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EMusic Acquired, Halting Unlimited Downloads
Posted by
michael
on Thu Oct 09, 2003 08:17 AM
from the pray-i-do-not-alter-it-any-further dept.
from the pray-i-do-not-alter-it-any-further dept.
wallabywatson writes "EMusic.com have announced that they are cancelling their $9.99 a month unlimited download service after being acquired by Dimensional Associates LLC. Instead, subscribers will be limited to 40 downloads (ie 3ish albums) per month. A new premium $50 a month service will allow 300 tracks (~25 albums). The service details have been released as have new terms and conditions. If, like me, you think this sucks and want to cancel your subscription go here before November 8, 2003."
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Link... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link... (Score:5, Informative)
I not sure whether or not users will be committed to pay until the end of the account's three-month or one-year term, however. I recommend that anyone charged beyond October dispute the charges.
Parent
I agree (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I agree (Score:3, Funny)
I was so busy laughing up chocolate milk through my nose that it took me a few seconds to realise that I wasn't even drinking chocolate milk.
Don't go "there" (Score:5, Informative)
Just login to EMusic and stop your subscription if you want to cancel. I just did.
Darnit, no more all I can download cheesy sound effects MP3's...
Re:Don't go "there" (Score:3, Insightful)
It was too good to last. (Score:3)
If not...bye bye emusic. It was nice knowing ya.
instant responce (Score:2)
Re:instant responce (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:instant responce (Score:3, Informative)
It's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bad news (Score:4, Interesting)
I strongly believe that the ability to easily FIND NEW music is the biggest gap in digital music right now, and a huge lost opportunity for independent labels. What I would love would be a subscription based unlimited download service, like eMusic was, that also sold CD's and gave you download credit for everything you purchased. Then people who bought CD's would have a convient venue to discover new music - downloading mp3's for free, and the ones that didn't would have a convient venue for paying for downloaded music.
If you were to integrate (cross link) this with a nice online radio site, like live365.com, then I would be in music heaven.
Parent
ITMS (Score:3, Interesting)
The rumors suggest that it will be out on Windows before the end of October. I'll play with it on my Windows box, but I'll still do all my purchasing on my Macs.
Re:ITMS (Score:3, Informative)
>I'll play with it on my Windows box, but I'll still do all my purchasing on my Macs.
What purchasing? You're renting. It's DRM crippled encrypted data, and your license to decrypted it is revokable. You'll be paying them money to the day you die.
Re:ITMS (Score:3, Informative)
There's actually 3 plans (Score:5, Informative)
EMusic Basic: $9.99 per month/maximum 40 downloads
EMusic Plus: $14.99 per month/maximum 65 downloads
EMusic Premium: $50.00 per month/maximum 300 downloads*
*Only for members who signed up before October 8th, and only if you sign up for Premium by November 8th.
EMusic Dead Pool (Score:5, Funny)
Re:EMusic Dead Pool (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, now they can make guaranteed payouts to rights holders; I'm not so sure this is a death knell. Probably an intense metamorphosis in subscriber base.
We've been saying it on the currently-dead message boards [emusic.com] for months -- if all of Emusic's subscribers downloaded as much as we did, they'd expire overnight, taking in less than a penny per track.
It was only a matter of time before they had to revamp their pricing structure. I just didn't expect so drastic of a change.
Parent
Tell me how this works... (Score:2)
And it's not like there are no alternatives where unlimited music downloads are available, right?
Right now thier customers are those people who are kind enough to give them a break and not go and download thier songs from kazaa. How does kind of a
Re:Tell me how this works... (Score:3, Interesting)
>how does this end up earning money for them?
Pyramaths. You just need to keep squeezing. Here's how it works.
You crank your prices by 5%. For one month, you're making 105% of what you were making before.
At the end of the month, 10% of your customers leave. No problem, you crank your prices by another 10%, to 115.5% of your original price. With 90% of the customers, you still make 103.95% of what you were making before you started squeezing.
The next month, another 10% of your customers leave
Cancel subscription link (Score:5, Informative)
Cancel link [emusic.com]
Probably going to stick with it for now (Score:2, Interesting)
Still, I think I'm probably going to keep the subscription since I average about 3 albums a month anyhow. I just wish they would let unused downloads accrue.
The really annoying thing for me about Emusic is that I can't access certain albums from Europe, and I'm too lazy to change my bill
Not so bad (Score:2, Funny)
-Bill
Alternative (Score:2)
what about unlimited AM radio equiv downloads? (Score:4, Interesting)
Small files. Fast downloads. Free advertising for the bands, rather than 'digital pillaging on the cyber-high-seas'. Lets you 'try before you buy'. etc etc.
That's what I want. I'll pay for it by buying more regular CDs if it recommends some good stuff to me.
There's something wrong with the pricing... (Score:2)
(Of course you might want to say the price in kinda inflated compared to the price the music industry sells their CDs to the store. Especially if they sell it for 8$ and the middle man adds 9$ for shipping, paying it's workers, etc. But
Emusic NOT an Unlimited Service (Score:4, Insightful)
With a business strategy like this, it's not hard to see why Emusic is being acquired. Unfortunately, it's hard to see how this new pricing structure will work any better with a music catalog that is decidedly obscure.
Lets do some math.... (Score:2, Insightful)
If I opt for the $50/month subscription and CHOOSE to subscribe twice a year, every SIX months, then I'll pay only $100 and be able to download 600 songs. I can use the time lag to see if they can indeed add to their song catalog in the meantime and wait for something worth downloading (good music, good quality files, etc) to be added.
Not only that, but the time lag ALSO allows me to go elsew
Re:Lets do some math.... (Score:5, Informative)
You can't do the $50 thing twice a year. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to subscribers that opened their accounts before October 8, and it's only good till November 8. You cancel it, it's toast.
As a current subscriber, I'm not so convinced it's the olive branch they intended it to be. Maybe at $25.
Parent
NOOOOOO!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you people want? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really folks, I can't figure some of you out. People who are cancelling their subscriptions over this are being unreasonable.
You're wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that you are paying the full price wether or not you actually download 40 songs. Being a mostly indie site, you may rarely have any idea what you are downloading. You may download 40 songs before you even find one group that interests you (unless you only stay with groups you aleady know).
Another problem is that it's subscription, unlike iTunes. That is, if I downloaded 12 song's in three mo
Re:What do you people want? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's only 25 cents if you download the max. Even if the service had every track you want there's only so long you could sustain that price point. Given that the music in question is not going to all appeal - entire genres might not interest you - then the base cost of $50 per month, if you only download 5-10 songs is way too high.
TWW
Re:What do you people want? (Score:3, Insightful)
Along with the selection, at least iTunes
Re:What do you people want? (Score:4, Insightful)
The reward, though, is getting turned onto bands that you would have never found out about otherwise. You download 20 CD's in a month, and out of those you find 2 new bands that you think are really cool. You can then check the "you might like" links and branch out from there. Over a couple of years, you wind up with a pretty good education in indie music. It had the potential to really elevate indie music to a new level of acceptance (like IFC & Sundance try to do for indie film).
but not anymore. That's what people are complaining about. I'd be willing to pay more per month, but I won't pay to lose the joys of exploration. The reason eMusic will hurt from this is that their catalog is really not strong enough in mainstream music selections to provide a compelling value proposition other than the joy of exploration. Of the 400-500 CD's (not tracks) I've downloaded, there are probably 100 that I think are really good. That's 20%. At 40 tracks a month, that means I'll average out 8 really good songs a month; if I'm lucky, those will be on one CD & I'll discover - when I'm lucky - 1 new band I like a month.
It's not about the cost per song I like. It's somewhat about the cost of songs I don't like, but moreso about the loss of exploration. It's the same reason people want to hold onto Kazaa, but we were exploring legally & in a socially responsible manner. It's the loss of discovery that's killing me, not the price per song.
Before eMusic, I was not even familiar with Mogwai(!), much less bands like Wheat, South San Gabriel, Mark Eitzel, or Claire Voyant. I'm not in college anymore - eMusic was my connection to new, non-corporate album-oriented music. And now that connection is lost.
Parent
music in America (Score:3, Insightful)
-- Hunter S. Thompson
That's a real goddamn shame. (Score:4, Funny)
My experience with EMusic (Score:3, Funny)
So I registered for the 3 month service ($15 a month) last Sunday and started downloading. Now, you only can queue 45 tracks at any given time, which is a real pain (I considered scripting something to aid me on this, but never got around to it). But whenever I was at my machine, I'd click on new albums to download. Finding good artists was easy--EMusic doesn't have the absolute widest selection--so I just started at CCR, downloading every single album, and went right through 'till I realized on Tuesday that I had nearly 4000 tracks. W00t.
Well, on Teusday, when I was sorta coming off that initial orgy of downloading, I got the following e-mail from EMusic:
Now, just to make it clear to anyone who missed the implications: my usage patterns apparently matched those of a 'bot (and why not--I was a machine!). So EMusic cancelled my subscription and refunded my service fee. I got 4000 MP3s, legally, for absolutely free. So as I said, w00t. Too bad this service isn't around any more.
This is a bullet put through emusic's brain. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The old bait and switch! (Score:3, Insightful)
YES! MICROSOFT! +30943047)&$&097340734 EXCELLENT
You do not deserve instant karma for simply turning every negative concept and applying it to Microsoft. Of course they're not going to start charging timed licenses for their OS. It's not clever, and it's not funny. Stop cheating at life and think of something clever to say.
Re:It sucks anyway (Score:2)
If you subscribe to the $9.99 plan and max it out monthly you're getting tracks for 25 cents. Not bad, but nothing like what we were getting.
My year was just about up, and I've got some pretty cool stuff. But I just don't know if it's worth it. Their $50 "olive branch" to subscribers certainly isn't.
Re:It sucks anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
In that context perhaps it isn't that bad. Although now I feel like I'm waisting a quarter every time I download and will feel Obligated to download 40 a month reguardless of if I want them or not. Maybe I'll wait it out for a month or so and see if I have problems with the cap. The main issue for me is that I'm a binge downloader. I might download 100 songs in a month, then nothing for 3 months. Now I'm probably just going to end up pissed off that I can't download
Re:Why is this so bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is that EMusic doesn't carry mainstream stuff; it's good music, but it simply isn't worth as much money.
Hmm. Time to change my sig...
Re:Why is this so bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
To bring you up to speed:
The format is MP3 and they say they're keeping it that way. So, no DRM. (That's why Emusic is the only non-CD PC format I get my music in; the CDs are only un-"protected" ones btw. I listen to my music my way, thankyouverymuch.)
They are available around the world but licensing agreements do require them to keep certain tracks available to i.e. North Americans only. Mostly foreign stuff that's supposedly selling well in foreign countries.
Finally, part of the reason Emusic is still cheaper is that their catalog is largely eclectic and indie stuff, with a sprinkling of "sampler" albums from a sprinkling of "popular" artists. That stuff goes cheaper, so it can be sold cheaper. I don't know how much this trend will continue.
I agree with you that they did need to change to be profitable. I just think they made too drastic of a change here.
Parent
Re:Why is this so bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been with them almost a year. My sub runs out in Nov. (Now...it's Nov 7 to be exact)
In that time, I've grabbed about 130 cd's. So maybe 12 cd's per month. 120 tracks on average. Often, I might go a month or two without anything, and then go get a bunch all at once.
With this new d/l limit, I'd have to cut back to 1/3. About 4 cd's per month, for the same price. And no month to month carryover of unused tracks.
Plus, now you'd have to be MUCH mor
Re:Ouch... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are you going to cancel? Just because they eliminated the "unlimited" downloads?
That makes absolutely no sense.
People should still be keeping their accounts and *encouraging* this type of non-DRM service. It's still cheaper (much!) than the next-best alternative, iTunes. Although I understand that their n
Oh, just say it! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent