EMusic - C/D

I was going to, but then I spotted this 7Digital sale. So many good MP3 albums for $2.00. I think the downloading process is a pain.

So I forgot that my account refreshes on the 26th or thereabouts, rather than the end/beginning of the month, and thus got ROBBED of $5.01 (was hemming and hawing on how to spend it since seemingly every album I wanted was $5.89 or $5.99. Totally fed up with this horseshit plus the relatively low bit rates and wanted to cancel my account. Short story long, they offered me a free month to stay. I took it, but am so cancelling after that.

yeah i've been on the $6.49/month plan for the last few months just as kind of a minimum involvement thing to see whether i want to stay in the long-term and increase my subscription again at some point, and it's really frustrating that pretty much every time i'm interested in a new album it's $6.99 (or it's even higher, which is frustrating in a different way because at that point i can usually get it cheaper on Amazon mp3). last month i kept delaying using it my downloads hoping that something new would come along with a lower price and then i forgot to go ahead and just download something older and cheaper before the new month rolled over.

so they've taken away record label name and release date from the new releases page

was there a point to doing this? uh i mean congrats on fucking it up for new bands i only discover through knowing the label name, wtg

i can't imagine the hassle having that info there was causing, i am sorry for your lots

cockmunchers

That really sucks. I browse classical new releases primarily where label is v v v important.

it looks like it's only gone when the cover art is thumbnailed (my default view). so not the end of the world but still hell of annoying

Found a good classical label (Radioservis, seeming to specialize in Polish and Hungarian stuff) whose album price is $4.40. Good to know about for those end of month situations. Has anyone noticed any other labels (of whatever genre) at this price?

The 61-track Homage a Nesuhi is a great comp of Atlantic Jazz for $5.99

Oh, good tip! There are a few such 2fer deals on there-- the Rhino Larry Levan comp is (or was) the price of one disc, as is Daniel Barenboim's killer 2cd of the Schumann symphonies. Some others I'm not remembering.

Now that the dust has settled on eMusic's new pricing structure, are there many people still using it? And if so are you satisfied with it? I let my account lapse about a year ago when I a little cash-strapped, but am thinking of signing back up. Is it worth it?

I'm still in but mostly just to irritate them.
My "grandfathered" account = Price: £6.39 (every 30 days) Bonus: £10.41 (every 30 days) Total Credit: £16.80 (every 30 days)

argh why do i keep forgetting to cancel my membership

at this point i basically keep my minimum membership partly as an excuse to look at eMusic's new releases slate every few weeks, which tends to be much easier to navigate than iTunes etc.

still cheaper than the alternatives for me

Same here.

i'm still grandfathered in at 22¢/track

still cheaper than the alternatives for me

― pitch defect (electricsound), Wednesday, May 11, 2011 7:13 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

i haven't done a lot of side-by-side comparison pricing but in my experience Amazon MP3 tends to have whatever new album i want for less than eMusic is selling it for

I got grandfathered in too - I use it, mainly for stuff I want to be able to listen to on my ipod while I'm running or sleeping. Sometimes I think it's a waste, but I always enjoy choosing my music and it is cheaper/easier to manage than alternatives. I don't like the switch from downloads to cash, though. It makes me feel way more likely to cancel.

amazon is not available to non-US residents

my alternative is 7digital, which occasionally is cheaper but not as a rule

oh right, forgot where you live -- still, though, i would like to give a shout out to Amazon MP3 for anyone who cares, they're pretty good!

Amazon has some stuff that emusic doesn't, they had a lot of seventies glam and bubblegum type stuff I like, but the navigation is atrocious. Emusic is definitely worth keeping if you're a big music fan. I'm glad they expanded actually!

amazon is not available to non-US residents

It's available in the UK.
But, more to the point, when are they going to stop with this 'region' shit?

when are they going to stop with this 'region' shit?

yeah i am fucking sick of it. australia gets fucked in the ass with this stuff all the time because we don't have any competitive local alternatives, either in range or price. itunes is more expensive than buying a cd.

I'm grandfathered but still deeply fucking aggravated after another month of missing my refresh date and losing out on $7 or $8. It is so obnoxious that they don't send a reminder email, which would be so insanely easy for them to do.

FYI - I attempted to cancel and they said "please don't leave - have a month for free and stick around," so I'm waiting for my refresh date to if it's that easy.

Since they're dicks who can't be bothered to send a reminder email or respond to inquiries about why they don't do that, I'll let everyone know how the free month plays out because you can all probably get one.

can you not just set an outlook reminder to yourself?

(other reminder applications are available)

i'm still grandfathered in at 22¢/track

the thing that really pissed me off was that i was in at 22 cents/track, but they kept diluting me down until it was 3 to 4 times that. the extent of my "grandfathering" ended up being like one track per month over current rates. more of an insult to injury thing, but srsly- fuck off emusic. i can buy at similar rates without a subscription.

can you not just set an outlook reminder to yourself?

I guess so, but - and I am willing to accept that this might be misguided - I kind of feel like the burden shouldn't necessarily be on me in this type of scenario.

i kinda agree. it'd be easy enough and nice of them. but sometimes you've gotta help yourself (and it is benefitting you, for not much effort)

(my 3g dongle quota is similar, a 30 day cycle. but i've done nothing about it. they DO actually text me when it's near the end but i never get them as i don't use their clunky windows client)

Well, you've all pretty well answered my question. Not going to resubscribe.

Just put my account on hold after 6 years (will probably drop it for good, but wanted to make sure)and signed up with MOG for mobile.

most of you probably know this (some of you probably wrote editorial pieces in connection with it), but for everyone else, emi and its subsidiaries -- e.g., blue note, mute -- arrived en masse this morning at emusic.

Unless, of course you are in the EU, UK or Canada...

Irritated. I have $4.62 and everything I want is > $5.
Is there a way to search for price points? I hate this system. This is totally making me want to cancel this dumb account and be done with it.

iirc you can search by number of tracks, which might help

Yeah, I tried that but it was like wading through a deep field of muck. I could just get a couple of tracks from an album I want, then fill in the blanks later, I guess but geez. I don't like their browsing setup at all if they are going to hold to this $ model.

You tried searching by number of tracks and genre? Also, I think that you can search through just the albums that have the 'deal' flag.

Number of tracks and genre at the same time, I mean.

once i get down to below the price of most full albums, i usually wait until the day before my refresh, buy the tracks i can afford, and then come back the next day to finish the album. although now that i type it out, that sounds kind of ridiculous and hoop-jumpy, and of course it doesn't help if i buy a lot at the beginning of the month and then have to wait and wait for the refresh.

Think I'm going to cancel and go back to used CD's once I move and actually have room for a CD library again. Too many albums I want are $6+

so emusic canada now has one kanye album and one lady gaga album. talk about a slow rollout of a major.

Might not be quite to your taste and maybe the pricing works out different in the US, but here are some good artists to check that often have just a few tracks per album. All ambient, experimental and um, modern classical stuff:

Robert Ashley
Steve Roach
Nurse With Wound
Klaus Schulze
Walter Marchetti
Rhys Chatham
Gavin Bryars
Oren Ambarchi
William Basinski
Black Swan
Tony Conrad
Taylor Deupree
Irr.App.(Ext.)
Charlemagne Palestine
Eliane Radigue
Yellow Swans

Great list, and I already have some of those bases covered (NWW, Schulze, Basinski) but the others are good reminders. You read my mind!

The only prob seems to be that what used to be a good deal album has turned into a $5.99 album, and most of these (at least the ones I just looked at) are $5.99 now. I mean, that is not a lot of cash, and I would pay it, but I have $4.62 credit. So...do I get booster pack and just spend more than I planned on spending? Maybe. Do I plan out what I'm going to download next time so that I have *just* the right balance of credit and albums? Unlikely, knowing me.

The hoop jumping is greatly outweighing my enjoyment of 2.5 albums per month at this point.

That's too bad, lots of the albums by the guys on that list only cost about a pound here.

Arrrgh....I was so busy this week that I didn't finish downloading last months downloads...I lost thirty god damned dollars! They should send you an automated e-mail every month to remind you!

that kind of programming costs $$$$$$$$$

It wouldn't cost them anything. They do that very deliberately. That's why I quit - for the record, you can go to cancel your account and the'll give you one month free to stay on. I did that, then quit as soo as I had spent those credits. They're dicks.

pretty much every monthly subscription service works this way. i was in my u-haul storage space two days over and i had to pay for an entire month. i wanted to burn the fucking building down.