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."

Such a shame

[yeschat]

This really does suck. If they could not afford to keep up the unlimited downloads, they should not have offered them from the start. I already canceled. It really kind of hurts to be honest. E-music was a example of how indie labels could work with selling music online via mp3. Now that is ruined.

I can't believe that anyone subscribing now won't cancel. I really have to wonder where they came up with this pricing plan. Oh well. Let's hope another good place like emusic comes around. Sad.

ITMS

[Arkham]

For people who download a lot of music, EMusic might have been a good deal before (not so much now). But for those of us who buy less than 10 songs a month, Apple's iTunes Music Store (ITMS) is a much better deal.

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.

Probably going to stick with it for now

[Hesperus]

I read the email from emusic as soon as it had landed in my inbox, and the change did annoy me, especially the fact that they buried it 3/4ths of the way down, where presumably they thought folks weren't going to read it.

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 billing info and set up a proxy server.

what about unlimited AM radio equiv downloads?

[rjforster]

The problem is I don't know what I want. I already have every CD by every band that I know that I like. As I can tell from a 56kbit mono OGG file whether I like the music or not I can then either buy the album or not, my choice.

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.

Re:It sucks anyway

[archen]

you're getting tracks for 25 cents

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 something. Is that worth flushing $100+ down the toilet per year? Hard to say.

Re:Tell me how this works...

[Rogerborg]

>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. Can you guess what your response is? Yes, squeeze the remainder.

It sounds insane, but as long as you have one paying customer, you can keep squeezing and squeezing and making more money that you were before.

Unfortunately for EMusic, this model is pretty much predicated on you being able to lock your customers in with proprietary incompatible products, or on them having Federal size budget and being unwilling to admit that they're getting buttfucked. See Microsoft's licensing schemes that (shock!) always seem to cost you more after each revision, and Windows for Warfare on Navy boats. Also see music sellers - sorry, lenders - that give you encrypted DRM crippled data and a revokable license to decrypt it. If you're giving those people money, be prepared to do so for the rest of your life.

But EMusic... well, people are going to leave there pretty fast, which is going to accelerate the price squeeze. You don't want to be their last customer, because he's really going to catch it in the shorts.

Re:bad news

[Sporkinum]

And no, Kazaa dos not make music (ie music you've never heard) easy to find, it only finds things that you already want.

I disagree. When looking for something, I often will look at other tracks from someone I am downloading from. Also different bands do covers. I'll download the covers or unknown stuff, and If I like what I hear, I'll buy their discs. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is a good example of a band I never heard of. I ended up buying 3 CDs from their website.

Re:bad news

[pavon]

I have been contemplating joining eMusic for the exact same reason. I haven't because I had a hard time justifying the cost when I would end up buying CD's from all the bands I liked anyway.

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.

Re:instant responce

[Dot.Com.CEO]

It took me two minutes to find the credit card I signed up with and cancel it. I have wanted to cancel since they changed to that shitty download manager that does not let you queue more than 40 mp3s. I was never a huge downloader but I liked the fact that I could queue up 10 albums once every two months and listen to them. They totally screwed my user experience with that stupid limitation. So, yes, I am very sad to stop being their customer since I learnt of artists there was no way I could find out about but there is NO WAY this price structure is realistic.

Re:ITMS

[Mryll]

Though what you're burning is a lossy reproduction of the track's original representation. Good as the original for some listeners and material, not nearly as good as the original for other listeners and material...