22 Oct 2004 | Jamie said...

Matt, thanks for the mention!

Don't forget to download the presidential debates for FREE via iTunes before Election Day!

22 Oct 2004 | eric said...

It's like an mp3blog minus the good parts.

Firstly, instead of offering a free, direct download to a song/artist you can download, you have to sacrifice some change to iTunes. Dozens, if not hundreds of other mp3blogs offer free, direct downloads, so why should one opt for a lesser experience with AsianMack. Please don't mistake this as promoting illegal mp3 download as many of those blogs only offer songs that are hosted at the artists' sites and make sure everything they're sharing is legit (i.e. mysteryandmisery.com).

And in order for one to even try out these songs, you have to have iTunes? People who prefer Winamp, Foobar, or QCD would again be choosing the lesser experience (in their opinion) with iTunes if they wanted to hear the tracks.

Thirdly, because your tracks are DRM'ed by iTunes, passing on the suggestion to your friends becomes a hassle. You can't send a track to a friend. Your friend will have to fork some change over to Apple, just to hear it. And again, your friend must have iTunes to listen to it.

On a lesser note, the people who're running mp3blogs have no monetary motivation to put up sub-par tracks. They put up music because they want to share what they love, indie or mainstream. There's no dang commision because they turned you onto a song.

Sites like these can't really compete with other mp3blogs and hopefully are just a fad. Places like largeheartedboy.com and music.for-robots.com are filled with just as much diversity/quality, if not more. The accompanying entries are also just as good, if not better. The difference between AsianMack and other quality mp3blogs is they won't make you jump through hoops just to enjoy their sites and the music they suggest.

22 Oct 2004 | eric said...

Hey, thanks for sharing your opinion. First of all, the commission is very very small. The reason why I chose iTunes is because I like the store. I just wanted a method to point people to albums/tracks that I really enjoyed. I have no corporate agenda. Anyway, I'm not trying to compete with anything or anyone. Just share my personal view about music that is meaningful to me. Thanks for listening.

22 Oct 2004 | Jamie said...

Oops. It should say "Jamie said..." above. Sorry Eric.

22 Oct 2004 | the real slim eric said...

Heh, I figured that. My apologies if I sounded over-critical with that storm I typed up. I added that "lesser note" on the corporate agenda not because I suspected it from your site, but because I see it as a possibility eventually. I do enjoy a lot of what you have on there (i.e. sedaris, arcade fire, dcfc), but I'm just not much of an iTunes user.

22 Oct 2004 | Jamie said...

Sorry to chime in again, but I forgot to underscore that the site is not just about "hipster indie rock" as Matt mentioned above. I mention a really great David Sedaris audio book that you should definitely check out, the presidential debates, and hey...maybe I'll post something about Journey's Greatest Hits someday. Wheel in the Sky keeps on turning....

22 Oct 2004 | Jacob Arnold said...

I tried the affiliate program on my site but was disappointed to find the links don't work well with all browsers and platforms. Using Firefox on a Windows box without iTunes installed, for example, I get a blank page and the error message "itms is not a registered protocol." I hesitate to add links that don't work for the majority of surfers.