MCHG download problems

GRAIL GLITCHES: Not surprisingly, given the scale of the event and the massive anticipation it generated, the rollout of Magna Carta Holy Grail to Galaxy owners via Google Play went somewhat less than smoothly. Wrote the L.A. Times’ Randall Roberts, who pulled an all-nighter downloading and listening to the album: “Social media was rife with frustrated fans unable to get the app to work properly, and many of them ended up hearing the highly anticipated release long after those who’d secured MCHG free through file sharing links." The experience of New York Daily News pop critic Jim Farber was similar: “By 12:30 a.m., enraged fans took to Twitter and Google Play to moan about the 99 problems they were having trying to get the thing to work. A source in Jay's camp says the app got 20 million requests in the first hour alone, which crashed it. I tried poking my phone's app far into the night without success. The next morning, I found the music, not via Samsung but through the wonders of the Web. (Thank you, illegal file sharing).” Meanwhile, on Google Play itself, the most common complaint from those who’d managed to successfully download the album had to do with the download destination. “Its amazing that Samsung has done this for certain users,” writes S3 owner Matthew Abreu. “Its great to see the creativity it took to create this album. Would have been perfect if it was actually downloaded into your music player.” No word yet on numbers of units moved through the promotion, but as this is written,19,472 downloaders have “reviewed” MCHG, with an average rating of 3.4 out of 5. (7/5a)