freeform goodness

The Day Emusic Died

Note: This is an edited version of a mailing list post I made earlier today. The subject is the downloadable music service Emusic, which (formerly) offered an all-you-can-download catalog of high-quality, legal MP3 music on independent labels for a very low price: $9.99/month. Today they informed their subscribers that they were moving to a much more restrictive set of subscription terms. On many occasions, I have raved about the value of the service.

I don’t mind the new price in theory — 25 cents a track is great — for an a la carte service. If they paired their current selection (assuming they retain their current label signings and continue signing new labels of equivalent quality and variety) with an intelligent buying interface like Apple’s or BuyMusic’s they could have a great specialist service for people like the ones who have been Emusic subscribers on this list. As it stands, though, the subscription service plans really break the service for someone like me. The album that really sold me on the service, my very favorite album from 2002, Ilkae’s Pistachio Island is impossible to download under the basic 40-track subscription plan. How messed up is that?

What Chris Prew said pretty much hits home for me:

“I’ll miss being able to download an entire album just because the band name was cool, etc.”

The new pricing structure (assuming I stick around — I haven’t decided yet) means I’ll only ever download sure things. There won’t be any more taking chances on outside-my-stock-genres stuff. I would never have downloaded Opeth’s _Blackwater Park_, Mono’s _One Step More And You Die_, all those wacky old Cantebury-school prog records on Voiceprint, all that cool skronky stuff on Atavistic, and dozens others I could list. The joy of immersing myself in the unfamiliar and discovering diamonds is gone, and I doubt I’ll ever see its like again. For me, it was never “let’s see how many metric tons of music I can download for $10 this month”, it was more like “it costs me next to nothing to maybe find my next favorite band or label. Let’s go clicky clicky through the new release list. Hey, Aaron really liked this hiphop record (queue). Stewart wrote nice things about this jazz disc (queue). Jeffrey and Roger dueted in the shower to this band (queue).”

Damn.

I’d heard of Merck before, but it took downloading the first 5 or so releases they posted on Emusic last year for me to realize how much I loved what the label was doing. Under the new plan, I’d download a couple of albums that are getting good reviews from the usual suspects, or new releases by proven bands, but where’s the fun in that?

:: Dave Walker 21:05 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/entertainment/music]
:: tags: music

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