CD-NOW taken over by Amazon?

Cafe Society
1

I made an order a week or so ago at CD-NOW, a music website I’ve been using for some time. When I made the order, it looked the same as it ever has, and my “want list” had all the items I had placed there over time. I ordered one of those items, “Sounds of the Satellites” by Laika (an excellent CD), as well as Telepopmusik’s “Genetic World.”

Having received both, I thought I’d check in and see if the Laika album had been taken off my want list. Imagine my surprise when I am redirected to an Amazon URL, and the design of the CD-NOW site has changed to look and behave just like Amazon! It appears that CD-NOW has been taken over by Amazon.com!

Don’t get me wrong, I like Amazon’s layout. But this happened without any warning, and in the transition my CD-NOW want list was erased, replaced by my Amazon wish list.

On this page, the new “alliance” is discussed, but it looks to me that CD-NOW is gone in all but name, and Amazon has taken over. Since CD-NOW often had music available that Amazon did not (particularly independent labels and imports), I can only hope that Amazon will at least keep that availability. CD-NOW was the best online music shopping service I knew of, versatile and reliable, and I hope that Amazon doesn’t completely lose their level of service.

They’re not off to a good start, with the way the dumped my CD-NOW want list out the window.

2

Yeah, I’m bummed. I noticed this just a day or two ago.

All I can say is that the one time I’ve used CD-NOW since it’s been Amazon, I wasn’t able to find either of the titles I was looking for. Possibly coincidence, but maybe not. I was 100% satisfied with CD-NOW, before. I’m also less of a fan of Amazon’s search results than I was of CD-NOW’s.

Ah well.

3

I noticed this just the other day. Goodbye to listening to samples of the whole album and coherent search result lists of your query.

4

I noticed this crap the other day to. The bad thing about amazon is you can’t listen to all the samples of the songs like you could on CDNow. God, I hate monopolies.

5

What really dismays me is that their huge database of band biographies and album reviews is apparently gone. It was a great free resource for music information, much like imdb is for movies. Sure, one can still google for the same details, but it was nice to have everything in one location.

6

That’s a good point, too… I always went to CD-Now to preview tracks on an album I was interested in… so much for that. sigh

Yeah, I’m going to miss the information side of it, as well. I learned about a number of really good bands that way.

sigh The more I learn about the Amazon takeover, the more it seems it’s going to suck.

I sent aan e-mail to Amazon complaining about my CD-Now wish list getting toasted. I wonder how they’ll respond… ?

7

What I want to know is, how does this affect the 6@6 poll? It completely firked up the links to discographies.

Bummer.

-Myron

8

Whatever isn’t carried by the CDNow preferred buyer’s club is toast. For example, most of mine. Fuckers. :mad:

The one consolation I do have is that I know they lost a lot of sales by doing this right before the holidays.

9

Apparently their email kill list was lost in the process as well. I had finally gotten CD-NOW to stop sending me fourteen emails a day and suddenly I get one announcing the brand new partnership.

If you want a good online music resource, head to:

(For the record I hate Amazon only slightly less than I hated CD-NOW. I won’t buy from either of them except as a last resort, especially when it comes to music.)

10

Where else would you buy?

11

My town still has stores in it.

12

Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff I want is too obscure to be found in the megastores, and I haven’t found any local, small music stores. So I’m stuck online.

13

Also, the band biographies and message boards CDNOW had were very interesting. It’s ashame amazon took over, because CDNow had even the most obscure bands.

14

I only used CDNow as a click over from All Music Guide, which I’m hoping stays intact – their info is wonderful.

15

Which means all of mine are gone. Dammit. This is about to turn into a Pit thread, I think. I’ll join you in a :mad:

16

I’ve had good luck with the samples on Cheap CD’s. I don’t know how well they do for truly obscure stuff though.

17

… and why the hell won’t the login accept ANY attempt by me to get in? It won’t accept my CDNow account ID/Password, and though I’ve entered the credit-card information and every other order detail I can think of to prompt it under the “Forgot your password?” thing, it seems convinced I never had an account with either Amazon or CDNow.

Well, whatever. I’ll go to allmusicguide to get my damn White Stripes import with the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Love Sick” on it. Bastids.