Rolling eMusic Thread for 2010

So two things to start:

1) Does anyone recommend a particular collection of Bach Organ Music available on emusic? There are so many to wade through and some of them seem to be bad.

2) Is something fishy going on with pricing? I'm starting to notice more albums again that are one-credit-per-song instead of 12 credits for a regular length album. Seems kind of fucked up - some of the regular-length albums I've looked at would cost me the equivalent of $10.

Does everyone one get the same result as me for the top album this week?

(charts > top album > this week)

1) Michael Jackson
2) Are You Experienced
3) lol - Ice Ice Baby rerecorded

I think the emergence of the Hendrix catalog might be a good excuse to get back into Hendrix a little - it has been a while.

I get this...

1. Ice, Ice, Baby (Re-Recorded / Remastered) - Vanilla Ice
2. Snap Yo Fingers - Lil Jon
3. Walking On Sunshine - Katrina and the Waves

Maybe these are national charts (for shame)?

Something big is about to happen with eMusic. From their blog:

So, things have been awfully quiet around these parts lately, no? Maybe a little too quiet? Well, far be it from us to tip our hands. Let’s just say, faithful readers of 17 Dots, that if I were you, I’d hang on to my January downloads for at least the next couple of weeks. . .

New major labels debuting, I assume (it's already obvious that Anti- is returning this month).

Now you tell me.

lol. They'll lavish you with free credits if you resubscribe.

In fact, some people use it as a strategy (quit, be drawn back by free credits). I haven't done that -- and won't -- because I'm too afraid of somehow messing up the deal I've got now.

What do you have now? They totally killed my good deal when they made the recent switch and I think I just have one of their standard packages (50 downloads for $20)

btw any news on the news?

Hmm i'm still on some grandfathered plan... mine expires in June. Poop. I dunno what I'll convert to, I cant afford $95 twice a year rly (well, I *can*, but I dunno).

heh once i've cleared a couple of debts i'm going up to the 200/month plan (i'm on 100/month after the repricing kerfuffle)

I was on an annual plan and I got renewed last year without warning (which was a little annoying), which is why I last til June. Beyond there I'll see how it goes - Rob likes emusic a lot so maybe I'll make him take over the billing.

btw any news on the news?

They've done an amazingly good job of keeping it under wraps, whatever it is. There's a 17 Dots blog post today teasing what's about to arrive (no hints, other than it will drop tomorrow). I can't even see the post on the 17 Dots blog; someone had to post it to the eMusic message boards for me to view it. Anyway, no idea what's in store, but I'm sure it something along the lines of "new major label(s)."

I'd rather, as someone on that post said, see some major minor labels spit up their back catas. But whatever happens, in all likelyhood it'll be US only anyway and we'll miss out as bloody usual.

(We being Aus that is)

Yeah, it's US-only, for now at least. I think that's basically outside eMusic's control, and they seem to try to extend the benefits to regions outside the US:

Cerebrus: believe me, I completely understand. All I can say on our behalf, without getting too much into it, is that efforts to acquire specific content outside the US are, indeed, ongoing, and we’re not giving up. It just tends to be a bit trickier for lots of dull legal reasons.

(from eMusic's EIC in the comments to another recent post).

Yeah suspected as much. Wah.

It's Warner Bros.; Rhino; and Anti- (Maybe among others; I haven't had a chance to further investigate).

(All US market only, I'm afraid)

Neil Young's entire discography is on there now.

guys i started a new Hendrix thread in part to discuss the stuff now on eMusic: search & destroy: the posthumous Jimi Hendrix catalog

Neil Young's entire discography is on there now.

Hadn't noticed this! Wow.

The Replacements entire discography, too. So many new titles, it's dizzying.

so... when do we get the inevitable price hike to go along with this? i'm expecting my 50-for-$20 to become 50-for-$25 sometime this year. at 50 cents a track they can still be "cheap," comparatively.

TOTALLY STOKED

Good part of the Joni Mitchell catalog is up - don't know if rest is coming
Coltrane on Atlantic
lots of great Atlantic soul stuff of course
It looks like the Tommy Boy catalog too but it's hard to tell - a lot of the labels seem to just be under "Rhino"

so... when do we get the inevitable price hike to go along with this? i'm expecting my 50-for-$20 to become 50-for-$25 sometime this year. at 50 cents a track they can still be "cheap," comparatively

The 17 Dots post announcing the drop -- echoing similar comments on the eMusic Message Boards from eMusic staff -- says that there is no forthcoming price increase or plan changes.

(Hoping for Sub Pop -- which is affiliated with Warner Bros. -- to appear also)

pst - Neil Young Decade for 12 credits (formerly 2 CD set, 35 tracks)

Ok, Beauty is a Rare Thing - Complete Ornette Coleman on Atlantic, 57 tracks, 12 credits

heyo, i think i just re-signed up for emusic!

yow they've also got the Stax Singles box for 12 credits! http://www.emusic.com/album/Various-Artists-Stax-Volt-The-Complete-Singles-1959-1968-MP3-Download/11757108.html

neil young's entire "archives vol. 1" (125 tracks) is also 12 credits. it's currently $80 on itunes.
what else can i grab before they fix this?

neil young's entire "archives vol. 1" (125 tracks) is also 12 credits.

Oops! Page Not Found.

Sorry, we've come up empty on that one. It could be that we no longer have what you were looking for, or the link you clicked was bad.

Beauty is a Rare Thing

more rare now than it was a few minutes ago

they canceled my archives download 62 tracks in...

Yeah, I think they're "disappearing" the shocking deals on Rhino Box Sets as we speak (well, type).

ha, yeah, that seemed a little too good to be true!

I did get the Stax box set. Old R&B artists ripped off on royalties once again.

Yeah, I just missed Coltrane: The Heavyweight Champion, but I did nab the Ornette. It's kind of a weird set b/c everything's out of order. I was thinking about actually just reordering/renaming everything as the individual albums and dling the cover art. This idea also gives me an interesting and pointless hypo to bring up to my copyright professor.

Talking Heads - Remain in Light was a good deal at 8 credits - is that still up?

the browsing by year options still only go up to 2009, anyone know a trick to viewing just 2010 releases?

ordinarily i'd just pull up "new this month" to get what I'm looking for but the enormous amount of old catalog stuff added to the site at the beginning of the year has made that option a lot less useful as far as finding just new releases

^i pretty much have to check new releases every single day otherwise it becomes impossible to get through it all

amazing day of debuts on emusic.

e.g., the smiths; joy division; new order; buena vista social club; kraftwerk; ali farka toure; dinosaur, jr.

i hate to say it, but every time a new crop of archival material goes up i kind of get annoyed because that also means it'll be that much harder to search for new new releases for a while, per my gripes upthread about the lack of a 2010 file to look things up by

fwiw, this new crop of archival titles arrive at a good time. without them, it would have been a very uneventful new release tuesday. now you have a week to digest these warner titles before the next wave of (semi-)interesting new titles arrives next week.

Is there an easy-to-read list of the newest Warner additions? Searching by label is fruitless because they have so many subsidiaries, and eMusic seems only to want to highlight about six new Warner titles on their front page. 17 Dots' post yesterday was similarly curtailed.

I'd really appreciate a rolling RSS feed or similar with everything that is added (and available in my area)... Of course it would be way bloated by much karaoke, useless tribute albums, horrible rerecordings etc, but I'd be willing to deal with that.

Scott, you're absolutely right. If you dig down into the comments section of 17Dots, many more of the interesting new titles are identified.

Anatol, I don't know if you're in Europe or the United States. For Europe, someone on the eMusic Message Boards posts a daily list of all new arrivals.

Europe! I didn't know! Thanks!

Daniel, thanks. I looked through the comments and that was helpful. Still wish eMusic could make a simple list on its site - something that is text only and could be expanded to include more info would be extremely simple and totally helpful.

As it is, I waded through 20 pages (15 albums per page) of "new this week" - I only got to the Js, where I saw that Joy Division wasn't even listed, making wonder if even eMusic knows what the hell they have.

Here's a trick. When you're on the Freshly Ripped page, look for "0-0" in the middle of the URL. Go up and change it to "0-100." It increases the number of items on the page from 15 to 100. (It only goes up to 100.) Saves time.

woah dude you just made my day

Thanks for the tip!

It'd be nice if they had a feature where you could sign up for email alerts whenever they add something by a particular artist or list of artists.

nice selection of folkways blues stuff on sale

http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/smithsoniansale/index.html

e.g., the smiths; joy division; new order; buena vista social club; kraftwerk; ali farka toure; dinosaur, jr.

― Daniel, Esq., Wednesday, 3 March 2010 01:29 (1 week ago) Bookmark

Unless you are not in the USA of course.

As people have said upthread I now notice.

It would be great if emusic at least allowed us non-americans to view what we're missing. That "Oops! Page not found" page is getting real tiresome.

looking very possible very soon . . .

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/16371657/Nirvana.jpg

. . . among others. as early as next tuesday, i think.

probably more flattering band pictures exist, i imagine. bad choice on my part.

Are we talking sub pop or just major label nirvana?

Sub Pop

looks like it arrives tuesday (US market, only)

So does that mean the Sub Pop catalog is coming?

yes. no details on whether it's the entire catalog, but given the way the emusic staff dropped the hint on the 17 dots blog, i'd guess a significant portion of the catalog will arrive tuesday.

Glad to know... I almost started spending my March allowance.

sub pop.

No album pricing, though, which means that that Radio Birdman best-of I'd promised myself when this happened has sucked up 22 of my remaining 31 credits for the month.

Exciting, but as I look through what they have on offer I realize I've got most of what I want from SP already. Still, I saved probably seven or eight albums. Glad to finally re-acquire the Codeine catalog.

I'm just realising what astonishing amounts of classical music you can get on emusic, often of the 2 credit, 50 minute album variety. So much to explore!

classical fans seem to love emusic. i guess many great classical discs are on specialized indie labels?

Well, it may have to do with repertoire more than performances... the works of the great and close-to-great and "notable" and even somewhat minor (in say 1998 eyes) composers have already been available (and copyable) for so long that *serious* longtime fans have much of what they want and can just complement at leisure. Also, indies are obv better now than majors at issuing niche stuff (Renaissance Flemish organs, symphonies of the Mannheim school et al), plus fresh premiere recordings etc -- since majors are in their mindless panic of "financial result NOW, bugger 2020", regardless of genre.

OTOH but giving the same result, if you're a nu-curious (in general or for a niche), you see the prices and then of course do eMusic or buy Naxos to check out just a bit further.

FUCK

23 35 CREDITS DOWN THE DRAIN

I KNOW IT'S MY FAULT AND THERE'S NO POINT IN POSTING ABOUT IT BUT I'M VENTING

WHY CAN'T THEY SEND A FUCKING NOTIFICATION E-MAIL A COUPLE DAYS BEFORE THE END OF A PAY PERIOD OR SOMETHING DAMMIT

― cee-u-en-tee (some dude), Tuesday, October 27, 2009 12:13 AM (6 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

damn! i refresh today. sorry for your loss, obv., but that's for the reminder.

THE WINDOW IS CLOSING ON MY 38 CREDITS!

does eMusic let you keep whatever you download from them? basically know nothing about the service, but it must be worth something if y'all are using it

use-'em-or-lose-'em (i.e., no rollover credits).

i mean, i think they've experimented with other systems in efforts to retain customers since sony arrived, but they didn't make that a permanent change (as evidenced by SD's experience today).

yeah, i get that. my question is more of a, "How does the service work?" kind of question. you pay a fixed amount, they give you X credits for a given time period, and then you use up those credits for non-DRM'd mp3s they let you keep forever?

correct. you get a monthly allotment of credits. you can sign-up for a month-to-month plan or for longer periods (e.g., a year). prices are much better than, say, itunes or lala. i suppose aime street is a legitimate competitor in the same-ish price-point, but that service operates on a market system (the more popular a song or disc becomes, the more expensive it becomes).

oh cool, that sounds really neat actually

I'm always worried that I'll forget to use up monthly credits before they refresh -- it's the worst aspect of their system.

The best is that they are very price-competitive. For albums with a lot of tracks, you might do better buying a used CD, but most of the time I've found eMusic works out to a lower cost per track.

i think they're best feature is the editorial content (which they make available for free, but i realize that paywalls are a failed and flawed notion). but yeah, emusic's pricing is v. good.

it looks good. but i've mostly given up on the idea of paying for mp3s now tbh

spain's elefant records has basically their entire 7" catalogue up as of today. some tremendously good stuff in there if u like yr indiepop

new soundways disc. it will available everywhere in a couple of weeks, but for now it's only on emusic.

the 'new this month' etc page has become 1000x more difficult to navigate through

I think you can switch it back to the old format.

well i would love to know how, because i can't find any links to do it

i'm looking into it now. one thing that makes the page more navigable is the option to reduce the size of the album artwork back to the old size. just click the smaller of the two square buttons along the upper margin of the page. also, the option to display 100 albums makes navigating a bit easier (i realize there was a way to accomplish this before, by tinkering with the URL, but that's not the optimal way to go about it; the new option is).

ah that does make it slightly easier

New format for browsing sucks. No more browsing by editor's picks, no more narrowing down classical selections by multiple categories, etc.

^I haven't found that to be the case.

Why do so many song titles on comps include the artist name? It's not like the artist field is listed as "various".

Apart from the fact that emusic taggers are *cough* not always up to it, the actual reason is that the worldwide-&-appwide legacy tagging model from the clueless early 90s is highly, totally, maddeningly dysfunctional.

Artist-album-track, yeah right. Try tagging up some multi-composer non-recital classical album, or a dance compilation released under the name of a duo who curated it and who themselves made 6 out of 18 tracks on the album, while the remaining 12 tracks also occur on the albums of the respective acts, and then try to tell me the fucking a-a-t-prejudiced model is not useless from the absolute fucking start. Argh. <--- seven years frust right there

I applaud the wiki-type zeal of musicbrainz; I find what they do promising; it's imperfect as of now, but the way of the shared nollidge is the only way to get a somehow usable format sometime soon...

(musicbrainz also got proper style guides for capitalization, which may make me biased in their favour -- i mean NO WAY will I let a file with name or titletag "Like A Rolling Stone" onto my harddrive; they help me with that.)

i have very mixed feelings about the new search engine, but i'm beginning to like it a little more. in any event, emusic has been showering subscribers with free credits lately, for which i'm very grateful. sounds like a series of midyear promotional events.

Yess! No Pocky for Kitty is on here, I hvent heard this in years. And I got some bonus dloads. woot.

so many good titles debuted lately. apparently, september 14 is a big new-release day.

Im suprised I can get stuff like sebadoh and superchunk and whatnot! Idve thought it wouldnt be available outside the US.

My only real problem is my reccomendations are skewed, cos I used to let my ex dload stuff, and he got loads of postrock and ambient/WARP/IDM kind of crap, so now its telling me "hey get this awesome silver mt zion and taylor dupree shit!" argh.

appropos of nothing, but i'll say again that emusic has an amazing group of music-critics writing for them. consistently love their reviews and recommendations.

I always grin when I see a review is by Ned or Matos or someone else here.

pretty happy a bunch of >12 song albums i've been dithering over are now album pricing. including the 23-track broadcast & the focus group one

Rob got that on vinyl a bit ago, its good.

So, a friend of mine in Adelaide let his sub lapse, and he's now saying it wont let him sign up again AT ALL as a non US resident? WTF? Is this a new thing?

nah, they announced no new aus subs a while back, which includes when you let it lapse. drag.

can't change credit card # either

Shitey. Must be vigilant about keeping my sub going/getting as much as I can before this whole thing dies in that case.

Is it just Aus? or any non US?

non US/EU/Canada

Fuquers.

I came across something on the forums saying that eMusic US is going to be getting the rest of the majors later this year. Anyone know any more about this?

YEAH RUB IT IN WHYDONCHA >:|

lol

i was unimpressed at missing out on most of the sub pop catalogue but we still got the beach house & retribution gospel choir albums so i'm not too dark

xpost

I'm on eMusic UK, we've never had any of the major labels...

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.

Your membership will continue just as it is today, and your monthly payments will not change. While some popular tracks will be more expensive, members will still enjoy savings of 20% - 50% compared to iTunes a la carte prices.

sigh

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

I will be losing between 3 and 19 songs per month.

i'm still grandfathered in at $20/90 credits, so i'm hoping canada doesn't get this.

Q: What countries are affected by this change?

A: The conversion from credits to a monetary system will take place in all regions. Expect to see albums and tracks priced in your local currency starting in November 2010.

d'oh. but it looks like they're giving me a $24 bonus? hmmm

thats an awesome deal! i get a $2 bonus. pretty pissed actually.

they actually shafted me pretty hard on the last conversion.

i'm done after this month.

i kind of knew the 25 cent track wouldn't be around forever. and there's only 2 months left on my subscription so it's not so bad for me. rip cheap music.

$5 - $9 is still "cheap music," isn't it? As far as legit options go?

Fucking bastards - just lost 10 credits on a new month kicking in which I forgot was coming. GODDAMN them for not emailing a reminder amongst their endless requests for me to review and rate things I've bought.

$5 - $9 is still "cheap music," isn't it? As far as legit options go?

i'd say "yes," at the low to mid-point of that range (e.g., the $7.50 price point that lala used to charge). above $7.50, it depends on what format you're getting -- with digital music, it's debatable (with compact discs, there's more justifying a higher price, e.g., packaging, liner notes, and so forth).

They're definitely pushing it at that point imo. A lot of amazon.com mp3 albums are in that price range, and at that point I wonder why bother committing to the subscription amount.

I'm kind of adopting a wait-and-see attitude for this switchover. But from what I've heard so far, I'm not too thrilled about it either.

turns out the bonus credit applies every month as long as you keep your subscription going.

i don't really mind the new system as far as i can tell and have no intention of canceling my subscription, but i have to say in a weird way changing from 'credits' to currency might kill some of my enjoyment of the site. it was nice to just have a kind of abstract number of credits i could use up every month after i'd paid my fee, so it felt like i wasn't spending money, i was just a kid in a candy shop grabbing things i wanted off the shelf. that fantasy's gonna be kinda dead now.

i was just a kid in a candy shop grabbing things i wanted off the shelf

This exactly. Seem strange to change such a core part of the experience of the service. I got to assume it was a dictat of the major label: "These downloads are worth real money". Previously, it's felt like a way to explore stuff while throwing some money at the indie artists. Like a tip system in two senses of the word- tipping the artists, getting tipped off to new stuff.

So - this is happening next month, right? I was sure by November they meant this month, but everything seems the same right now (having just logged in for the first time in a little while after losing those credits last week).

i think it's mid-november, from what others have said on the emusic message boards.

i agree with that "kid in the candy store" feeling. it will certainly feel different after the change to a currency model.

why would they say things are happening in November and then change them in October? i figure there has to be at least some window of time between the announcement and the changes taking place anyways.

I guess I figured my November credits would be affected - my account cycles on the 25th of each month. But I guess maybe that's only the way I think of it, like I consider it my November paycheck when I get paid at the end of October, since it's money I'll be spending the next month. Or something.

my account refreshes at about the same time. i just got credits for this month (october).

just got this in my inbox:

As we prepare for the largest catalog addition ever to eMusic - 250,000 new tracks! - we want to be up front with our loyal indie fans and provide advance notice that music from Domino, Merge and the Beggars Group family of labels will no longer be available on eMusic as of Nov. 18, 2010 pending further discussions.

oh ffs

yeah. there's a thread on it, as well.

it guts almost all (maybe all) the major-indie labels from emusic, on the eve of a price increase. i don't get it. anyone have any insight about why, and why now?

i hope beggars et al are considering their own download store. if itunes is the only option, i won't ever buy music from any of these labels again

wow

i hope beggars et al are considering their own download store. if itunes is the only option, i won't ever buy music from any of these labels again

― the barenaked ladies are the roaring night (electricsound), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 8:33 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

can you use amazon mp3? i use that the most these days.

changes are changes, no biggie, but it is a bummer that they do this stuff with such short notice, if I'd known i would've stocked up on all the Merge stuff I'd been wanting to get for a while.

i'm less cut about merge as most of their stuff isn't avail to aus anyway, thanks to licensing by mostly useless local labels. losing 4AD is a big one though. places like boomkat and 7digital do carry them but when it ends up approaching 2nd hand cd cost it's not worth it.

amazon still U.S. only

don't regret cancelling last month

i've been a member since 2003, and THIS IS THE THANKS I etc.

the main joy of emusic has been seeing an opening act or hearing a random mp3 of a smaller band, and then going to emusic and finding they've got an album or two listed. i guess for the smaller indies this won't change anything, except the per-track price will be higher?

Like I said in the other thread devoted to this recent price hike, I'm now done with emusic. It was nice while it lasted, but I find almost everything I want for about the same price (and better bitrate) on Amazon - without having to worry about losing credits (My fault I know, but I've lost probably 4 albums worth of credits the past five years for various reasons).

yeah i quit a few months ago too

Erk does the Beggars group also inc 4AD?

I cant quit, I have a yearly sub I only just renewed about 3 months ago :(

But I still have credits, and not price? idgi.

beggars = 4AD, rough trade, xl, young turks and the defunct labels too pure, mantra, wiiija..

they're going before my sub renews, drag. i get most of what i want straight away but looks like i'll be missing the efterklang album, oh well that's what i get for snoozing

matador as well

Hmm. Warp are still on emusic right?

xpost i tht we couldnt get the matador shiz.

Wow, that's big - beggars stuff often seems to dominate the emusic charts -- at least four of the top 10 right now.

grabbing the Warpaint record while i can.

If you like the Warpaint, you might want to grab the Glasser while you're at it cos that's going too.

Hmm. Warp are still on emusic right?

Some Warp seems to be there, but it's far from being the complete discog afaict (at least in the UK).

i would wager that beggars were getting less $% than the majors, and if so i kinda don't blame them

matador responds but doesn't really say anything

lol they warned ppl that labels were going. i don't remember them ever doing that before in the 7 years i've was there (which always bummed me out).

tidal wave of new titles. verve, island, sanctuary, geffen, other UMG affiliates. prices look v. good, on the whole.

looks like "album deals" are still in place, which is good

talk talk's laughing stock is $2.50 (just by way of example; there's too much to digest, tbh).

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hX6TOfSKy2U/S2Xks2kivrI/AAAAAAAAAlI/JGPO_bhwsvg/s400/the+nice+price.jpg

lol. okay okay.

i asked beggars about non-itunes alternatives that non-US/UK customers could use to obtain their music and i got an arrogant response that suggested two places that non-US/UK people can't access, and itunes. great. fuck them.

beggars cant be choosers iirc

i love all indie labels that just departed, but i found their press-releases unseemly.

Hahah wow. Yesteday I had credits, and access to 4AD. TOday, I have $12.50, and all my TV on the Radio shortcuts have gone BOOM. Knew I should have gone on a spree last night grr.

Ok hang on woah woah. They've disabled re-downloading! WHAT THE FUCK.

search around, trayce. there's lots of new stuff. i'm trying to figure out what will be my first download of the new stuff.

wait, they couldn't have disabled downloading! that would be crazy.

wow you're not kidding. "re-purchase album"?!

I just signed up for a YEAR based on the labels available, and re-downloadable purchased tracks.

I want a fucking refund. Is that an option?

AND THEY DIDNT ANNOUNCE THAT.

hmm so what i'm getting from this is that if your track(s) don't successfully download, you have to buy them again. um, i don't think they thought this through.

Hi Everyone -
eMusic’s policy on re-downloads hasn’t changed: members who experience a technical problem while downloading a track or album will be able to retry the download free of charge. What is new as of today is that we can now detect whether or not a download has been completed successfully. 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 successful download, a blue button with a checkmark will appear. Members can click it to request an additional download but will be charged for it. 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. In the event you are unable to complete a download due to a technical problem, please contact Customer Care for assistance.

Looking ahead, we are working on a digital locker which will allow members to access their music collection in the "cloud" with any web-enabled device. We hope to make this feature available in the New Year.

thanks,
Cathy
eMusic

i still can't stand that itunes and amazon don't allow re-downloading (right?)

i don't tend to re-download stuff much if at all but it was nice to know the option was there. i'd find it a bit more palatable if they addressed dodgy files (with dropouts, glitches etc) with a greater urgency.

forgot that this was going to include ECM and Impulse. Will have to hang on for a bit longer. Prices are still cheaper than Amazon MP3, and at times cheaper than buying a very cheap used CD from amazon with the shipping.

Also Deutsche Grammophon, and obviously Geffen, Island Def Jam, etc

I re-downloaded a lot of things at work - it was easier to use the cloud computing method and re-grab my tunes that way rather than load up an ipod or USB stick. It wasnt like I was abusing the re-downloading (tho I will admit I once gave someone my login info so they could grab a couple of tracks off my downloads).

I only just renewed for a whole year and there is no way in hell I'dve done so if I knew changes this big were afoot.

as irritating as all this is i have to concede it's still the best option for me and i'm not about to go short of stuff i want to download (though if captured tracks leaves there'll be hell to pay!!1). i might go back to buying actual cds for the 4AD stuff.

So I'll just have to do everything I can to abuse the shit out of their current system out of spite.

xpost captured tracks?

(I'm glad I got Twin Shadow before this happened)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

twin shadow was 4ad iirc.

yes

(captured tracks = awesome NY indie label who i love)

i'm not on emusic, but i think my record is

captured tracks is v. good. a lot of killer singles. i need to check their prices under the new system.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-emusic-has-a-rift-with-indie-labels/

Interesting article, though doesn't add much on the indie fallout.

Apparently the subscriber base has not grown much in the last few years in spite of adding the Warner and Sony stuff.

It actually occurred to me that the switch to $ pricing is probably to attract subscribers by making it easier to show that their pricing is cheaper than itunes and amazon. Makes more sense when I think about it that way.

The loss of indie labels is problematic however. I have a feeling a lot of their base right now is of the "I still want the small labels to get my money" mentality, and if the small labels go, those consumers will increasingly go too.

they're pretty much in line w/ the rest of the indie stuff xpost

I just randomly selected an Edward Ka-Spel album I had in saved items and they want $5.99 for it. Fuck, I'd just go down to Second Spin and buy a secondhand cd... BUT THAT SHOP IS CLOSING :|

Dear music industry: go broke, fuck you.

I have a feeling a lot of their base right now is of the "I still want the small labels to get my money" mentality, and if the small labels go, those consumers will increasingly go too.

YES. this was a big one for me.

bandcamp ftw

Except bandcamp recently changed all its rules too innit?

i think that, of the 400K or so subscribers, there are far fewer of the "i still want the small labels to get my money" crowd than people assume.

Except bandcamp recently changed all its rules too innit?

how so?

If you get more than X amount of downloads of your page's tracks you have to pay for it.

Its because some labels were abusing the bandcamp system as a free hosting service, basically.

i look forward to the day i actually have to pay to get more downloads enabled on bandcamp ;_;

Hahah yeah thats kind of what I said to Rob, I was like "well its not as if you'll ever have so many downloads that uh oh"

why is it called "bandcamp."

"last year at band camp . . ." is all i think of with that name.

Ha.

Those prices look so ugly aesthetically, but that is a trivial complaint.

There's a survey you can fill in about the changes.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/402676/currency-launch-US?snid=DBD8291447FEAD65D8140F4873131F3F

I recommend we all do so. I assume that all the "awesome 250000 new tracks!" are not at all avaliable to me - so I gain nothing, lose 3 labels I heavily downloaded from, and cop a price increase, when I just subscribed for a whole year (and cant get a refund on, presumably).

so I gain nothing

you've gained a new screen name!

the number of great titles (esp. jazz titles) for $3.00 is astounding.

Just completed the cancellation of my account. Been a member since 2004 so it'll feel odd not having to remember to download 'x' number of downloads at the end of every month.

If we detect a problem with a download, the download button will turn red.

what a nice day to find out this doesn't actually happen.

I keep seeing a lot of "adios, eMusic" stuff on Facebook, but is this is just within my smaller nerd-y world? Is this move actually going to help them expand?

I am curious enough that I am going to hang on for one more month to see how it goes, but otherwise I suppose I'll be bailing too.

no way to know for sure, but i think the facebook/emu message board criticisms aren't representative samplings, and i wouldn't draw conclusions from them.

but losing those big three indie labels is going to leave a mark.

Before the switch, I had about 250 titles "saved for later." As far as I can tell, all of them are still available.

OK, example of the new pricing scheme sucking in at least one instance -- Coltrane Complete Live at Village Vanguard -- $26.10 in credits on emusic (4 discs), $27.00 with free shipping CD on Amazon, the latter obviously being better quality and not coming with the new redownload policy.

similarly, $6.50 for a Velvet Underground record on emusic vs. $7.99 for a CD. Increasingly thinking I might cancel.

found a pretty ridiculous one today... Deadbeat's Radio Rothko $9.31 vs Radio Rothko (continuous mix) 49 cents. Same album, an extra $8.82 for separate tracks.

if you search for music by a band on one of the indie labels that just left eMusic, it brings up a link to this saying "Help us bring back [band name]!":

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/413293/add-your-voice?snid=C2BE2E198D77A97033A192FDE9975D9C

seems really weird and kind of distasteful to me, although I don't really know the details of why those labels left.