EMusic Acquired, Halting Unlimited Downloads

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."

I agree

[91degrees]

By the way - When will /. offer a subscription with an unlimited number of pages?

Takeover Unwelcome

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one despise our new overpriced music overlords.

EMusic Dead Pool

[toupsie]

Post your predictions when this company goes belly up. My guess is March 12, 2004.

Not so bad

[indros13]

Big deal, no one will ever need more than (6)40 songs(K).

-Bill

Re:I agree

[Rogerborg]

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.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have a free one, but you have to use mozilla/phoenix prefs.js + usercontent.css as your browser :)

Re:Takeover Unwelcome

[Anonymous Coward]

New?

That's a real goddamn shame.

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Oh well. Back to kazaa.

My experience with EMusic

[KrispyKringle]

That's hilarious. I stumbled across EMusic (thanks to a mention of it in Zinf) at about the end of last week. I tried out the free demo, and figured $45 for three months of downloading was worth it. After all, I could only get about 3 albums for that price on CD; here I could find easily 10 or 20 good ones and tons more I wouldn't mind, so I figured it would pay for itself.

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:

NOTICE OF SUBSCRIPTION TERMINATION

Your EMusic.com subscription has been permanently terminated pursuant to sections 5.3 and 7.1 of the EMusic.com Subscription Agreement due to account activity in violation of the terms and spirit of the EMusic service.

The monthly subscription fee collected by EMusic.com with respect to the current period shall be reimbursed to your credit card account and EMusic.com will not bill for those months remaining of your subscription commitment period.

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.

Dear Emusic Customers...

[perimorph]

Dear Emusic Customers,

Please cancel your subscriptions so that the music industry can complain about the lack of subscribers.

To encourage cooperation, our services will be watered down considerably.

Thanks,
Darla McBride
President
Dimensional Associates LLC

Oh, just say it!

[Mattcelt]

$10 may not seem like much to you, but it's a lot to a working family. ...you insensitive clod!