All Music

I am borderline obsessed with finding new music that interests me. When I was little I would literally scan all of the titles at my local music store to see if there was something new. Later I turned to Amazon and their data-mined recommendations, which at times were surprisingly compelling. Then one of my co-workers showed me the All Music Guide. I immediately fell in love with it and spent the rest of the day exploring some of the more obscure connections to my favorite bands.

And that was the beauty of it. I could make these connections, and learn about them. AMG had something to say about almost anything I could throw at it. I started to evangelize. It was an internet resource second in importance only to Google and my .Mac account. And then the unthinkable happened.

They redesigned the site.

Rather, they took a usable resource and did everything they could, using Flash and JavaScript, to screw it all up. Actions that required three clicks now take six. Information is obscured. Load times are in the toilet. Its one of the most abhorrent steps backward that I have seen on the Internet.

Thankfully, someone has taken action. Adrian Holovaty has devised a plugin for Firefox that helps to undo AMG's mischief. I may even have to start using Firefox for a while to see if it works as advertised.

Thank you to Adrian and to Waxy for the link!