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Amazon Gags On Gaga
theodp writes "Having hawked Google Chrome over the weekend with an ad that aired on SNL, Lady Gaga turned her attention Monday to hyping Amazon's Cloud Player service. Fans were delighted to learn that they could download Gaga's entire 'Born This Way' album for a mere $0.99, until technical difficulties set in. 'Amazon is experiencing high volume and downloads are delayed,' Amazon said in a statement. 'If customers order today, they will get the full Lady Gaga, Born This Way album for $0.99. Thanks for your patience.' Some frustrated users meted out one-star ratings for the album as their way of protesting Amazon's slow service, lowering the album's rating to three stars. So, was that karma for upstaging Donald Knuth at the Googleplex?"
Amazon has better taste than I thought.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
As a user of Reddit, this is not news to me. Reddit is down more than any other normal website, and seems something to do with some *magical words here* from Amazon.
I have read somewhere that the cloud is a good solution for scalability. Maybe the Amazon Cloud sould search for a Cloud hosting solution :D
It seems Amazon has the skill to cut wikileaks money, but lack the skill to create a proper cloud.
-Woof woof woof!
Personal anecdote: I had no problems at all downloading the album.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thanks for making the ratings less useful.
You may think you're all-important and that your one time shipping experience should mean as much as someone who is reviewing the actual usefulness and quality of the product but all you're doing is adding more useless noise to the reviews.
So hats off to you Mr. Garbage-In.
Didn't care much about the album. The 20GB cloud storage offered with it seemed worth it.
"Some frustrated users meted out one-star ratings for the album as their way of protesting Amazon's slow service"
Fortunately those people are morons so we can disregard their silly protest. Amazon should cancel those one-star ratings, but then they'd be accused of censorship, influencing the rating, etc. The whole thing sounds a bit silly to me.
...apparently, this would be the best way to DDoS Amazon :).
I thought it was put to rest that Lady Gaga does not have a penis. Is this new evidence?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
So, I saw this and went to Amazon, only to find out that the "today" mentioned in the summary/article was yesterday, May 23rd. /. editors REALLY need to:
1. Post stories sooner.
2. Fact check.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Look at the big picture:
Gaga's going to make boat loads of cash from her 0.99 album, Amazon's going to give her a nice gift (more cash) for promoting their cloud service, Gaga got media headlines on this, more people are aware of Gaga (more popular) and will likely sell more stuff in the long run.
and.... Don Knuth is still... Don Knuth... Now who was he again?
Karma is only karma if everyone appreciates it. Otherwise it's religion and no one cares.
David Bowie and Freddie Mercury did all before, and considerably better. She's like a glam star constructed from spare parts.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A couple of the songs are pretty good, and some of them show some indication of good rock. Sadly, they turn into bubble gum music.
I'd love to hear her do some rock.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's fine. Give it a crappy rating becasue it's a crappy album. Giving the album a crappy rating becasue Amazon screwed up the delivery system just makes legitimate bad reviews that much more lost.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Amazon has a 'was this review helpful?' that most definitely floats useful and non-useful positive and negative reviews.
Shrug. Most of the current fans weren't around when David and Freddie did their thing. (or Boy George, Madonna, Prince, etc.)
It's new to them, and GaGa is basically the only one doing it now.
My mom always tells me that fashions have a 30 year cycle. If that's the case, Lady GaGa might be the first of many.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
While I feel usually this is fine as customer are rating the entire purchase, not just the product, in this case, I think, Amazon should remove the post that rate the album based on the delivery service. Maybe send the users whom posted an e-mail explaining why, and asking them to try again, then re post their review.
This is nothing new if your a gamer buying a new release of a top 10 game. There excuse though is ,we didnt expect the game to do this well. I say BS sence thats the excuse they use every release.A cloud is nothing more then a server and if you dont have enough servers there will be uploading problems.
Jack of all trades,master of none
The vast majority of one-star ratings are for the quality of music on this album, which is poor. Saying the one-star ratings are due to download problems is an LG publicity spin that's just blindly repeated. You don't have to take my word for it. Read the one-star reviews yourself.
When i checked yesterday "most" critics gave mixed reviews, not that i care a great deal what critics say. I liked her first two albums, so i figured it would be hard to go too wrong for 99 cents. In the worst case scenario i would have wasted.... 99 cents.
After buying it my conclusion was that it's certainly not as good as those first two albums i really liked. Was it a waste of money? Well there are a couple good tracks, so for the price of 99 cents i certainly feel i got my money's worth. Is it worth buying for $10 or whatever the "regular" price is? I probably wouldn't get it at that rate, not unless some of the other songs start growing on me after listening to them some more.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Other than this being a story digging on Amazons cloud performance, why exactly should I give two shits about Lady Gaga and her ability to whore out her music? IMHO, 99 cents is overpriced.
And yes, people abuse the star rating system for stupid crap such as slow shipping...been going on for years.
There is nothing novel about your idea...I have seen it implemented before.
"That ain't no woman, that's a man, man!"
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Freddie Mercury did all before
To her credit, I believe she acknowledges this. In fact, that's why she calls her self "Lady GaGa." It's a hat-tip to the old Queen bic-lighter anthem, "Radio Ga Ga"
Uh-huh. Amazon really wants to promote its global expandable multiplexable file server service as fragile enough to fall over due to simple downloads.
Or maybe the gay community liked her act and it was a little off-kilter so she ran with that and it ballooned into a massive career worth a billion dollars at retail and makes you sick to your stomach because you have to reboot computers in an insurance company for $17.50/hr for the rest of your life.
...Lady Gaga gags on you? Soviet Russia might be better than I'd first thought!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Amazon's not alone.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So the Wikileaks supporters...hackers...cannot bring down Amazon (http://www.gigenetcloud.com/blog/index.php?/archives/42-Reliability-of-Cloud-Proven-After-Wikileaks-Attacks.html) but Gaga can
Stroke of fucking genius. Next time I do a restaurant review the taxi driver better not get lost on the way home, or I'll say the wine was piss and the food wasn't fit for pigs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
never thought I'd see Lady Gaga and Donald Knuth mentioned in the same post.
I just want to bang her.
Jonathanjk.com
What was described is really one of my pet peeves about online ratings systems. The ratings system at Amazon is clearly intended for the product itself, but you'll often see lower marks because of something unrelated to the product (e.g., shipping times, difficulty reaching the seller). To me, that destroys the value of the ratings system.
I often refer to customer ratings at Amazon and other online retailers when making my own purchase decisions [Full disclosure: I'm a regular reviewer at Amazon.] Often, I'll look at those overall ratings if I'm just getting a feel for the products out there. In such cases, where people give the product poor reviews because of problems with the delivery system, they unfairly steer other consumers away from what may be otherwise excellent products.
It would be hard for Gaga to claim any real harm from the practice (simply because of the volume of sales that will be processed anyway), but it could make a huge difference for a small producer or independent craftsperson whose products are sold through Amazon itself, Fulfilled by Amazon, or Amazon's affiliates program.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Amazing the amount of effort that went into that considering the potential audience.
Very well done.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Well, that's alleged. I don't think its a "tip of the hat" by any means. The story goes that music producer Rob Fusari, who helped Stefani write some of her earlier songs, compared some of her vocal harmonies to that of Freddie Mercury. Fusari helped create the moniker Gaga, after the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga". Gaga was in the process of trying to come up with a stage name when she received a text message from Fusari that read "Lady Gaga." He explained, "Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of saying hello, I would start singing 'Radio Ga Ga'. That was her entrance song. [Lady Gaga] was actually a glitch; I typed 'Radio Ga Ga' in a text and it did an autocorrect so somehow 'Radio' got changed to 'Lady'. She texted me back, "That's it." After that day, she was Lady Gaga. She's like, "Don't ever call me Stefani again." The New York Post, however, has reported that this story is incorrect, and that the name resulted from a marketing meeting. Considering Stefani's penchant for exaggeration (i.e., she was an outcast in school), I'm prone to believe the NY Post story. http://www.tntmagazine.com/tnt-today/archive/2011/04/27/lady-gaga-accused-of-faking-tears-over-school-bullying-claims.aspx Gaga performing at "The Bazaar" in Atlanta, Georgia The New York Post, however, has reported that this story is incorrect, and that the name resulted from a marketing meeting.
http://thepiratebay.org/search/born%20this%20way/0/7/100
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Some frustrated users meted out one-star ratings for the album as their way of protesting Amazon's slow service, lowering the album's rating to three stars
I didn't see the ad, but happened to see it show up in my Amazon MP3 app on my phone due to the popularity. Listening to the album snippets, I assure you, it deserves the three stars.
I don't know. People who were likely part of the bullying don't remember the bullying? Big surprise! Would it surprise me that she made shit up to get sympathy? Nope. But neither would it surprise me to hear that she was bullied, but the bullies claim they were "just joking" or something similar.
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
$0.99 for a Lada Gaga album? Seems a little high, don't you think.
So an online service was too bogged down to provide said service. I'm not seeing the "stuff that matters" part of this.
[Cutaway to a small orphan sitting on the steps of an orphanage, red suitcase in hand]
[Carter and Chris drive up to the front, and the orphan runs to the car]
Carter: [During this, the orphan tries to open the door to the car, unsucessfully] Come on! Come on in! Your family's waiting in here! There are toys, and a puppy! And food that's not served from warming trays!
[The orphan desperately tries to open the door, and then bangs on the window of the door, as a small puppy eagerly presses up against the glass, barking]
Carter: Come on, you gotta want it!
[Orphan throws the briefcase at the window, only for it to bounce off the glass]
Carter: Aw, you gotta do better than that! Okay i guess you don't want a new family, toys and a puppy.
This is what Amazon was doing to those poor orphans gaga for Gaga.
The deal is this, okay?
I'll buy your album for 99c if you buy a new lightbulb with it so you can stop getting dressed in the dark.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Interesting. So the low price for a high demand item exceeded Amazon's capacity to deliver. So Amazon should have... charged more, reducing the demand, so that they'd have the capacity to deliver?
Charge more for less service to throttle the demand to your capacity, or pay more to upgrade service so you can charge less and hope the volume of sales maximizing demand covers the cost of the upgrade in service.
Is balancing this equation why broadband speeds in the US aren't increasing as fast as other countries'?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?