Nice if you can get it! (NicePrice.net)

Member Name: missbrowneyedgirl

Product:	NicePrice.net
Date:	22/01/02 (271 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: in theory - cut price CDs

Disadvantages: no shop, no catalogue, no use to me!

We're all familiar with Nice Price aren't we? What's that? We aren't! Ok, well let me fill you in...

Nice Price, usually spotted by a removable red sticker on the case, is a part of Sony Music. In very basic terms Sony take 'classic' (or more likely just a couple or years old) albums and re-release them on a nice price label. There is usually no difference to the CD except for one thing - the price! You're starting to like this idea already, I can see...;)

Well, nice price albums retail at just about anything from £4.99 to slightly less than normal price. They are a great way of building your CD collection and are available at all (well, as far as I have seen) music outlets. The Nice Price CDs simply sit there, on the shelf, with all the ordinary CDs but a smaller price tag.

So, you can imagine my delight when I see Primal Scream's 'Screamadelica' in the amazon.co.uk sale for only £4.99! Finally I get to upgrade my 10-year-old cassette version. When the masterpiece in question arrives, I'm not surprised to see it's adorned with a red Nice Price sticker. What I was surprised to see was a URL sitting below the familiar white letters. It simply read www.niceprice.net.

Obviously, I couldn't resist it. I didn't really know a lot about Nice Price except for they seemed to appear randomly, and at various prices in places where I bought CDs. Oh, and obviously I knew I loved the price tags...;)

A short while later, I arrived at an immensely ugly looking web page. A black background, the nice price logo and 8 separate yellow paragraphs, each in a different language. Luckily for me, the first one was English. It simply said 'The greatest artists and their classic original rock and pop albums at attractive prices! Plus our fantastic "Best Of" series, beautiful Boxed Sets, the Legacy collection and much more...' Seeing as the word 'more' was a link it
would have been rude not to click it.

I was quickly whisked away to the much better looking, and far more interesting English version of the site: http://www.niceprice.net/niceprice/english/new_np/ flashindex.html

The site is red. In fact not just red but bright, bold scarlet red. The same red as the Nice Price label. Interspersed in this brightness is the odd bit of green (not enough to make you think it's Christmas) and a fair helping of black. A clean, simple and effective design. Then the outstanding feature of the site drew my attention. No I'm not talking about the tacky scrolling montage of album covers, I'm talking about the flash menu. Ok, it doesn't look THAT special but put your mouse over the menu items and it makes really cool boingy noises!

If at this point the old adage 'small things... small minds' is popping into your head don't worry. I'm fully aware of that..;) After several more minutes of playing with the menu I had a look at the actually content of the homepage.
First was an 'Album focus' detailing The Very Best Of Andy Williams which was released on 15 January 2001.

The release date didn't really concern me at this stage. It could be that they review old releases, or that someone had made a mistake and meant 2002. Being excited at the prospect of cut price CDs I (foolishly) didn't really pay it much attention.

Also on the home page was a list of new nice price releases including Incubus - S.C.I.E.N.C.E., Pras - Ghetto Superstar, Finley Quaye - Maverick A Strike, Jamiroquai - Emergency On Planet Earth, Reef - Glow and Pearl Jam - Vs amongst many others. I clicked on a few of the titles to find they gave an album shot and a track listing but nothing else. Not an awful lot of use without at least a price. I investigated the menu further.

Next I clicked the Catalogue A-Z button to access the Nice Price Catalogue, only to find a message saying &
#39;Sorry, the Nice Price Catalogue is not available at the moment'. This dampened by enthusiasm a little but I carried on into the Box Sets option.

Again I found a list of albums, mainly 'golden oldies' collections by artists such as Bob Dylan, Jeff Beck, Carole King, Simon & Garfunkel, The Clash and the legendary Frank Sinatra. Still there were no prices! I ploughed on to the Top 100 albums but found much of the same.

The Fugees- The Score, Meatloaf - Hits Out Of Hell, Manic Street Preachers- Generation Terrorists, Cypress Hill- Black Sunday... The list went on an on, with classic albums and immeasurable artists but still no indications of where, how or costs of purchasing the CDs.

In pure desperation I tried the About Nice Price option. Here I was told 'Feel free to browse our catalogue, making your selections. Once you're done, proceed to the secure checkout. Only a few days later, receive your selection delivered direct to your home!'

The page also wove tales of remastered albums and minidiscs but gave no indication of how to do any of this! There were no 'add to cart' button to be seen so far on the site. By this time I was a little irritated. I decided to check out the interactive section.

Here I found, much to my joy, a Forum. Great, I can just pop in there and ask someone how to but things on the site. Unfortunately, that would have been far too easy. Despite the fact that the forum opened on 26th August 1999 there were only 12 messages, the last one being posted in August 2000. This clearly wasn't a very well used site!

I tried signing up for the Mailing list and received nothing. I filled in my concerns on the Contact form and for my trouble, was rewarded with an Internal Server Error when I hit the Submit button! Needless to say the News section was empty.

That was the final straw. They had won, they had broken me. I searched fruitlessly on Sony's site
for any mention of this one. I don't know whether it was a venture that flopped, a brief period of server problems or a site that never got off the ground but it certainly isn't any of the things it claims to be.

I'll keep trying the site, in the feint hope of its recovery but in the meantime I'd give this one a miss unless you like reading track listings! In Conclusion it's brilliant idea but a real shame that it's not working.

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