I actually bought an All Music Guide book back in college. And it was out of date the day I bought it. Such is the fate of all reference books these days. The web beats books in nearly all aspects: freshness of data, completeness of data, speed of access, flexibly in searching and sorting...
I use the AMG web site as one of my primary music references, along with SeeqPod, imeem, and Amazon. I use it for reading the origins of an artist, getting a sense for their most popular songs, and discovering obscuring recordings of a favorite artist.
For the latter, I go to the artist page in AMG, then click the Songs tab. It defaults to Highlights (which can be interesting), but I click the All Songs sub-tab, then sort by album. I'm always amazed at the random compilations that some of my favorite artists appear on: Jason Falkner doing a cover of Def Leppard's Photograph; Guster covering the Violent Femmes; or my favorite cover of all-time: Ben Folds Five performing Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head.
I use the AMG web site as one of my primary music references, along with SeeqPod, imeem, and Amazon. I use it for reading the origins of an artist, getting a sense for their most popular songs, and discovering obscuring recordings of a favorite artist.
For the latter, I go to the artist page in AMG, then click the Songs tab. It defaults to Highlights (which can be interesting), but I click the All Songs sub-tab, then sort by album. I'm always amazed at the random compilations that some of my favorite artists appear on: Jason Falkner doing a cover of Def Leppard's Photograph; Guster covering the Violent Femmes; or my favorite cover of all-time: Ben Folds Five performing Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head.
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