that.

I'm going to add my voice to the sure to be chorus asking for pmc integration in MC. Failing that, I'd like to see Last fm support and tabs in pmc. With these I'd be more likely to use it as my media player. As it is now I just use it to get files.

[Charlemagne 8]

I love it.
I cancelled Rhapsody months ago and this is a better alternative so I'm sticking with it as long as I'm still employed.
I share the integration wish but for now it's not a problem.

Minor inconveniences:
I can't find my account status

Browsing is somewhat difficult -- you pretty much have to know what you're looking for. I've found ways around that but it's not obvious.
(Browsing "new" stuff was a favorite pass time on Rhapsody.)

CVIII

[JimH]

Thanks for the feedback.  Here are a few more that I received by e-mail:

Some comments:
o Browsing should be in view schemes, not drop down boxes.
o Similar artists as playlists (or something), the radio function is "too slow" for this purpose.
o Missing artists. I understand it's a rights issue...
o Integration with MC13.

I'm one of the people who has been using Performer MC and there are some features I really like. For example, after you search for an artist you can jump right to the YouTube video or Wikipedia entry from the search page. However, I did get inconsistent results with YouTube. About half the time I clicked on a video I would get a message that said something about installing components and the video would never play. Other times it worked flawlessly. In addition, there were some search anomalies but this may have been Medianet's issue. All in all I think you are off to a great start but I must reserve final judgement until my teenage daughter weighs in.

Love it. One suggestion: a list of "Just added" updated daily like on Rhapsody.

Otherwise, PMC out performs Rhapsody in every catagory -- speed, reliability, etc.

Great job.

I love performer.  It had a few warts at first (login troubles mostly), but
the latest version does great.  I am now running it on my Asus netbook, and
It is great!

I like the product and greater integration with Media Center. But I decided to close my account because I had to choose either continuing with Rhapsody or switching, and the biggest reason for me to stick with Rhapsody is the greater download/streaming quality of Rhapsody. For me there's a mismatch between offering 320K purchases but only 128K streaming. I mostly stream from Rhapsody and thus that quality really matters to me; when I buy I buy 256K mp3s from Amazon.com most of the time. For me to make Performer my media center I need high bitrate streaming along with the high bitrate downloads.  (And perhaps even more I'd like a Performer plug-in to Media Center to be able to integrate Performer into my highly customized Media Center database rather than integrate my media collection into Performer's less-capable media databasing features.

[rpalmer68]

I know the MC13 plugin has already been mentioned .....

For me I'd LOVE to (and would) use this service, but my htpc runs MC13 in theater view so until we can use the subscription service within MC13/theater view it's not going to get enough use by the family to justify the cost.

Now if I could browse/search the performer database via Netremote/MC13 as well then we're on a REAL winner for me!

Richard

[CadErik]

We think it's ready for wider distribution now, and a little publicity, but I'd like to know what you think.  Is it ready?  Any advice on little things we can fix?

- International subscriptions: I believe there is a great market... In Canada there is ONLY Napster which is still in version 3 with the very old stinky player. I know I could "move" to Texas and subscribe but I bet the legal agreements won't allow us to access 4 million tracks (Napster has way more tracks in catalog int the states than Canada), so before I move thousand of tracks from Napster to Performer, I'd like to be sure about the future of international subscriptions. Most US website do filter by IP to restrict the content...

- Feature to generate a list of artists albums from an existing library and then download them in batch with performer: there are many competitors, and many your potential customers will already be customers with one existing service and as soon as they cancel their service, many of their DRMed tracks will stop working. This is why a feature to move an existing library to performer is very important IMO.

Erik.

[pank2002]

I need a plugin for vanilla MC before I can test it more thoroughly. This can be experimental.
Also, the issue on international subscriptions needs to be solved...

[tmarnik]

I'm sure you're sick of hearing it but I have to say it anyway - integration with MC 13 would be HUGE!

Failing that, it would at least be nice to be able to add subscription artists/albums/tracks to my library without having to download them.  What I really want is a way to augment my existing collection with stuff I don't have.  Ideally, I would be able to select an artist/album/track, right-click, and say Add to Library.

I also agree with previous comments that it would be nice to improve the browsability to discover new music.  When I start up, I find myself scratching my head trying to think about what I should play.  And there is no easy way that I can find to get a variety of music started quickly.  The Artist Radio feature is nice, but the artists are too similar.  I would prefer to be able to specify any number of artists, or any number of genres, and start playing music based on those selections.

This might be getting crazy, but taking the above one step further, it would really be cool if it would scrobble my library like MC with the last.fm plug-in and then play similar artists, and tracks I don't have from the artists that are in my library.

I have also always wanted to be able to create Smartlists based on percentages.  So I could set it up to play 50% Rock, 25% Pop, 25% Alternative for instance.

In general, I think it's a great product.  Thanks for listening.

[gottwavo]

I like Performer better than Rhapsody and it is better in performance. I never could use Rhapsody to listen to music. It always hung up after five or six tracks. Rhapsody is slow in searching, display, download. It seems they have more titles ...

A few things I would like to see improverd over time.
- Have a link to download or buy the complete album with one click
- Higher bit rate than 128 for download
- A (of course more expensive) subscription option to download mp3 instead of wma, instead of paying for each file
- better cover art quality, at least 500x500 px for everything
- Ability to see the cover art in full quality
- Something that compares the files I want to download with my libary if it's not already there to prevent double downloading. Musicmatch could do this.
- Have less "30 seconds files" for the CDs
- Integration into Media Center
- Have a larger window for searching with some advanced options (like search for artist, title, track, keyword)
- some things dont work as expected. Like: Can not change the display, Can not close th program sometimes

A good start ...