
Lady Gaga's $0.99 Album Download Overwhelms Amazon - scottkduncan
http://mashable.com/2011/05/23/lady-gaga-amazon-2/
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smackfu
The really interesting thing is that this indicates that Amazon really is
copying the bits around to everyone's locker, rather than just saying "user x
has rights to song y". Otherwise why would it take so long (12 hours+) just to
give me access to these songs?

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rudiger
What is the reasoning behind not performing de-duplication of common files? It
seems incredibly stupid to copy a popular song hundreds of thousands of times
when a "single" canonical copy would do. Multiple people can stream music from
a single file and people with large music collections would wait seconds
instead of hours waiting for their songs to upload.

~~~
msg
revanchist copyright laws on performance of music

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Niten
Ironically requiring that they make _more_ copies, if this is true.

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kmfrk
This articles serves to point out something more significant, which is how
broken Amazon's review system is:

> However, the damage has already been done, as users are meting out one-star
> ratings in droves, most of which deal with Amazon’s slow service as opposed
> to the quality of the music (although some reviews in the lower bracket did
> dub the disc “disappointing”). As a result, the album has a relatively low
> three-star rating.

Can't Amazon allocate some resources to find a decent fix to this? It doesn't
exactly make it desirable to use their platform.

~~~
smackfu
It depends on whether you consider delivery and packaging to be part of the
product that Amazon is selling. If you buy something physical twice and it
comes broken both times because Amazon is packing it poorly (which has
happened to me), is that relevant for a review?

~~~
bgentry
No. If you're reviewing Fry's electronics and they sell you a previously-
opened, broken HP computer, it's the review of Fry's that should suffer, not
the review of that particular HP machine.

A review of an album should be confined to your opinions on that album.

That being said, most people don't know the difference as I see this kind of
thing on Zappos and NewEgg all the time.

~~~
ugh
I think people do know the difference but reviews offer them a very public way
to complain.

I don’t think there are easily discoverable and public review sections for the
services Amazon and other online retailers provide†. Are there gaps in the
selection of products? Are prices appropriate? Is the shipping slow? Is the
packaging inappropriate? Are you given inaccurate information about the
arrival of you orders? Are songs slow to download? Is the user interface
wonky?

There is no place for consumers to publicly review online retailers on their
own websites. That sucks. It makes product reviews less useful because they
are riddled with all that noise that is in no way related to the actual
product. It also doesn’t allow consumers to review online retailers in a way
that’s accessible to other consumers. This is a failing of the online
retailer, not consumers.

I think online retailers are quite happy that all the talk about their
services is spread around in all the product reviews and not in any central
place. They can even delete criticism of their service with the justification
that the review in question is off-topic.

It’s not even as though this is a hard problem. You would just have to ask the
reviewer what he wants to write about (the product or the service).

†Amazon’s review guidelines ([http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-
help/customer-reviews-gui...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-
help/customer-reviews-guidelines)), for example, do not even allow users to
publicly share information about or criticize Amazon’s service in reviews. You
are asked to use the feedback form which is not public. Quote: “What’s not
allowed: […] Feedback on the seller, your shipment experience or the packaging
(you can do that at www.amazon.com/feedback and www.amazon.com/packaging)”

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6ren
> I tried this as an experiment to see if I wanted to order more music this
> way, but it only downloaded half the songs. Still a deal at 99cents, but not
> an experiment I’ll want to repeat with a full-price album.

This is "expanding the userbase", and seems overwhelmingly successful.

I've been thinking recently that "sales" (as in specials, temporary price
reductions) are a socially acceptable way to do discriminatory pricing
(different prices for different people).

You want to do this because some people are happy to pay more (so you want to
charge the higher price), and some people will only buy at a lower price. If
you price it high, you lose the low people; if you price it low, you can't
charge the high people a high price. It makes sense to therefore have offer
high prices to high people, and low prices to low people. But people hate
this! Amazon actually tried it for a while, until it was noticed (maybe they
still do, but in a less discernible way?)

A sale is a way to capture those low people, and only losing some high people.
This is apart from getting them to be regular users.

~~~
busted
The model of having regular sales to capture people who wouldn't otherwise
buy, on a product that is digital so costs nothing to create (ie all costs are
already sunk), is done really successfully with video games by Steam. People
actually complain when there's a good Steam sale because they end up spending
so much money, $5 or $10 at a time.

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aresant
More accurate title would be "Overwhelms Amazon's Music Download Service"

EG - no instances of downtime for the regular site / commerce.

~~~
nlo
Not entirely so. I keep latency monitors running on Amazon.com and all of the
sites I have hosted on EC2, and noticed a distinct spike in latency across the
board corresponding with yesterday's offer.

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BasDirks
People are way too harsh on Amazon. I mean who could have predicted that so
many people would buy a 1 dollar album from arguably the most
popular/controversial artist on the entire planet.

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jonnytran
This is so irritating. Why do people expect new products to be infinitely
scalable out of the gates. Of course they're going to show slowdown during a
flash event. Because of people like this, great projects like Google Wave get
shut down, and all because of people's irrational expectations. "It doesn't do
everything... I'm never using this again." Startup projects grow slowly and
organically. Just because it's coming from a big company, why do people expect
it to be totally different.

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dr_
Looks like they weren't really ready for this. However download times appear
to be improving. If you're stuck, trying pausing and restarting the download.

~~~
warmfuzzykitten
It was quite speedy for me just now. No complaints.

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kgermino
I just bought it from my iPad, ( had to gift it to myself to get it to go
through). I got it for free. It came up as a .99 album and a $.99
discount/promotion. I have no idea what happened unless they are making it
free to make up for the technical issues.

Also, I don't know if I get the 20gb for first album purchase (probably not
but I can deal with that) or if it will end up in my cloud locker when I
accept the 'gift'.

~~~
RyanKearney
Was it your first purchase? My first Album purchase had a $2.99 promotion
discount or something.

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tzs
Lady Gaga does what Anonymous could not?

~~~
jamesbkel
Well, she had a lot of help from the N fans who purchased the album.

~~~
sliverstorm
It is kind of comforting to know that Anon is still smaller than the fanbase
of a pop icon.

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warmfuzzykitten
Seemed to be challenging to find the offer on Amazon. Here is the direct link
<http://tinyurl.com/3lkrosr> Worked fine for me. 1-click purchase + download
from cloud.

~~~
aw3c2
Non-shortened actual direct link is [http://www.amazon.com/Born-This-Way-
digital-booklet/dp/B0051...](http://www.amazon.com/Born-This-Way-digital-
booklet/dp/B0051QIGP4/)

Also without lots of parameters that might or might not include an affiliate
strings.

Please do not post shortened URLs here. It is obfuscation.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That link takes me to the album priced at $6.99 - did I miss the deal?

\--

Edit: Oh, also "It appears that you are attempting to use Amazon Cloud Player
from outside the U.S. This service is intended for U.S. customers only."

Globalisation it's the future!

~~~
turtle4
Yes, you missed the deal, but because it was available only on release day
(5/23) at the discounted price, not because of your location.

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mikiem
Oh, there must be something else wrong... It cant be only the load. I mean,
they can just spin up more EC2 instances right? Isn't every application
infinitely scaleable in "the cloud"? (tongue in cheek)

