EMusic - C/D

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More and more, this is seeming like a really good idea.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 May 2006 21:09 (seventeen years ago) link

it's a pretty good deal if you're into instrumental art metal bands like Boris/Pelican/Isis etc... since most of those full albums have at most 7 or 8 songs long songs. your monthly quota can get you 4 or 5 of these albums.

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.

― pinder (pinder), Wednesday, 24 May 2006 21:16 (seventeen years ago) link

The quota thing is the only part I don't like -- at about 25 cents a song, even a 20-song album costs $5.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 May 2006 21:24 (seventeen years ago) link

The trick is to not download the whole album. I know that rankles the completist in you guys, but after you pull skits from the hip hop (which I generally do when I rip it anyway), you're generally down to a good seven tracks.

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

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 24 May 2006 22:12 (seventeen years ago) link

I can't work out how to see what they have available, without signing up. There are no links to any type of catalogue, only to the Register page. Is there some kinda trick?

― cnwb (cnwb), Thursday, 25 May 2006 05:38 (seventeen years ago) link

It's okay. You can stop looking. I found the back door:
http://www.emusic.com/browse/all.html

― cnwb (cnwb), Thursday, 25 May 2006 05:54 (seventeen years ago) link

I really like it although if you're in the UK it can be really frustrating as it seems a lot of albums haven't been licensed for download outside the US because they're on a different label. So recently I would have downloaded the new Calexico, The Streets, Eagles of Death Metal and they've just got the whole White Stripes catalogue and the Raconteurs but none of them are available in the UK.

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.

― mms (mms), Thursday, 25 May 2006 07:42 (seventeen years ago) link

I've been using this for a while and it's really very good. Got the new Scott Walker album the other day, for example.
I am getting sick of the 'not available for download in your country' messages, though. So many things that I want I just can't get...

― Greig (treefell), Thursday, 25 May 2006 09:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, I got the Scott Walker too, surprised to find it was one I could actually download.

― mms (mms), Thursday, 25 May 2006 10:17 (seventeen years ago) link

Some of their selection is a little odd, like with certain jazz musicians they'll have a bunch of lesser albums but none of the best stuff. I can only assume this is because some of the better jazz labels aren't on board yet. Hopefully this will change soon.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 25 May 2006 11:13 (seventeen years ago) link

For example, they have a whole bunch of Coltrane but none of the Atlantic or Impulse stuff.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 25 May 2006 11:14 (seventeen years ago) link

"I'd appreciate a higher-volume account option than the current max of 90 tracks for $20 a month, though (ie EMUSIC CAN YOU HEAR ME I WANT TO GIVE YOU MORE MONEY)."

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!

― slb, Thursday, 25 May 2006 11:29 (seventeen years ago) link

can you not open another parallel account under a different name? might need to use a different credit card but...

― koogy wonderland (koogs), Thursday, 25 May 2006 11:39 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm sure you could if you used a different e-mail address and credit card.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 25 May 2006 11:42 (seventeen years ago) link

you only need a different email address.

― a.b. (alanbanana), Thursday, 25 May 2006 13:40 (seventeen years ago) link

This article suggests that they're starting to negotiate per-artist contracts with some major-label stuff, which probably explains why the White Stripes catalog just went up:

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.

― bendy (bendy), Thursday, 25 May 2006 14:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Browsing just now, and noticed that their Fall section is now divided into studio albums and live albums. Of course, Live At The Witch Trials is included w/live albums. Brief snarky moment of amusement.

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.

― dlp9001 (dlp9001), Thursday, 25 May 2006 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Classic. Just for starters: they have a good selection of Go-Betweens albums for the uninitiated (though I don't think they have the recent remastered versions) and their Editor's Picks are mostly excellent. And you don't have to sign up for a whole year. You can cancel a subscription any time.

― Roy Kasten (Roy Kasten), Friday, 26 May 2006 16:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Funny reading the first post on this thread and my naive 2003 version of download economics! Carry on.

― mcd (mcd), Friday, 26 May 2006 17:08 (seventeen years ago) link

I dig it, but the non rollover policy sucks.

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?

― Uncle Tom (Uncle Tom), Friday, 26 May 2006 22:49 (seventeen years ago) link

one month passes...

Even yet still more classic than last time I said classic, but for the same reasons. My 80s vinyl replacement project CONTINUES APACE w/labels like (some) ZTT added -- I've been v slow in getting digital copies of e.g. A Secret Wish and Who's Afraid, but now they're MINE @ click of button haha! Plus early Foetus albums I scoured London's second-hand shops for in the late 80's, willing to pay like £30 apiece!

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...

― The Vintner's Lipogram (OleM), Friday, 14 July 2006 23:21 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh and Uncle Tom, have you mailed them and asked them to correct? Maltaggage is one of the few really annoying things abt emusic.

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

― The Vintner's Lipogram (OleM), Friday, 14 July 2006 23:25 (seventeen years ago) link

/what makes them a bit Quirky rather than Totally Streamlined/

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.

― bendy (bendy), Saturday, 15 July 2006 10:50 (seventeen years ago) link

i realized yesterday i was on the last day of my emusic month and still had like 75 downloads. i had fun going through and grabbing things somewhat randomly (a couple of those fania reissues, some funkadelic, paul bley, assorted hip-hop). now i have new music to listen to for the next couple weeks. and 90 new downloads, whee.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 15 July 2006 13:34 (seventeen years ago) link

That reminds me -- hiphop emusic recommendations, anyone?

― The Vintner's Lipogram (OleM), Saturday, 15 July 2006 13:37 (seventeen years ago) link

i got a couple tracks of that jacki-o album that are good.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 15 July 2006 18:12 (seventeen years ago) link

CLASSIC times 500000000!
I hysterically love emusic.

― clodia pulchra (emo by proxy), Saturday, 15 July 2006 22:42 (seventeen years ago) link

Immediately scores 5,000,000+ pts over iTunes just for being able to search by label.

― Telephonething (Telephonething), Sunday, 16 July 2006 00:06 (seventeen years ago) link

inspired by the this heat thread i just downloaded this heat and part of the chrome box. whooo.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 16 July 2006 18:21 (seventeen years ago) link

vintners,
yes, I did email them - and no, they didn't say reply. Much like the schmoes at allmusic when I tried to correct the numerous errors in our entry.

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.

― Uncle Tom (Uncle Tom), Tuesday, 18 July 2006 00:52 (seventeen years ago) link

four weeks pass...

ohmigod...ohmigod... found the mp3s on the saregama label. 200+pages worth of bollywood soundtracks. suffering from indian psychedelic funk poisoning...

― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Tuesday, 15 August 2006 23:36 (seventeen years ago) link

one month passes...

so this is a good thing, yes? anything else I should know beyond what's on this thread already?

― geoff (gcannon), Monday, 18 September 2006 02:22 (seventeen years ago) link

nothing?

― geoff (gcannon), Monday, 18 September 2006 13:45 (seventeen years ago) link

I love it. The only thing is make sure you use your downloads before they run out. This can get a little tricky, but it's worth the trouble.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Monday, 18 September 2006 13:50 (seventeen years ago) link

they should roll over the remaining downloads quota each month so you can still get your money's worth if you don't get round to downloading enough songs within a 30 day period. the frequent 'not available outside the US' thing is bullshit too but i know that's not their fault.

― Konal Doddz (blueski), Monday, 18 September 2006 13:53 (seventeen years ago) link

sometimes the catalog of certain labels seems to contract and expand, so again, just like a record store, its good to snag somthing when you find it, lest it dissapear from your "Save for Later" list.

― bendy (bendy), Monday, 18 September 2006 13:54 (seventeen years ago) link

But there are great ways to use up your downloads at the end of the month - you can just go through, say, the Folkways catalog and grab a bunch of random stuff for example.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Monday, 18 September 2006 13:57 (seventeen years ago) link

Does anyone know what the quality of the mp3s is now on eMusic? An album I just dl'd sounds WRONG to me, but it could be the new remaster.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Thursday, 21 September 2006 14:44 (seventeen years ago) link

I love eMusic. But I use it only for items I wouldn't seek out at the record store. Put differently, it's a great service to fill out a catalogue, and the fact that I've got to "use or lose" my monthly downloads encourages me to try stuff rather than sqander my montly allotment.

― Daniel, Esq., Thursday, 21 September 2006 15:28 (seventeen years ago) link

Does anyone know what the quality of the mp3s is now on eMusic?

i dled about 100 mp3s over the past two months - the majority were 192, though a few were VBR that averaged around that. i think some of the indian soundtrack stuff was 160.

― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Thursday, 21 September 2006 17:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I signed up for a free trial of eMusic but my login didn't work. I wrote them and asked them to cancel my login because their system didn't work but they didn't respond. Months later I looked at my credit card and noticed that I had been billed $10 per month for the last few months. I emailed and called them and asked them to revoke the charges, but they refused. So basically, fuck eMusic and everyone who has ever or will ever work for them.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 21 September 2006 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Does anyone know what the quality of the mp3s is now on eMusic?

http://www.emusic.com/help/technical.html#q11

It's unlikely you will hear any difference from the cd version.

― todd (todd), Thursday, 21 September 2006 17:45 (seventeen years ago) link

the no-rollover thing pains me a little because i'm the kind of guy who tends to forget such things until a day too late. is there any way to at least donate my unused downloads to deprived orphans? that way at least i wouldn't feel as guilty.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 21 September 2006 18:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I lost three downloads that way once, but they gave them back after I sent an e-mail. Didn't seem to be a big problem.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Thursday, 21 September 2006 20:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, the rollover issue is the only problem I have with eMusic. It doesn't help that, for whatever reason, the day your account resets isn't always the same as it was the previous month! Instead of going straight Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 to Nov. 15, it shifts from, like, Sept. 15 to Oct. 14. That fucked me over a few times before I caught on.

― reddening (reddening), Thursday, 21 September 2006 22:00 (seventeen years ago) link

seven months pass...

There's talk that Tzadik and 2 other key labels are leaving emusic very soon.

― abanana, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 07:43 (sixteen years ago) link

I heard 6 or 7 were threatening to withdraw. They want more money from emusic for having their stuff on there. Presumably want emusic to raise their prices. £10 a month for 6 albums or so is pretty good value.

― cheasyweasel, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 08:21 (sixteen years ago) link

I posted this elsewhere, but this thread's original post inspired me to recycle.

Quote:

At eMusic, independent labels and artists get paid.

This is open for debate. As all of eMusic revenue comes from subscriptions, their payouts are based on net revenue divided by number of downloads. So, if after eMusic takes their fees and perecentage off, the total net revenue is 1M, and they "sold" 10M songs, then the actual amount is only 10 cents per track sold to the label/artist. The full stat rate on mechanicals is 9.1 cents, leaving the label and artist to quibble over 9/10ths of a cent.

But for the sake of argument, lets say it's 1M/2M downloads. That's 50 cents per track. Knock off a dime (rounded) for mechanicals, and the label and artist split a whopping 40 cents. If the artist is on a 50/50 revenue split, then they make 20 cents. But what if they're on a 70/30 split? The numbers continue to get worse as the percentage divide increases.

Consider that iTunes pays 70% of the retail price of 99 cents, and you're looking at 2/5th more than my best case eMusic model. In a business of pennies, that 2/5ths will stack up really quickly for the artist and label. Other Music's new download service is offering labels 65% and various levels of pricing, giving the label and artist opportunities to decide how much their music is worth.

eMusic is of much greater benefit to the consumer, which is great if you're only a consumer. But for people trying to make a living off their art (or business prowess), eMusic is working in direct competition to them. By offering their product for cheap, or free in the case of "50 free downloads," they're really just finding a new way to cut up the penny. They don't comp the artists or labels for those 50 free downloads because their primary concern is getting that trial subscriber to buy in at $9.99 a month.

Let's look at the real eMusic basic subscription economics:

$9.99 per month divided by 30 downloads is 33 cents per download. Let's knock eMusic's 50/50 revenue split off, and take off another few pennies for their various fees (uploading, delivering charge, the list goes on and on). Where are we at? 14 cents? Mechanical at 9.1 cents and you're down to less than 5 cents. One nickel. And it just gets worse for each subscription level. Now, throw in the 50 free downloads times maybe 1000 trials a month. The net result is that they increased the pool of songs without increasing the pool of revenue. The net result is that you were fucked before you encoded your first track.

So yes, eMusic techincally "pays," but so does Walmart. Can I interest anyone in a smock?

― VG++, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 13:50 (sixteen years ago) link

I don't see how a label can cry about an agreement like that after they agreed to it. If you don't like what they pay, you don't have to put your stuff on eMusic, and if you change your mind you can leave like some labels are talking about doing. The market will bear things out -- if too many labels are threatening to leave, it will hurt eMusic's viability and they will be forced to pay more, whether by charging more or cutting into its own profit.

― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 15:20 (sixteen years ago) link

I noticed this weekend that Durtro has gone. Luckily I had already bought the remaster of Thunder Perfect Mind.

xpost-- they already did raise their prices significantly a few months ago, though established subscribers were allowed to lock in at the former rate. I used to buy a booster pack every month, though, and now I never do-- to expensive.

Who are the labels? Please not BIS, Naxos, Earache, LTM...!!!

― Jon Lewis, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 15:20 (sixteen years ago) link

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