I like Magnatune a lot; the honest business model, the diversity of genres, and the occasionally interesting music.
It could use a couple of improvements (most of them minor) when it comes to how the site works and looks, though.
For example, the site’s all about selling music. How do you know what music to buy? Unless you’re a fan of randomness and serendipity, logic says you’ll want to see some sales/downloads charts and some reviews.
Charts and Stats
Magnatune offers plenty of stats of your pleasure (best-selling by genre this month, and more), but how you get to those pages? The only links I could find where on the bottom of the artists‘ and genres‘ pages. And with the artists’ page being quite long, your best to find it is via the genres’ page.
So, suggested improvement #1: more prominent placement of charts — why not on top of the artists/genres listing? And why not a direct link from the top of each page on the site, or from the left sidebar?
Customer Reviews
Charts are very good, but they’re not a proper, all-around indicator of the album’s identity. Sure the album’s probably good because it sells a lot, but why is it good? What’s its strong point? Do only a few tracks standout, or is it good as a whole? Is it good because of the great lyrics, the inspiring music, the captivating choruses, the unresistable beats, or you-name-it? (The information on each artist’s page doesn’t cut it, and it’s probably not meant for this either.)
If you’re looking for such information before getting an album, Magnatune offers you the chance to stream it in its entirety, which is undoubtedly a great option.
But it’s an option only for those with fast connections; and there’s lots of us living with slo-o-ow connections who still want to be a part of Magnatune. Listening in low-fi is a somewhat viable option, but you can’t count on it to draw conclusions on some aspects of the music (such as the quality of the production, the various layers, etc.).
Also, listening to a stream takes time (equal to the album’s duration ~40-60 minutes). And this is not time where music acts as a background activity; if you wish to draw conclusions on the music, you have to focus on it, making the listening session a foreground activity.
So while streaming rocks, it has a few weak points; keep that point, I’ll be back at it, in a second.
Another way to find out more information about the good albums, is by visiting the Magnatune Forums. Good luck discovering the threads talking about good picks; you’re on your own when it comes to finding them, and when you come to think of it, it’s just too much trouble for something that should be so simple.
Conclusion (and suggested improvement #2): let customers add their reviews on the albums’ pages, Amazon-style. This is a vast improvement over the searching-the-forums-for-good-picks method, and a nice compliment to the streaming (perfect for those who don’t want to spend 60 minutes to listen to the full stream).
Why do listeners think this is a recording worthy of my time? What’s so special about it? That’s the special insight customer reviews give, and that’s what’s missing from the picture in Magnatune.
And it’s information I can skim in a few minutes, closing the gap in the preview-buy window.
[Note: only let those who have paid (i.e. not licenced it) to review it; you value/judge something far more seriously when you've paid for it.]
Minor Rants
Mostly a personal wish, but I’m sure someone out there shares it too: the grey-text-on-white-background on the site’s pages (example) should go. #666666? What’s wrong with dear ol’ black (#000000)? A bit darker, but insanely more readable and makes me feel like I’m not sitting in front a bleached screen.
And while we’re at it. A quick look at the source code showed bad signs of HTML 4-itis (probably because John Buckman, Magnatune’s founder, isn’t primarily a designer?):
This is obviously trivial since the site’s about music, and the redundant markups in the code don’t add remarkably to the pages’ loading time, but still; such a hip idea deserves to be XHTML/CSS (and it’ll raise John’s geek quotient by at least 10 points).
In Closing
John is a smart guy and I’m sure he’s either working on some of my suggestions as we speak, or he has dismissed some of them for reasons I haven’t thought of yet (I’m not claiming these are false reasons; just that they haven’t crossed my mind yet).
For the slim chance he has missed some of my suggestions, I hope he considers them and makes Magnatune even better.
