EMusic - C/D

google site:emusic.com inurl:album 15..80-0..59-listen

change the 15 to whatever you want the minimum length in minutes to be.

If you burn the albums to CD, you always have a stack of CDs with stuff you haven't heard on it waiting for you!

Heh, I downloaded John Cage's Empty Words (part III) from eMusic - two tracks, 74 minutes each.

They also have some live albums that I haven't seen elsewhere (search for "Schubas" and "Casbah" for starters.)

I wish I could pay more for higher quality, or that the downloads were higher quality; it irks me to know that someday, like with my cassettes and my vinyl and my early CDs, that I'll probably upgrade a lot of what I picked up on eMusic because the bitrate is noticeable.

Nothing personal to Doug or Philip (two writers whose work I admire and like a lot) but I still do not find eMusic to be a community type of place for me where I want to spend time doing anything but downloading. There's a lot of quality writing and some of the lists are really great, but I can't seem to make eMusic a daily stop in my surfing. It's not a destination for me in that sense and I'm not sure why.

Also, the exclusive live stuff is a nice touch and I wish there was more of that (like the exclusive titles that the CIMS gets.)

This was my download strategy:

1. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (all tracks)
I've heard and liked the singles, I've skimmed through the rest at a listening station in some record store. I think it's a really good album, but before buying it I've wanted to spend some time listening to it straight through to be sure I separate my own impressions from the hype that surrounded it. [Conclusion: I'll buy the CD as soon as I can find it used.]

2. [remembering the notion, expressed in this thread, that it's good to download LONG tracks]
Eliane Radigue, Trilogie de la mort -- three hour-long tracks, beautiful drone-y electronic sounds, the smartest decision I made in this whole process

3. [spontaneously deciding to hunt down some individual tracks where I'm not interested in buying the whole album]
Annie - several tracks off Anniemal
Ladytron - several tracks off 604 and Light & Magic
Armand Van Helden - "U Don't Know Me" and "Flowerz"

4. [spontaneously deciding it's about time I finally checked out Derek Bailey]
Derek Bailey - Improvisations (all tracks)

5. [remembering I've been curious about Robert Rich but put off by all the New Age hoo-haw]
Robert Rich - Below Zero (all tracks)
still haven't listened to it

6. [remembering that ever since the recent Imogen Heap thread, I've been trying to find Todd Rundgren's "Pretending to Care," off the mid-80s album _A Capella_]
They don't have it, but they have a cover of it by a band called The Unherd.

That's 50 tracks, and I've unsubscribed. Part of the challenge is that I'm just not a music downloader, so anything I *really* want, I want on CD. The eMusic process was all about remembering things I *sort of* want.

rhaps usually covers my nostalgic needs... you know, when some friend goes, "dude krokus!" i can actually give krokus a listen and leave it at that without spending much more than a few cents i suppose. etc etc. old hip hop records i never bought but have radio taped mixes of, etc etc.

one by one, emusic has steadily brought lot's and lot's of "want list" labels onboard. i never thought i'd see tzadik come, but here they are. or dischord. touch and go! shit, those dudes charge out the wazoo for their records at the store, but here they are! emusic has really become kind of a paradise for back catalog siftings. i keep hoping drag city will come, but they seem pretty stiff on such things. (do they do itunes even? i'm too lazy to fire up itunes right now.)

as far as i'm concerned, services like emusic are saints for kicking DRM to the curb and letting us be honest fans. (for now anyway. legislation always pending in one form or another.)

m.

Certainly far from having everything I want, but I've already downloaded tons of stuff I've been fiending for for a while.

Also great to have for making my wedding mixes.

It sucks for a lot of comedy albums though since they have lots of short tracks. Your monthly 40 song quota can be filled with 2 albums.

I really want to write for these guys. There are so many bitchin' compilations that are unsung on their site.

Having said that there are still lots of interesting things to download and at £8 or so for 65 tracks a month, it's well worth it.

This is the most frustrating thing about the site. You can now buy additional slightly-more-expensive 'booster packs' when your 90 downloads have been used up, but you're only allowed 5 or so of these per month. I'd spend twice as much on emusic than I do already if only they allowed me to!

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/emusic.ars

The Ryko catalog is still up, even though Warners is buying in to their distro channels, so maybe more majors will test the waters a eMusic.

If I'm remembering correctly, eMusic used to have some Impulse jazz (Alice Coltrane was Impulse? They used to have her.) but lost it right before they switched over to their current pricing plan.

i do wish they'd spell my last album right, rather than making "fahrenheit 69" into "fahrenh eit 69"

hopefully they'll get the new one right.

question - if you guys like the free emusic track, do you download the rest of the album?

Also, although I don't like the non-rollover, it is part of what makes them a bit Quirky rather than Totally Streamlined, which I kinda like. The per-track rather than per-time cost is another example. (Though it means my quizgeek desire for The National Anthems of the World will go unfulfilled on that particular site.)

I really want to write for these guys. There are so many bitchin' compilations that are unsung on their site.

-- Forksclovetofu

Ooh such as? Account replenishes in five days...

("You've got your dick on backwards"????)

The holes and treasures in their collection reproduce the act of searching through a giagatic used record store better than anything else online. When I lived in Pittsburgh, I lived accross the street from Jerry's Records. My eMusic subscription feels like wandering over there- I don't know what I'm going to pick up, but I'm probably going to learn about something I never heard of before.

FYI "You've got your dick on backwards" is a parody of the Sonics "you've got your head on backwards." which kinda paved the way for our upcoming "blowfly's punk rock party" (due in september) though when we cut "...backwards" we never imagined doing a whole record like that.

as far as hip hop on emusic -- all the rhymesayers stuff is on there, as is most of the def jux stuff and the coup via epitaph. obviously, there aren't many major label artists on emusic - so the hip hop is kinda sparse.

I'm amazed that emusic still exists. Used to love them. It's like finding out that there's a big market for 78s. In all seriousness, I got an astounding amount of great music from this service. A billion years ago.

I was over the moon in 2002 when eMusic began hosting all the old Daniel Johnston tapes, just weeks after me getting into him and thinking I'd have to order all these import cassettes

My wishlist slowly shrinked with all the dropped labels until I gave up on my grandfathered (+bonus credits) account in 2015. Feel better about supporting artists through bandcamp, too.

I'm amazed that emusic still exists. Used to love them. It's like finding out that there's a big market for 78s. In all seriousness, I got an astounding amount of great music from this service. A billion years ago.

― dlp9001, Friday, May 12, 2017 1:49 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ooh owned

It's clear that they've been barely keeping the site ticking over since they decided to switch their backend to 7digital and putting all their effort into the new site.
It looked from the beta test that a lot of content that should have been on the site for months (new releases from Sub Pop as one example) would appear after the switch over.
Then the launch happened and labels like Sub Pop, Warp, Bella Union suddenly have no or very little in the catalogue. There's been no real explanation as to why this stuff hasn't appeared in the new live site but also no fanfare of new and returning labels. As a UK user it's very nice to see nearly 400 records turn up from Domino after years away.
There are a lot of disgruntled older users out there and I don't really see why anyone new would want to join up but I'm hopeful that once they sort their content issues out it will continue to be more than worth the money I pay for it.

I've been a member since 2008. I've come close to cancelling a few times, what with the constant turnover in labels, sometimes it takes a while to find things you want. I just went there today and saw they've completely redone the site and it looks like half my wishlist has vanished - victims of label turnover I guess. It was great when you could get Blue Note jazz records from the '60s and major-label stuff. I almost cancelled after that disappeared, but then I found enough independent-label metal to keep me going. Now, I get most of that from Bandcamp, which has much better selection, so I'm not sure if I'll stick with eMusic much longer.

Looks like they've added a bunch of avant-jazz labels: HatHut, ESP, Tzadik. I may have to start listening to that kind of stuff again.

Anyone want to help me with some Tzadik recommendations? I basically stopped paying attention around 2000.

Every time I see this thread bumped I expect a link to a news article saying they've finally folded.

hmm, I've been disappointed by recent Tzadik albums I've tried. Anything written by or featuring Zorn in the last 15 years seems to be an aimless mess.

I like these from after 2000:

Kayo Dot, Choirs of the Eye, 2003
Wadada Leo Smith, Lake Biwa, 2004
the Scott Johnson reissue, John Somebody
Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, Mayim Rabim, 2006

I don't have any interest in the no-wave improvisational klezmer punk side of the label, but I have dipped into their New Music offerings. IIRC, I liked:

Maryanne Amacher - Sound Characters, Sound Characters vol. 2
Alvin Curran - Animal Behavior, Theme Park, Lost Marbles, Shofar Rags
Arnold Dreyblatt - Animal Magnetism, Who's Who In Central & East Europe 1933
Annie Gosfield - Burnt Ivory and Loose Wires, Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites, Almost Truths And Open Deceptions
Lukas Ligeti - Mystery System, Afrikan Machinery
Lois Vierk - River Beneath the River
The Cracow Klezmer Band - Balan: Book of Angels Vol.5, Remembrance

The latter group could be described as Penderecki does klezmer, and may get me into the genre yet.

last month I got every single Haydn Symphony from here for like $6.99 ...

The Morton Feldman Patterns in a Chromatic Field on tzadik is fantastic.

Also, emusic has reverted to certain albums which are one long track being priced super cheap. I just got two Feldman chamber music albums on Bridge Records for like a buck each.

Now chasing the cryptocurrency craze.