Recent Down Loads And Additions From E - Music

[mjzee]

Where does it say that prices are going up?

[captainwrong]

Where does it say that prices are going up?

Log in and check this link: https://www.emusic.com/account/notification.html

For most people, the price increase is close to 50%! Considering I'm on eMusic because I really don't care about SonyBMG stuff, this might be a deal breaker for me.

[jazzbo]

yeah, that bites. I may not keep the account forever.

[mjzee]

Yes, I just saw the bad news. I have one more month at the current rates on each of my two accounts, and then I'm quitting. It was a great ride while it lasted!

Hmmmm. I saw something on their bulletin board about Best Buy booster packs. Wonder if I should pursue that now.

[RDK]

I'm currently on a 50/$11.95 plan which reverts to 30/$11.95 at the end of July. I'll probably stick it out for a while - hell, I've got nearly 500 albums in my Saved for Later list! - and just cherry pick albums with fewer tracks.

[BFrank]

My sub expires at the end of January and they are converting my 75/mo to 35/mo for almost the same price. Don't like that, but there are other plans.

A couple of interesting notes to take the sting away:

* Free Booster Pack!

To celebrate the addition of all this great music we're giving you a 15-track booster pack (good for 30 days), free! The booster pack will automatically be added to your account in early August

* New album pricing

Ever hesitate to download an album comprised of many tracks because it'd eat up so many credits? Album pricing will allow you to download selected albums of 12 or more tracks for the price of 12 downloads. The change will be a boon to fans of classical music and two-minute thrash-masters alike.

[Soulstation1]

Probably convert one of my emusic memberships to a netflick membership

[ejp626]

I'm currently on a 50/$11.95 plan which reverts to 30/$11.95 at the end of July. I'll probably stick it out for a while - hell, I've got nearly 500 albums in my Saved for Later list! - and just cherry pick albums with fewer tracks.

Right, well I'm on the 90/$19.95 plan which goes to 50/$19.95, nearly doubling the price per track. I feel I'm getting royally shafted to the point where I'll probably get a few boosters to clear out my baglog* and cancel.

*backlog, though baglog looks cooler.

Edited June 2, 2009 by ejp626

[John L]

Yea, time to move on for me as well. emusic was nice in avoiding costly major pop artists on major labels and passing some of the savings on to us. Now, it seems that they have made a decision to go the Amazon-iTunes route and pass the bill to us. No thanks. When you factor in the sometimes low and unpredictable byt rate of their MP3s and the plan that forces you to buy music every month under a use-it-or-lose-it clause, Amazon and iTunes now seem much more attractive to me.

Edited June 2, 2009 by John L

[Drew Peacock]

Did the price of booster packs already increase? $0.50 per track

[Free For All]

I'm disappointed to hear about this price hike. I've really enjoyed E-Music, I've found a lot of great music there (most recently the Criss Cross catalog), but I don't think I'll be staying on with the higher prices. At any rate, I need to cut some of these monthly membership fees from my budget.

[Jams_Runt]

Far be it from me to sound like an Emusic apologist, especially since I'm mighty ambivalent about the price hike myself, but I recently heard from a jazz musician who is well respected in these parts that he has never seen a dime from emusic downloads. I was seriously considering canceling my membership after that. I hope that with the rate hike the artists will actually get paid. Up until now Emusic has been operating with a model where they offer subscribers downloads under cost, banking on the fact that not everyone will use them. As someone who has been burning through my 90 downloads a month the day I get them, I've often wondered how sustainable this model could be. Now it looks like they are going to be offering downloads at cost, which makes sense to me.

I do think rolling the new rate hike out with the HEY LOOK SONY! MILESCASHSPRINGSTEENCLASHWUTANGHOOORAY!!! (and we're going to charge you more for less) was a BIG mistake. I even think I can come close to my 90 downloads if they cap the Chronological Classics at 12 downloads per album.

Wait that defeats the purpose. Dammit, what a mess :blush2:

[RDK]

I'm reluctant to consider this some "end of the world" for emusic. With the price increase (I think to around .40/track for me), it will make me more discriminating, but it's still a great deal, especially on albums with fewer tracks. At my plan, I'll only have 30 tracks/mo, but used wisely I can get 5 or 6 albums out of that - I've downloaded many 2/3/4 track jazz albums over the years - and I'll probably sample albums more, grabbing just a track or two. But i do predict that I'll be buying more used CDs. And cutting back, maybe I'll finally be able to dig into the backlog of stuff I already have.

[Free For All]

And cutting back, maybe I'll finally be able to dig into the backlog of stuff I already have.

Definitely, that's what I plan to do. I really don't need to buy as much music as I do.

[A Lark Ascending]

Rather sad, but this seems how things go.

Something quite unique starts and becomes a middle league success. Those who run it get drawn into the possibility of going into the big league and enter mainstream territory. The distinctiveness vanishes, step by step. As, very often, does the business!

As long as e-music continues to offer the range of music it does and prices don't exceed iTunes or Amazon I'll stick with it, though probably cut back once the price hike hits Europe.

One thing I wish they'd be is a bit more discriminating - for yesterday's new releases you had to wade through yet another low budget label releasing a zillion early jazz collections, the music of which is available elsewhere.

[randyhersom]

I'm hanging in, but I'll pick up the pace of redownloading items from my 2x 2K club heyday. It could be the beginning of the end, but it's not the end just yet. Black Saint/Soul Note was a lot of fun, as has been the whole experience. It will be a pleasant surprise if they dig out some long OOP DIW titles.

[John L]

Far be it from me to sound like an Emusic apologist, especially since I'm mighty ambivalent about the price hike myself, but I recently heard from a jazz musician who is well respected in these parts that he has never seen a dime from emusic downloads. I was seriously considering canceling my membership after that. I hope that with the rate hike the artists will actually get paid. Up until now Emusic has been operating with a model where they offer subscribers downloads under cost, banking on the fact that not everyone will use them. As someone who has been burning through my 90 downloads a month the day I get them, I've often wondered how sustainable this model could be. Now it looks like they are going to be offering downloads at cost, which makes sense to me.

Could you please explain this a bit further? Do companies offering dowloads actually incur costs per download? I assumed that they simply pay a fee for the right to sell particular MP3s for a certain amount of time. Under that model, the marginal cost to emusic of downloads would be zero.

I would also not expect that emusic would pay the artists directly unless the artist owned the copyright to the music. The artists should receive compensation from the company that sells the rights to emusic. But maybe they don't. That is an interesting question indeed. Do companies have an incentive to sell MP3s as opposed to CDs because of some loophole that allows them not to compensate the artists?

[Jams_Runt]

I guess I wasn't too clear. The jazz artist said that his label hasn't seen a dime from emusic. Also, I tried to find the article, but I read that the licensing fee emusic paid to labels was closer to 40 cents a download. They were charged almost half that with the expectation that not everyone would use all their downloads. It was not a sustainable business model.

[John L]

I guess I wasn't too clear. The jazz artist said that his label hasn't seen a dime from emusic. Also, I tried to find the article, but I read that the licensing fee emusic paid to labels was closer to 40 cents a download. They were charged almost half that with the expectation that not everyone would use all their downloads. It was not a sustainable business model.

Thanks, but I am still not clear on this.

Why hasn't the label hasn't seen a dime from emusic if a licensing fee was paid?

My question about the licensing fee refers to the nature of the contract. If the contract reads that emusic is paying a fixed fee to a label for the right to sell downloads for XX amount of time, then the business model that you refer to is not clear. Since emusic would not incur any cost per download in this case, it would not make sense to rationalize licensing frees in per download terms. emusic sells memberships (downloads) on the basis of what it makes available. But the optimal (profit-maximizing) price that it should charge for downloads is independent of licensing fees that it pays.

One possibility is that some major companies like Sony try to protect their CD markets by stipulating a minimum price for downloads in licensing contracts. In that case, emusic may have had to choose either to decline major labels or raise its prices.

Edited June 3, 2009 by John L

[ejp626]

I guess I wasn't too clear. The jazz artist said that his label hasn't seen a dime from emusic. Also, I tried to find the article, but I read that the licensing fee emusic paid to labels was closer to 40 cents a download. They were charged almost half that with the expectation that not everyone would use all their downloads. It was not a sustainable business model.

Thanks, but I am still not clear on this.

Why hasn't the label hasn't seen a dime from emusic if a licensing fee was paid?

Yes, not clear. Is this because not one customer downloaded any of their tracks? If that's the case, maybe there is a larger problem than their emusic contract.

[Jams_Runt]

I've clearly gotten myself in over my head here. I know for a fact people have downloaded this guy's music from Emusic. I do not know how the emusic model works, but I swear I read that each actual download cost emusic 40 cents, but that they charged less with the goal of making money on the unused downloads. I know that they have had financial problems recently, and I assume this is why some musicians and their labels might not have seen the money, (although I am also sure that it is a small amount we are talking here.) I am going to shut up now, because I have been frantically looking for the article I mentioned and I have been getting nowhere. I always hate it when I read some crackpot theory that someone backs up with "I read this somewhere I swear..." and I now see I have turned into that exact crackpot.

[ejp626]

I've clearly gotten myself in over my head here. I know for a fact people have downloaded this guy's music from Emusic. I do not know how the emusic model works, but I swear I read that each actual download cost emusic 40 cents, but that they charged less with the goal of making money on the unused downloads. I know that they have had financial problems recently, and I assume this is why some musicians and their labels might not have seen the money, (although I am also sure that it is a small amount we are talking here.) I am going to shut up now, because I have been frantically looking for the article I mentioned and I have been getting nowhere. I always hate it when I read some crackpot theory that someone backs up with "I read this somewhere I swear..." and I now see I have turned into that exact crackpot.

If you find it cool; I'm not suggesting you just made this up. We're just curious.

And indeed if eMusic is losing money, well paying more is sometimes a necessary evil. It will still be slightly better than iTunes for a lot of what I listen to, but not so much better that I won't cancel after I get through my backlog, particularly the rest of the Black & Blue catalogue. I actually found there are roughly 80 albums on my main wish list, and maybe 35 of them are no longer worth it to me at the new price point (yet 5 or 10 are now better deals if I can actually get them for 12 dls). Then about 75 from Black & Blue. So I might stick around 6-9 months longer.

I think what bothers me the most is that they have this ridiculous PR campaign that is trying to make me feel GREAT about getting considerably less than I currently do for the same price. I absolutely hate it when companies treat their customers like idiots.

[RDK]

I've heard nothing about emusic losing money; in fact, from all accounts they're (relatively) thriving.

As I've heard the business model, they essentially take all the money each month from the gym-style subscription plan (meaning that many won't use up all their alloted tracks) and after taking their cut, they split the money equally between all the tracks downloaded that month. So, for example, if 100,000 are downloaded in total and an artist's tracks were downloaded 5 times, then that artist receives 5/100,000 of the total pot. I've also heard that the average payout to an artist is .40/track, but that seems high since it's more than what I'm currently paying for a track (.24).

As for an artist not getting paid, maybe he needs to take it up with the label. I still remember Buddy DeFranco complaining on the message board of his website - dunno if it's even still there - that so many years later he never personally saw a dime from Mosaic's boxed set of his work.

[Soulstation1]

I wonder if James Oscar Alfredson has recieved a check from emusic?

[Soulstation1]

OMG

Miles Davis Kind Of Blue is part of the new package deals