eMusic Changes

[Monte]

Anyone else see the notification that your eMusic plan will be changing?

I don't buy that it is just a coincidence that they put up the major label crap from Sony and now cut downloads in half and have the nerve to call 80-95% price increases "insignifigant".

I liked eMusic because small independent label stuff was cheap enough that even though about half of it I never listened to more than a few times it was worth the risk to find a few gems.

Now, rather than their subscription model I'll just leave them and be less risky and pay for what I want on used cd's or Amazon downloads.

[relacey]

I had the same reaction. My subscription renews at the end of the month one last time under my old plan. I'll see if there is much in the new label that I want and don't already have (but I doubt it). Then I'm gone from emusic too. I'm currently paying $0.25 per download so I'm looking at a 100%+ increase. They have some balls, I'll give 'em that.

[Sam Sherry]

I'll hang for the moment. My problem with EMusic is the same as it ever was and always will be: Lots of really nice stuff but a very limited amount of life-changing stuff.

Your mileage may vary.

"That's the way (oon-dahd-en-dooboo-doot) . . . of the world (oon-dahd-en-deebah-dup-aroo, doobee) . . . "

[Monte]

Originally Posted by Sam Sherry

I'll hang for the moment. My problem with EMusic is the same as it ever was and always will be: Lots of really nice stuff but a very limited amount of life-changing stuff.

Your mileage may vary.

"That's the way (oon-dahd-en-dooboo-doot) . . . of the world (oon-dahd-en-deebah-dup-aroo, doobee) . . . "

That's the crux of the matter Sam. The independent label stuff is so hit and miss that for every diamond I download a hundred tunes I may listen to a few times at most.

That's ok at .26 a song (current yearly plan). Not so cool at double that.

eMusic defends itself by saying they will still be cheaper than iTunes and Amazon, but that is apples to oranges. Small label stuff that is an unknown is obviously going to be worth less on the open market than a Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg, or whoever that has a gigantic marketing budget (quality of music has nothing to do with it.

[hdiddy]

Meh. I'm kinda done with eMusic. Was starting to run out of things that interested me. I'll just buy stuff when I need it. Too bad. I got to hear some good new stuff and never hesitated to try a whole album on a whim. I'm with Monty. Too bad they can't do two pricing models where you can get more with the indies than the large labels.

I'm just waiting for the more obscure artists to set up their own ArtistShare and offer cheap downloads so that their artists get better distribution. In the meantime, I'll just pay full price for peops I like just to support them.

[ejuzek]

I´m gone too, I have been a customer since 2003, but this is outrageous.

Take a look
http://www.nonalignmentpact.com/2009...usic-died.html

[Sam Sherry]

Originally Posted by Sam Sherry

I'll hang for the moment. My problem with EMusic is the same as it ever was and always will be: Lots of really nice stuff but a very limited amount of life-changing stuff.

Originally Posted by Monte

That's the crux of the matter Sam. The independent label stuff is so hit and miss that for every diamond I download a hundred tunes I may listen to a few times at most.

I've been thinking about this a lot and I come back to the chance to get on to some life-changing stuff, and Columbia actually has it. How about:

* The entire Miles Davis catalogue from Sketches of Spain to We Want Miles at about fifty cents a song
* Woody Shaw's best work
* The Mahavishnu Orchestra
* Herbie Hancock: Headhunters, Chick Corea Duo, VSOP 1 2 & 3
* Wynton Marsalis Quintet: Black Codes (my copy is duped off the scratchiest piece of vinyl)
* Branford Marsalis -- Bloomington, Crazy People and much more
* Terrence Blanchard & Donald Harrison -- Black Pearls (which I've always wanted and never had)
* Stan Clarke -- Everything after the debut and before 2006 (assuming "Epic" comes with "Columbia"
* Dexter Gordon, Homecoming, Manhattan Symphony and forward
* The Electric Flag & most of the best Michael Bloomfield
* Chicago I & II
* Jeff Beck

Yeah, I have some of that on vinyl and some on CD. Some of that I don't have and don't feel like buying for $15 per. I'm actually pretty excited about the music. Fifty cents a clip isn't too much money.

I hate to say it, but in my world, if a deal is too good to be true you can basically count on somebody to break it. I understand how many people get steamed about that but unfortunately that's just bidness as usural around here.

[damonsmith]

I am not happy with it from either side - as a label owner I make more from emusic because the prices are fair for mp3s. Mp3s are not cds and should not be priced as such.
The huge blunder here is that they think they are competing with itunes and amazon when in fact they are competing with file sharing.
Everyone needs to realize that the power is in the hands of the listener, we are at their mercy.

[relacey]

Has anyone seen a list of what will be included in the Sony back-catalog? I wasn't aware that the Columbia stuff that Sam mentioned was part of the package.

To me it will all come down to an individual, economic decision: Will I get sufficient value for my entertainment dollar under the new price structure and with the expanded catalog?

[Warning - the rest of this may seem obvious I'm just sorting out my thoughts in what follows. Feel free to skip]

Pros
1. If there are some "life changing" downloads available, that's a big potential pro but I haven't found any details yet. Hence the question above. I've already got more music than I can really listen to in a lifetime or two, so adding more B material is not much incentive.

1a. I suspect like many here, I already have many of the things touted by emusic in vinyl and cd (Springsteen, Chicago (while they were still a kick-ass band before Terry Kath's untimely demise), early Billy Joel (pre-CB), etc.) So I really don't need to download this again. I've already ripped it all.

2. It's still less expensive than most other services and probably price comparable with the used CD market if you don't have to pay shipping.

3. Access to things I'd probably never find in a used CD market or even stuff that's out of print. I mostly haunt the jazz section, so access to many of the older sides from the 40s, 50s, 60s is appreciated.

4. No DRM and support for those of us who are not locked into Windows or Mac (e.g. Linux). I can't run iTunes if I wanted to (I don't) and Amazon.com currently doesn't have a downloader for 64-bit Linux systems so I have to keep a 32-bit box around to accommodate that.

5. You can go back and re-download what you have already purchased. I've had to do this more often that I thought I would and it's turned out to be a bigger plus that I had first imagined.

6. I'm not sure yet how much the new album pricing will matter. A lot of jazz sides are 4 or 5 cuts but there is some stuff where it will probably save me a few downloads. It would have been nice when I downloaded Benny Goodman Live at Carnegie Hall + the Small Group Sessions.

Cons
1. At the higher prices, I'd really like to see higher quality rips, preferably some lossless format like flac. Then I can choose to degrade them to whatever I'm willing to tolerate. This is an option if you have the original CD. Also, how about the liner notes in electronic form?

2. Emusic has the worst indexing and search functions imaginable. If you're going to charge more, how about upgrading my ability to find things I'm looking for? Plus, some indication of what's "coming soon" would be nice. A couple of times I've download albums only to have remastered versions available a few days later. Sometimes you want both, and sometimes not. Also, there is still a lot of schlock to wade through - re-releases and re-re-releases of the same material. Better indexing and cataloging would help sort this out.

3. Unless it's included in the Sony package, we're still not getting access to the Blue Note catalog. Granted, maybe that's only a big deal to me, but there's a lot of good stuff on BN.

Bottom line: If the Sony catalog has enough value added, I'll probably stay at least until I get everything from that, which will now take twice as long under my new plan. Otherwise, I've got one more month under my old plan and maybe a second month with the new plan plus a promised 25 download bonus.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by relacey

Cons
1. At the higher prices, I'd really like to see higher quality rips, preferably some lossless format like flac. Then I can choose to degrade them to whatever I'm willing to tolerate. This is an option if you have the original CD. Also, how about the liner notes in electronic form?

2. Emusic has the worst indexing and search functions imaginable. If you're going to charge more, how about upgrading my ability to find things I'm looking for? Plus, some indication of what's "coming soon" would be nice. A couple of times I've download albums only to have remastered versions available a few days later. Sometimes you want both, and sometimes not. Also, there is still a lot of schlock to wade through - re-releases and re-re-releases of the same material. Better indexing and cataloging would help sort this out.

This, especially the first sentence of "2." I can't find **** on emusic unless I stumble upon it.

[damonsmith]

It is also going to just be Sony's back catalog not new releases. The decision is ultimately out of touch and not good for anyone involved.

To be dead honest, if I did actually want any major label back catalog, I certainly wouldn't pay for it in this day and age.

[Gornick]

I'm with Damon on this one. The draw of eMusic was the independent aspect of it. I have been on for two years and still have plenty to discover over there. If you are just looking for old PC and Ray Brown recordings, then I guess you are going to run out after awhile, but if your tastes are a little more broad, I can't see ever running out of things to check out. ****, it's worth 10 bucks a month just to try some new stuff out, even if you only spin it a couple times and delete it.

Tons and tons of free music, avant-garde, classical, afro-Cuban. Having access to Los Van Van's 70's material has been life-changing for me. There's tons of Cachao, I got Blanton over there. Lester with Billie, I got Fred Hopkins with Air over there.

It might be nice to have Columbia's back cataloge, but not worth dropping my available downloads to less than half and raising my fee a buck. It's not worth having the Majors once again step on the little guys and screw everything up like they always do. I might stick around a month just to finish grabbing the things I have been putting off, but, I doubt I stick around after that.

I agree about the indexing, I have wasted plenty of time trying to find stuff I knew was there last week, let alone stuff I thought should be there. Thank god there are other sites out there for research purposes, rather than sifting through that muck.

[relacey]

Well, emusic's new releases are up and I'm still sorting through them. One little detail with the new priceing plan that I'm not happy about is they have adopted the model of having certain cuts only available if you download the album. Here's the catch. The album download is 12 credits even if there are only 8 cuts. I don't know how widespread this is but I've already run across it a couple of times in just a few minutes of browsing.

On the other hand, I can get Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations (32 cuts) for 12 credits.

[Sam Sherry]

Well, folks, for better and worse The Change Has Come. I've downloaded the Marsalis' "Black Codes", Dylan's "Oh Mercy" and most of Mingus' "Let My Children Hear Music."

Each of these is life-changing music at the Sherry house and long-unheard too.

But there's that other, profiteering hink. For a lot of the new offerings benefit from "Album Pricing" -- for example, the first 18 tracks of Dylan's "Biograph" will only cost you 12 DLs. On the other hand, many of these offerings suffer from "Album Pricing" -- if you want a rip of "Let My Children" which includes "Hobo" and "Hurricane Sue" you have to pony up 12 DL-chits to get 7 songs.

So, as always, ya gotta be conscious to be cost conscious. Are you better-off buying that used CD off EBay for six bucks shipped? Or do you just say, "**** it. This is life-changing music and ahmo git me some even if it costs an extra two bucks."

[relacey]

I'm also finding a number of albums where the "Album Pricing" isn't applied. For example, Charlie Parker on Dial: The Complete Sessions 4 CDs and 89 cuts. By any logic the album pricing for this should be no more than 48 credits (although I'd argue for 12) but the emusic price is 89 credits. Is this not an across the board policy change?

Edit - I found my answer, in the FAQ emusic states -
"A: Album pricing is available for select albums. Here's how it will work: most titles will be available for 12 credits, regardless of the number of tracks. Some albums will be offered for less, either six or nine credits. Sometimes no discount will be offered, (in those cases, for example, a 17 track album will cost 17 credits). We'll be working with our partner labels in order to deliver the best deal possible for subscribers.

Initially album pricing may be limited to a select group of labels. We have to work with each label individually to make album pricing available so it may take a while before you see it as an option on releases from other labels, but trust us: we're working feverishly to make that happen. See also the answer to the question "Can you explain what the different track and album download buttons mean?" below. "

[jgbass]

I did not even download anything after I ran out of downloads. The price is their booster package is a big big jump from before. I will be limiting my downloads from now on.

[Bruce Lindfield]

I used to the follow the thread on this for interesting ideas, but I always buy my dowloads from Amazon or iTunes and could never see the point of eMusic...

I just want to buy particular things at high quality.

At first I was very resistant to buying any downloads, preferring to buy and rip from CDs - but more recently I have found a load of stuff - like Red Mitchell etc. - that I have never seen available on CD!

[Jason Sypher]

I've had a recent realization that when I have a number of downloads "left" at the end of the month they sometimes get swallowed up before the 30 or 31st? Have you experienced that? I wrote them and they returned the downloads to my account. I didn't know they were going to raise the rates. I have been teetering for awhile with emusic. Yes there is a lot to check out but there is so much that they do not have as well. So, what is the next best thing? I love independent music but I also like to be able to download the latest music as well. Any suggestions?

[jgbass]

Jason,

They switch over every 30 days, so as the months pass, the change date will get earlier in the month. I recently thought I had about 30 downloads to use by the end of the month, used them all, then found out I had used all the downloads for the upcoming month. No downloads for me last month. I wrote them, but they were not gracious enough to restore any downloads. Maybe part of their recent toughening up policies and of course there are no rollovers.

Now, I am thinking of writing down the change date in my planner to avoid these problems.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I'm highly annoyed that they don't roll them over, and may cancel because of this. Sometimes I get too busy to be messing around with downloading music, then find that I just gave them money for nothing. If they really want to make people go for the new rate increases, the least they could do would be to allow rollover from month to month.