UPDATE: Well it appears Rovi has read this post based on this sites logs… I went for a visit to see if they have changed their ways, so to speak..Now they have merged Tim Story the director with Tim Story the composer. Real Nice Rovi! The Dwight Ashley & Tim Story things are a real mess.. For example they have an Ashley|Story listing for Standing & Falling under Ashley + Story. And have put it under the genre of Jazz. The 3 Ashley|Story releases are not under Tim Story and on it goes. IMHO this site is a :FAIL: and a classical example of the error feed back loop on the internet.
UPDATE: I just got an email from Rovi, who now owns All Music, All Movie and All Game .com. Rovi has repackage it’s error-base, with a new skin. Unbelievable! It is the same error-ridden heap described below. I am puzzled why Rovi VP of marketing, Dave Jordan thinks we will fall for this. Are you kidding me? Take a look for yourself, allrovi.com This is just really sad. Enough said!
Allmusic.com: A Failed Resource!
Allmusic.com, now owned by the Rovi Corporation, was once the premier go-to site and source for information about artist biographies, releases and track information, and just about anything you could think to look for…
Sadly, that was a long time ago.
These days, if you are not a household name you will be fortunate to have said name spelled correctly, let alone have accurate information posted about you or your work. If Allmusic spells the artist’s name wrong when making a database entry, guess what? You may not find it — and if there is already an entry for the artist that happens to be spelled correctly, there will be a new entry created that is not connected in any way to the artist’s existing information.
Here is an example (a Nepenthe Music example, of course). Go to allmusic.com, and type in Hans-Joachim Rodelius. You will find the Nepenthe Music release Offene Turen. Note the misspelling in Ach’s name (the first “e” is missing). Now, type in Hans-Joachim Roedelius — you will find seven more of his releases. Now, type in only his last name, Roedelius. You will find more releases still, all unconnected to the other two versions listings that include his first name.
I have to say this is rather lame for obvious reasons. But just in case you missed it, we now have THREE entries for the same guy. What is not so obvious is that they lease out their database and spread all sorts of errors all over the Internet. In Ach’s case, you might miss some of his extensive discography, or mistakenly believe his name is is spelled Hans-Joachim Rodelius… and repeat those errors in your own reviews, blog posts, liner notes, etc.
Here is another Nepenthe-related error. Did you know Tim Story was influenced by Keith Jarrett? No? Well, you’re in good company — because Tim Story did not know he was influenced by Mr. Jarrett either — until he read that bit of info at allmusic.com.
Those are just two examples of NUMEROUS errors concerning artists on just this ONE small record label. Multiply it by all the artists in release, and the scale of errors is rather massive. This is just one case example and of course Nepenthe is not the only one. I suggest you look up an artist whose work you know well sometime, and you’ll see what I mean … it is truly “over the the top.”
I have repeatedly tried to contact Allmusic for the the last 12 years to correct these and other problems. Got lucky once and they fixed the error. Another time I was told to send another disc…(yes they really did tell me that). I did what they asked, and the error got worse. Mainly they never reply and I, out of habit, send the same email to them every two months or so.
The total errors at allmusic.com could fill, well, an entire database. A database we could call allmusic.com. Seriously, this is a problem — the more their services are used, the more the Internet becomes corrupt with their bad data.
Simple solution: STOP USING THEM! Maybe then they will fix the problem. Maybe they won’t. But it WILL reduce the ongoing echo-chamber of errors created year after year after year … you get the idea.
If you need LEGITIMATE information about recording artists, there are other places out there that actually care about the integrity of their information. Try soundunwound.com or the commercial one called Muze.
Okay — that is the end of this rant.
Thanks for reading – Next Time!
D. Ashley
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
