Double Bass EMusic -- Another Slip Down The Slope?

[Sam Sherry]

Hello Samuel,

Hello, EMusic. This can't be all good.

Mark your calendars because in November 2010, eMusic is adding more than 250,000 tracks from Universal Music Group to its catalog, the single largest addition ever!

Woah. I will mark my calendar for November, 2010. I certainly would hate to miss the entire month.

This addition comes as part of our mission to offer members a rich catalog that is both deep and broad, with every day low prices that make music discovery as affordable as it is rewarding.

Who can say 'no' to deep, broad music? So you'll be dropping your price?

In order to continue to grow our catalog and to insure a sustainable business in the long-term, we need more flexible pricing. So we are changing from a credit-per-track system to currency pricing. Starting in November, you'll see tracks and albums priced in dollars and cents instead of credits.

That, by itself, doesn't sound bad . . . yet . . .

Your membership will continue just as it is today, and your monthly payments will not change.

"Ah feeeeeeeel a bat moon on the rice!" -- JC Fogarty

While some popular tracks will be more expensive, members will still enjoy savings of 20% - 50% compared to iTunes a la carte prices.

Ah, there you have it. "Some popular tracks" will be more expensive. Perhaps some unpopular tracks will be more expensive too -- those are the ones that actually cost more, per DL, to host and follow.

For more details about these changes, including the new catalog, new currency pricing, and how this affects your account, please read the full announcement.

Etc.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I saw that. I'll have to wait and see what it means in music next time I visit after the change.

 

[Monte]

I left them after the last big price increase. I'd rather pay more to buy tracks I know I want while eMusic was a place I'd use credits on stuff I wasn't sure if I'd like. Although it used to be cheap, I'd guesstimate about 60-70% of what I downloaded wasn't listened to more than once or twice.

 

[Huy Nguyen]

Yeah, and I find their online catalog kinda hard to use. Too much crap to sift through. I quit then came back and now I'm not so sure anymore. I pretty much have all the music I want from them. It's starting to become like that old Columbia music subscription. Amazon looks better and better. So what if you pay more? Like Monte alludes to: just buy what you want and not have to DL all sorts of stuff to make sure you credits aren't wasted.

EDIT: Btw I just saw this after logging in:

New pricing in a nutshell
Under the new currency pricing system, eMusic members will enjoy savings of 20%-50% compared to iTunes a la carte prices. The majority of albums on eMusic will be priced from $5.19 - $8.99. Single track pricing for members will vary as follows:
$0.49 for most tracks currently in our catalog
$0.69 - $0.79 for more popular content
$0.89 for tracks that generally sell for $1.29 at iTunes

Your monthly loyalty bonus
To thank you for being an eMusic member, a special loyalty bonus will be added to your account each month. The bonus level depends on the plan you are in. For more details regarding your new membership plan see the Your Plan info on the right.

Which apparently is like $6/mo since I'm on the $30 plan.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

My biggest gripe with them remains that they don't roll over credits you don't use. I can put up with the rest, but that policy really burns my ***. I don't care about loyalty bonuses or whatever - just give me the damn credits I paid for. I can't even count the number of times I've downloaded something I didn't really want in order not to lose the credits because life was busy and I didn't get to search their catalog before the deadline.

 

[Febs]

My biggest gripe with them remains that they don't roll over credits you don't use. I can put up with the rest, but that policy really burns my ***. I don't care about loyalty bonuses or whatever - just give me the damn credits I paid for. I can't even count the number of times I've downloaded something I didn't really want in order not to lose the credits because life was busy and I didn't get to search their catalog before the deadline.

+1. It really annoyed me when I would log in to download tracks, and find out that since they run on a 30-day cycle rather than a calendar month, I had missed the deadline by 1 day. That's what finally caused me to quit eMusic after being a customer for many, many years.

 

[damonsmith]

What they are missing is that the whole thing is just virtual "tip jar" at this point. They keep acting like they are competing with itunes when they are really competing with FREE. Please DO NOT pay for any of the Major's tracks on emusic.
I use it only for small, independant labels.

 

[Andy Allen]

On the face of it it doesn't seem to change my account or it's value much.

I'd like to think that this will be eMusic's opportunity to fix some of the pricing problems and discrepancies that plague their catalog at present. On the other hand, based on previous experience, it's more likely that they'll just screw it up further.

Andy

 

[damonsmith]

Well, at least this time they are adding ECM and Deutsche Gramaphone, so it isn't just lame Columbia back catalog.
ECM is producing albums still, so getting new ECMs cheaper from emusic will be worth it, since I already buy them from itunes.
So, it looks lame, but not useless!

 

[damonsmith]

The whole thing came through yesterday and it seems fine. ECM albums for 6.49 about .49 a track which is about the same and they give you a few extra $ depending on the plan/booster.
The Henze concerto with Gary Karr is on there, too. That might need it's own post!

 

[Andy Allen]

Well, it's good and bad....

It doesn't seem like they have solved their "album only" pricing fiasco.

And that is further complicated by their new policy of charging for repeat downloads. I'm not sure how you would get an album-only track if you have started downloading the individual tracks piecemeal, as I usually do. I'm not sure I want to risk re-buying already downloaded tracks to find out.

It doesn't seem that this is a good move on their part - one of the things that kept me from dumping my subscription for a while every now and then was that they provided an online back-up of all my downloaded music. Since that no longer exists there's much less incentive to keep a continuous subscription.

Anyway, we'll see if the new eMusic turns out for the best - on the one hand I was starting to buy more of my music outside of eMusic, so the expanded catalog might be of advantage. On the other hand the pricing might bug me enough to give up entirely.

I'll give 'em a fair chance.

Andy

 

[damonsmith]

You don't have to pay for repeat downloads. I had to repeat an album I bought this morning and it was free. It seems fine so far.

 

[Andy Allen]

This from their new-plan information page:

"About Your Downloads

Previous downloads are not affected by this plan change. As always, once you have a track it is yours to keep. A new download tracking system is now in place to indicate when you can retry downloading a track or album for free if you experience technical problems.

If we detect a problem with a download, the download button will turn red . Members can click it to retry the download at no charge. After a track or album has been downloaded, this button will appear . Members can click it to request an additional download but will be charged for it. In the event you are unable to complete a download due to a technical problem, please contact Customer Care for assistance.

If you want to get a copy of a song onto two different computers, one at work and one at home, for example, you’ll need to do this manually, with a USB flash drive or other method to avoid being charged again. As always, we recommend you back up your downloads regularly."

It seems that unless you have a problem downloading the track in the first place you have to pay to download again. It's unclear if that applies to tracks downloaded before the plan change; possibly not then, if you've already tried it.

Andy

 

[Damon Rondeau]

My biggest gripe with them remains that they don't roll over credits you don't use. I can put up with the rest, but that policy really burns my ***. I don't care about loyalty bonuses or whatever - just give me the damn credits I paid for. I can't even count the number of times I've downloaded something I didn't really want in order not to lose the credits because life was busy and I didn't get to search their catalog before the deadline.

I left them mostly because of this, too. And I never jumped in at the last minute to try and get my money's worth. Consequently, the stuff I *did* d/l from them over the five or so years I was with them -- maybe 2 or 3 hundred tracks in that time? -- turned out to be damned expensive tracks.

There's another factor, though. My interests don't necessarily lead to me to looking for new stuff -- I'm most often in the mode of exploring and getting deeper into old stuff (it's the historian in me, I guess.) And I found that eMusic almost never had the *best* material from old catalogues. Usually they've got the stuff that used to show up in the cheap bins at old-fashioned record stores. Very high dreck-to-gold ratio. Very frustrating when you're in research mode and you want to hear a certain track NOW. For that kind of scope, I find that iTunes (as much as I'm no fan of Apple) is really good. I should check out Amazon more often, I guess...


A little getting-off topic note: Up here in Canada, we lost Pandora a couple of years ago (prohibitively expensive for them to license the music up here; it's a situation that really sucks.) For someone like me, with his nose so often rooting around in the past, I rely on friends and radio and ambient environmental factors to steer new sounds my way. For the brief time I used Pandora, I found it to really excel at that. "Hey, you liked that? Maybe check out this..."

 

[damonsmith]

In this case there is a lot more "old" catalog that might be more interesting to most of us than Columbia (which obviously does have some good stuff), but now there is ECM, Verve, Impulse, Deutsche Gramaphone and a bunch of other catalogs they were lacking.

I am not a fan of re-buying things I have on LP or paying for major label back catalog but there is a lot on emusic that you can't even find on file sharing sites.

If it gets to the end of the month and you can't use your credits just download some Bach! Or a classical bass album - there are over 50.

 

[Damon Rondeau]

That's great they've got those labels but I see my timing sucks as always... Simple fact is they won't get me back because of that payment model -- the relationship is just too sticky, non-liquid and set up to suit them first. If I was smart and dedicated and on the ball I could look after my own interests but, man, I got **** to do.

 

[damonsmith]

And truthfully, if you aren't listening to LOTS of music, Amazon's prices are not too bad and their catalog is great.

 

[Sam Sherry]

The Henze concerto with Gary Karr is on there, too. That might need it's own post!

Link please?

 

[Jack Clark]

My biggest gripe with them remains that they don't roll over credits you don't use. I can put up with the rest, but that policy really burns my ***. I don't care about loyalty bonuses or whatever - just give me the damn credits I paid for. I can't even count the number of times I've downloaded something I didn't really want in order not to lose the credits because life was busy and I didn't get to search their catalog before the deadline.

+1. Amen. You have to feel like downloading music in accordance with their schedule, not yours. Once I even downloaded the same album two months running because I didn't have time to check. I stupidly had bought a years subscription and after six months of pressure and frustration, I finally decided it would be less stress and strain to just write it off as a bad decision and a good learning experience--which is what I did. Didn't download anything during the last six months and I feel good about that decision. Now I just download what I want when I feel like it at Amazon. Considering all the credits I lost by being untimely, it's cheaper to do it this way.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

I only buy downloads from Amazon and they are getting better all round - lots of deals and it is so much easier to search Amazon's site - plus they automatically try to recommend stuff you will like - which often fails dramatically, but occasionally finds interesting stuff.

It's definitely a mistake to assume that you are only competing with iTunes!