EMusic - C/D

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.

i was being facetious--that's one reason i quit them too

the change in the system is an insidious money-sucker too, because before you always had a number of 'songs' on your account that you could use up, now that the account balance is measured in dollars and cents, there's always going to be some odd remainder that you won't find a song of that amount to purchase, so when the month rolls over that's basically money you get no benefit all from having given to them.

no. "loose change" -- less than enough to download a final song in a given month -- rolls over to the next month.

even then, if i have sixty cents left to spend, it won't roll over, because i could potentially find some .49 song to download. so then it becomes a matter of hunting around for a song that falls within this magical price-point, or else losing the money. it's tedious.

you're right. but it was the same way with the old credit system (if you had a stray credit or two left at the end of a billing cycle, those credits didn't roll-over to the new billing cycle; instead, you lost them).

yeah, but a credit was a credit -- you grabbed a song and went on your way. usually i'd get one or two songs off an album that i intended to complete during the next pay period. this new business of hunting for an appropriately priced single at the end of every pay period was what finally annoyed me enough to put my account on hold (that and the appearance of US spotify).

no. "loose change" -- less than enough to download a final song in a given month -- rolls over to the next month.

― Daniel, Esq., Saturday, August 20, 2011 10:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

really? good to know, i thought it didn't!

but reddening otm, it's still another reason the site sucks now compared to the old days

Just cancelled for good. I basically spent three weeks trying to reduce my account level and got no help from customer service. Every time I'd try to drop to a lower plan I'd get a glitch. Luckily the cancel function did not glitch. Was barely worth it anymore anyway -- near CD price for low-quality mp3.

I have an eMusic question. How do the royalties work with the labels in this type of situation: eMusic has just put the new Sacred Bones reissue of the Eraserhead soundtrack up for £1.28. It's retailing for about £40 on vinyl. I'm sure this was some kind of automated thing, because it's only technically a four track album (similarly, the reissue of Sleep's Dopesmoker was put up for 84p as a single song).

Am I boning the labels or bands if I jump on those possible mistakes, or will they get the same cut no matter what?

I have read (in an old interview with one of the emusic honchos) that the labels always get paid more for tracks over 6 minutes. No idea about comparing it with LP sales.

I want an emusic this-or-that thread.

Ie, should I go ahead and buy the new Gudrun Gut, Wildlife for the unusually high $9.48 of credit, or should I wait til November 6 to see if Andy Stott's Luxury Problems will get a timely emusic release.

Not a rhetorical question.

the psychology of buying on itunes is v different than the psychology of buying on emusic. with itunes i think, "do i really, really want this? can an album with a lead song called zed the mythical goat possibly be worth $9.99?" with emusic i think, "eh, they've already taken my X dollars this month; might as well download this."

anyone know what's the typical price of an album for an emusic subscriber these days? to non-subscribers (who can now buy a la carte), the emusic and itunes prices are mostly equal.

I just don't see the benefit of this service vs. $10/month for Spotify Premium

do they have anything spotify doesn't?

it's a function of my age, really. i have an attachment to owning, not just "renting" (streaming), music. purely personal preference.

typical price of an album for an emusic subscriber these days

6.99

in other news, since the motherfucking orchard swallowed up ioda, the amount of actually good music available to me on emusic has diminished to microscopic levels

they still have bruno mars.

the entire catalogue.