Contractual Obligation. (musica.co.uk)

Member Name: Ian Proudfoot

Product:	musica.co.uk
Date:	26/09/01 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good range, Average Prices

Disadvantages: Cataloguing, Genre defintions, Inaccurate delivery times

On-line shopping has saved my life but decimated my back balance. Once upon a time I was happy to leave on the limited supplies of CDs and vinyl available from my local record emporiums or the glut of music that always filled my bags after a trip to London. Then things changed. I finally got Internet access and a world of imports, rarities and bargains began to wing themselves to me via the couriers of the world. The negative effect of this was that I began to spend a vast amount on CDs. My expenditure on shiny plastic discs increased four fold and my bedroom became more and more like a library than a place to sleep. I tried to break the addict but then an offer was made to me. “Look there’s this new on-line music store, goes by the name of Musica. Go on try it out and see what you think.” Okay I can handle this I thought I ever got a voucher so I don’t have to spend my hard-earned cash, what had I got to lose… Well let me tell you!

Musica is one of the newest large scale CD sellers on the net, attempting to tap into the market dominated by your Amazons, CD Now, Virgins and HMV’s of the world. Like these stores it offers a wide range of music not just your top 40 supermarket style bargains of CD Wow and their ilk. Which in the eyes of the average music fan can only be a good think in a world of choice reduction on the high street. On the flip side it is not the most specialised of on-line stores on the web, although it does attempt some degree to offer such a service.

For me there is several key factors that make a good on-line music store. These are site design and navigation, choice and availability of stock, cost and customer services. Out of these choice rates the highest, whilst (shock horror) cost rates the lowest. The question that must be answered is how does Musica rate on the selected criteria.

First up site design and navigation. On the design front Musica rates as okay. Thankfully there is
none of the Shockwave Flash intros or menus that now dominate a lot of web sites and make loading times and menu selection as about enjoyable as sitting through reruns So Haunt me whilst trapped in your favourite rocking chair by a burly man with bad BO and dribbling problem. Musica instead keep the design nice and simple. The main page is divided between two menus on the left and right of the screen which hold links to Key browsing sections (Classical, Jazz, World Music and Pop) as well as a quick search engine and links to Music awards and information about the company. The centre gives links to Musica recommended albums in the various sections, key special offers and a short article on a major artist who is on tour or about to release a new album, etc..

Where Musica does slip up is on the genre definitions. Classical, Jazz and World music all seem well defined but the Pop selection is a veritable smorgasbord of distant musical relatives and conflicting genres. Pop seems to be a tag for every other form of music that doesn't fit into the other three genre definitions. So we get everything from Brass bands to Industrial, Irish Folk to Garage Rock under one roof. Which in my opinion is stretching a genre definition just a little to far for my liking.

The next problem I have with the Musica is the navigation around the various sub-genres under the broader headings. Things are fine if you are looking for a particular artist or group as the search function brings back accurate results. However if your a browser like myself who just likes to flick through the virtual racks then Musica is like searching a library after someone's moved all the books around and changed a few of the hardback covers for a laugh (mental note: Must remember to stop doing this every time I go down to the local library). Instead of the CDs being ordered by Artist or even popularity they just seem to be in some form of random order, with some titles appearing more th
an once. A lot of titles are also missing track listings or have incorrect titles. Trawling through racks of records in a store might be fun but when you experience it on line it just reeks of laziness.

Devo once sang 'use your freedom of choice'' and one thing Musica does have is a good wide selection of titles by which you will be able to carry this out by. I was quiet impressed by what the CDs that Musica listed as being available. Everything from your common and garden Top 40 album to the obscure Industrial release seemed to be listed. In a manner similar to Amazon CDs have an availability and estimated delivery time tagged next to them. Which is helpful but inaccurate when it comes to the actual delivery of goods.

Which brings me neatly to cost and Customer services. Cost wise Musica averages about eleven pounds a CD. Which is fairly good and on par with other on-line music retailers. Customer service is also fairly good with e-mails being sent on receipt of your order and also to keep you update on the progress of your order. However don't use the fore mentioned estimated delivery times as a guide to when your goods are going to arrive, particularly if you've ordered something scarce or obscure.

I placed an order for three CDs. One I knew was recently released (Seabound - No Sleep Demon if your interested), one slightly rarer (Megadump - Fork Me, Feed Me, Kill Me) and one that I believed to be deleted (Pankow - Pankow). Musica stated a time of one to two weeks delivery for all three CDs. 5 weeks later the two CDs I knew would be available turned up at my door in a jiffy bag. To Musica's credit they did inform me of the delivery date for the two CDs, however they should have know that the other CD wasn't going to be available and informed me so. Also the sending of a CDs in a non re-inforced jiffy bag is not the best of ways to send CDs through the post as it all gives them minimal protection against
the ritual abuse given to all parcels delivered by the Royal Mail and other couriers.

So would I use Musica again? To be honest probably not. It's not because I got bad service it's just on a personal level there's other sites that meet my requirements on higher levels of availability and service. Musica also really needs to sort out it's cataloguing as at the moment as it's extremely confused and misleading. If Musica can sort this out they might well be able to challenge Amazon and CD Now. Maybe in a few months I have a look back and see if my CD has turned up and any improvements have been made. Until then its sayonara Musica.

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