Great news for eMusic Subscribers

Actually the price increase would about 147% per track.

And it really is the long time customers that are getting the biggest increases, since they can't even get close to an equivalent new plan to what they had.  I suspect the impact is less on the casual user accounts that were paying higher rates per track downloads already.

Dang, I'm on one year, and it just renewed in March.  Oh well, I'll see what happens when I get there…

Bummer.  I thought you were going to tell me I could carryover my DL's….

callat703 wrote:
Anybody on here use or know anything about the new Napster service?

I use it (the $15 unlimited DRM with 10 DRM-free DL's a month).  I saw no need for the $5 streaming only with 5 DRM-free downloads.

I will answer any specific questions in my thread as to not hi-jack Kosmo's thread.

Err…. not happy about going from 90 dls to 50 dls a month for the same price. What bothered me even more was that all the albums that I am supposed to be super excited about I already have or don't care about. I loved emusic because of the harder to find indie music, I couldn't care less about Beyonce or Aerosmith. Maybe if the Sub Pop catalog goes onto emusic I would be happy but having heard from someone who works for them, I don't think that will happen.

Bummer…if they had added Sub Pop, Drag City, Creation, Saddle Creek, Team Love, ANTI, Numero, et al, and approached it with "hey, this gives more payout to indie musicians and labels, and we need to do it to stay in business" this price increase/plan cut would have been received much more favorably I think.

As it is they've got lots and lots of angry folks on 17 Dots and pretty much no opposing viewpoint. They're really tarnishing their brand.

Talk about your poorly rolled out changes, the use of the word slight in the NYT story was enough to piss people off and they should have done a much better job of explaining the new album pricing policy.  i.e. provide specific album titles as examples.  my heart says that the album pricing will soften the blow a bit of the newer plans, but my gut says they'll find some way to botch it.

in addition to the announcements on 17dots there is now some official info being posted on the message board over there. 

"Obviously, a lot of comments have been about the pricing. The Great Recession of 2009 is not the best time to be doing this. We own up to that. However, we - and our labels - simply cannot sustain some of the lowest cost plans that many of you currently have. The price increase is not just about Sony, it is for all of our labels, including the ones that have left over the years and those we have yet to sign."

bellenseb wrote:
Bummer…if they had added Sub Pop, Drag City, Creation, Saddle Creek, Team Love, ANTI, Numero, et al, and approached it with "hey, this gives more payout to indie musicians and labels, and we need to do it to stay in business" this price increase/plan cut would have been received much more favorably I think.

well, with this crowd, anyways… i'm sure there are plenty of people who actually are excited about having access to the sony catalog.

and,

kosmo wrote:
"Obviously, a lot of comments have been about the pricing. The Great Recession of 2009 is not the best time to be doing this. We own up to that. However, we - and our labels - simply cannot sustain some of the lowest cost plans that many of you currently have. The price increase is not just about Sony, it is for all of our labels, including the ones that have left over the years and those we have yet to sign."

if you take that statement at face value (note the "if"), sounds like they are trying to funnel more money to the smaller labels.  they mentioned previously that they needed to change the plans and sony was the event that offered the best opportunity.  would these hikes have gone over better if they hadn't gotten sony, and you simply were getting less DLs without a greater selection?

"Effective Jul 26, 2009, your plan will change to the new eMusic Premium plan which gives you 50 downloads for $19.99 every 30 days."

OUCH…from 90 downloads to 50 downloads…that's about 3-4 albums I'm going to lose each month. Who here is cancelling their account?

They should just grandfather my already grandfathered plan :)  and restrict access to the Sony stuff!

Drag City used to be on emusic…

bellenseb wrote:
If they can finally get Sub Pop, Drag City, Numero, and other big indies on board, plus the album pricing, I might stick around…

Saddle Creek was added recently. Victory and Epitaph are no longer on. Add those and Sub Pop and I would have been okay with the increase but again, don't care much about the Sony catalog

I hate to beat a dead horse, but their business model has been flawed from the beginning.  They survived on people not using all their credits, and now they are doing what they can to survive.  I don't fault them for this, nor am I exactly acting surprised.

Kosmo, looks like you need to go in and edit your thread title.  ;)

Real shame because eMusic was always the best of the music download services out there.

It also looks like the big guys are finally accepting new, internet based modes of music distribution. Bad thing about that is that once they get in, they usually take over everything and ruin it all for both the fans and the smaller more independent artists and labels.

In the end, somewhere down the line, we'll find yet another avenue that they will eventually take over. It's an endless and inevitable cycle.

I'd be real curious to see how how many of their subscribers will bother with much of the Sony crap. Sure, you will at first get a certain bulk who will download Beyonce because they secretly kind of like that one song and have the credits to use or lose so just go for the whole album. Then there are those who never listen to them anymore but liked Areosmith way back in high school so they too download them just to use up credits. Oh, there's Celine Dion. Mom likes her so go ahead. Download that crap and burn it to a disc and give it to Mom. She'll be happy as long as you make sure you burn it as a music file to play in her CD player. Maybe I'm way off base but it just seems that a lot of the Sony catelogue isn't really the best for a big bulk of the average internet savvy types. Beyonce will appeal to a lot of them (though not most of us) but I honestly don't think that a lot of their fans do much in the way of downloading. Sony may even think this but just want to get their hands in control of eMusic for more corporate control though I don't really know about that. Just knowing how some very big corporations sometimes think and pondering out loud.

Actually it's good news for me as my subscription recently got reupped for another two years :D  of course my subscription is part of the problem  :P

I think that the pairing of the announcement of arrival of the Sony Music catalog and the price increase was a really bone headed thing to do.  If they had done some gradual price increases and properly rolled out their new album pricing policy, less people would be considering quitting.  It's clear the pricing increases were going to happen regardless of the Sony Music catalog.  By pairing the two, you only get the dander up of the people who dislike major labels and is essential the opposite of what eMusic has stood for.

The music nerd in me still thinks there maybe some out of print gems, b-sides, remixes and other rarities lurking around in the Sony catalog, however it will be months before we see any of that as the priority will be to get the mass market online.

They really should be creating a separate service in order to handle the Sony,etc catalogs and leave the eMusic site and community as is…

Jaguar wrote:
I'd be real curious to see how how many of their subscribers will bother with much of the Sony crap.

I think current subscribers are missing the point.  This isn't about playing nice and pleasing the majority of current subscribers (a model I've already descibed as unsustainable).

This is about trying to lure new subscribers, and the best way to do that would be to offer a more widely varied catalog.

Well, finally read the personalized announcement of how my plan will change, and on March 10, 2010, my plan will go from $191/yr for 90 downloads a month to $175/yr for 35 downloads a month.  Means I'm quitting on March 9, or whenever I use my last allocation.  With 90 downloads, I don't mind that there are months I download little of my allocation, but having those credits expire makes 35 per month something I'd want to use fully.  Hope the new subscribers are suffiicient to keep them afloat.  With iTunes dropping that protection software limiting use, eMusic may face a world of hurt if they're not competing on price so much.

The upload of all the new music happened today with a ton of back catalog appearing from Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Iggy, etc… I still have the regular amount of downloads which will change for me on the 11th and then I get 50 downloads w/a Booster Pack of 25 available (which, do I have to use that right away or whenever I want?). Any suggestions one what to blow this on? I have a few Bruce albums but did not know if there were a few hidden gems I should get. Any other album recommendations out there?

And just to follow up - on some Springsteen albums it says "Album Only" under download. Does that mean you have to get the whole album (and spend an extra 4 credits) or it is not available? Hmm… not liking this so far.

Yes, correct.

I'll be downloading some Leonard Cohen tonite.

El wrote:
And just to follow up - on some Springsteen albums it says "Album Only" under download. Does that mean you have to get the whole album (and spend an extra 4 credits) or it is not available? Hmm… not liking this so far.

eMusic adds titles from the Warner Music Group

http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/just_added/index.html


which is great news and a much better addition than the endless Trance and Tribute albums (Bluegrass, string, etc)