EMusic - C/D

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.

oooooooooh

for me it's a portability issue. i can't put spotify on my ipod and that's what I listen to the most because i like to listen to music while walking/running/moving from a to b. if i had to drain my phone battery i'd be stingy about listening to stuff and that would be stupid. better to just have mp3s. also they're MINE.

Also if the label decides they don't wanna be on emusic (or spotify) any more, I still have the music.

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."

otm. i cancelled my emusic subscription a few years ago because i was basically just downloading only remotely interesting stuff in order to use up my monthly amount. it was this contest every month to use it up before I forgot about it and lost the money. i almost never buy music on itunes. maybe like 2 albums in the past 6 years. lots of people give itunes giftcards though so i've certainly used those.

i basically use spotify now, primarily to check out new stuff that i eventually will buy in physical format if i really like it.

do they have anything spotify doesn't?

Yes, definitely - ECM and ReR and also some dance oriented things like Hessle Audio and Hemlock are a few labels that spring to my mind. Also some labels put things up on eMusic on day of release but you might have to wait a couple of months until it's on Spotify (e.g. RVNG)

my main problem with spotify as an alternative to downloading is that i can't take it anywhere! just thinking about that makes me wonder if my walkman still works.

Well, you can pay $10/month for premium and then you get it to mobile devices, and you can set certain albums to play in "offline" mode which is kind of like a temporary download. Of course this is limited by the space you have on your phone or mobile device (a problem for me since mine tends to be full of baby videos at all times).

it also requires carrying my phone at all times and using its battery for something that is not related to the phone so what do i do if i binge on spotify and can't make/receive a phone call?!
i'm a super ambulant person and also paranoid about batteries dying so spotify on my phone just isn't really an option for me
i'm ok with emusic for now! why do i keep talking about this?!

Accidentally found this on emusic today, it's under 6 bucks:

http://o.scdn.co/300/c43c2b8375e245a80b7c23227b9c63018f043357

100 mambo-craze-era songs by a great, weird roster: Henry Mancini, Johnny Burnette, June Carter, Eydie Gorme, Ivory Joe Hunter, Sophia Loren, Lavern Baker, Huey Piano Smith, Ruth Brown, Hank Snow, and on and on.

I was just thinking about eMusic yesterday—I just upgraded a bunch of old 128 CBR mp3s from eMusic through iTunes Match. I'm glad it's still around.

what's the fifth song on that comp?

Ha. There is a version of that, though not the original. (But there are a few others by Perez Prado.)

"As a result, beginning today, we will be exiting the mainstream music business and offering exclusively independent music."

in full support here

Wait what?

(My monthly credits reup tomorrow...)

in full support here

― outback bumfuc (electricsound), Friday, September 26, 2014

wish i had a better idea of what this announcement meant, or what the catalog will look like tomorrow. no major-indies, plus loss of major labels, leaves micro-label and self-released (which was already onsite).

i haven't been an emu member for years now. but if the service again looks like it did in 2010, i might reconsider.

So many of my Saved albums are classical things on labels like bis, Harmonia mundi, aeon, and bridge, and I assume those are indie enough to still be there in the morning.

Bummer to lose sony and warner though.