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.

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.