Goodybye Emusic.com

If you change your mind and want to get some indie stuff, try www.magnatune.com - sliding pricing scale...try before you buy (MP3casting) etc etc...

I can't tell you how pissed I am. I've read about EMusic in one of your entries and spent few months trying to find a way to subscribe (It's not easy if you live in Serbia.). At the end, a month ago I convinced a friend who lives in Canada to subscribe for a year in behalf of me. And, what happened? Just one month later EMusic changed subscription policy. From unlimited to 40 mp3s?!? That makes me angry. There's so many albums on my EMusic's wishlist waiting for download.

Amen. I've been an embarassingly ardent supporter of emusic for about six months. Now, I'm contemplating cancelling my subscription.

Moreover, I've no more outlets from which to purchase music; I've since sworn off the RIAA, and I have nowhere left to turn.

I used to love music so much, but these days, I find I'm more concerning about licensing than actual music; sad.

The Apple iTunes store just started adding indie music with a handful of Kill Rock Stars albums. Granted a few of these albums are probably 8-10 years old, but it is a start. There may be more labels on there -- I didn't go through the full list of this week's new releases+

www.streamwaves.com - no mp3 downloads but streaming music for about the price of a cd....most major labels. had a friend who used to work for them..they're just down the street from me here in dallas.

Hi! had the same email today! just replied to it in flames ... a Private Equity group IS buying INDIE music supplier! what a shame! I won't remain into that crap! cancel NOW! and go to fountain of complaints ;)

Although it certainly seems like a drastic step backwards, I actually think I can live with that. Personally, I don't download anywhere near 65 mp3's per month. And, when you break that down, it's still roughly six CD's worth of music per month for the price of one, which still seems like a decent deal to me. That's just me, though.

Clearly, the $50 price tag is a big deterrant for those with a more voracious music appetite. They will certainly lose a ton of business there, and it's a shame.

Although these might be the first steps on the road to ruin, I still think they've put together a good model for sucessful, "legit" music downloading, plus their selection of punk and indie-rock is second to none, so I'm not ready to totally write them off just yet.

10$ for 6 cds ... bah, that was not my way to consume ... as soon as I logged in, 6 to 10 cds were being downloaded ... I used emusic to discover ... I will now go back to my previous channels ...

I miss emusic ...

From what I've seen emusic was well ahead of it's competition, a simple, intuitive navigation system no gimmicks, few adds, no platform specific restriction. I got a generally friendly 'vibe' from using site. And of course the decent pricing structure and unlimited downloads. oh well back to the vinyl exchange

on a side note the new napster site requirements are pretty strict
'System Requirements
PC only, Windows XP/2000, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or higher, Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher, '

yackk!

guys go there:

http://www.weblisten.com

check the english flag ...

have fun!!!!

Well it's too bad, but a great service while it lasted eh? Here's to hoping someone (iTunes) can bridge the gap between mainsteam and indie online.

It's still cheaper than most alternatives if you don't download more than 65 tracks a month. I fit in that category and I like how they do business. I'll be keeping my account.

intresting article over at wired regarding napster & ipod compatability

I'll be cancelling my account as well. It's a real shame. I only hope iTunes will finally open its doors to Canadians soon, since it looks like Napster won't agree with my iPod.

there is another service similar to iTunes which is only indie groups, don;'t know pricing, but it is at http://www.audiolunchbox.com/ so we'll have to see.

I joined emusic as well after a recommendation from this site. I can't say that I ever really found much I was interested in outside of their jazz library. But I downloaded and listened to music I would never have taken a chance listening to otherwise. The all u can download model worked very well for that. I live in Taiwan and emusic seemed to be the only real option, the iTunes store is US only.

I'll be cancelling my subscription.

My husband is a musician and distributes his album via cdbaby.com. They are in the works to allows digital distribution through iTunes, etc. I think this will be good for the REALLY small independent artists.

This definitely sucks the donkey's... ahem. Oh well, at least they're giving me some weeks of time to download what's left of my stash and cancel promptly afterwards. For my listening habits, 65 mp3s a month is not something I'd pay $15 a month for.

With a limit of 2000 MP3's a month it was ridiculous to think they could ever make any money and still also pay the label and artist a royalty, even if it was a small one. Why the hell didn't put in a lower limit a month, say 200. I would have still joined and stayed for the nearly 3 years I have been a member. Goodbye E music, it was good while it lasted. Also good luck getting as many downloads as you can, its slow and keeps failing. Clever eh, and the message boards are gone too. Can't have people complaining can we!

ALB (http://www.audiolunchbox.com) will be launching on 10.31.03

We allow ONLY independent music on our site and will be launching with around 40,000 tracks from over 35 different labels and entities including Epitaph, Artemis, Vagrant, Trustkill and CD Baby. Another 40 labels are expected to sign licensing deals with us in the next 90 days.

The site will be cross-platform and free of any DRM restrictions. 2 audio formats will be offered, MP3s and Ogg (Vorbis). Single tracks are .99.

We are committed to increasing exposure and availabilty of great independent music. Look for it soon!

I agree. I cancelled my subscription as well. I found it a great service to try experimental music. Having unlimited downloads gave me the ability to try music I would otherwise not buy. Some is terrible, some is good and some is amazing. Unfortunately, I'll no longer have the chance to experiment.

Maybe subscriptions will drop to a level where this new company will realize we were making more money allowing unlimited downloads. Maybe not.

Clint

Bugger! eMusic let me discover so much new stuff that I'd never have found down here in Sydney, most memorable being all the Elephant 6 collective's works. I probably took about 200 per month & would be happy with that at the same price but this is crap. Sorry eMusic, you sold out & I'm bailing out!

What a tragedy!

Hello,

We have received your request and will be sending you an email confirmation of your cancellation shortly. We expect our response time to be slightly delayed *I hope its slightly delayed since I hope everyone is giving you the ASS* and we appreciate your patience during this time. *Kiss my ---, I would have been happy if you had decreased downloads to a more reasonable level, I was wondering why the message boards were canned...I wonder how many ppl you will lose :-P*

Regards,
EMusic.com Support *Absolute TURDS*

and another thing; i seem to be having problems now completing downloads with my emusic download manager.. and no message board to find out why.

I'm suffering from emusic withdrawal, but every day in every way, I'm getting better and better. (Stole that line from Herbert Lom).

From the day I got emusic's nastygram about the change in ownership and download terms, my downloader stopped working properly. Panic downloading, I'm sure.

The new terms are laughable. I'd like to know how many subscribers have bailed on them. I suspect the new owners will be changing their tune fairly quickly and upping the number of allowed downloads if they expect to survive.

Anyway, shutting down the message board without warning was thoughtless and cruel. With so many loyal members evangelizing for emusic, myself included, the least they could have done was to provide grief counselors in our hour of need.

But, I can't complain too much. I have a firewire drive full of tunes to organize and listen to thanks to emusic. Boycott the RIAA and MPAA.

I want to make people aware of a new music download / filesharing technology that I believe is revolutionary in it's concept...and will for the first time see that artists actually get paid, potentially for MANY years to come. It's called WEED, and was just recently developed in Seattle by a bunch of musicians and software developers who came up with a better answer to the problems of file-sharing on the Internet. Better than try to explain everything here, you should just check it out:

http://www.downloadweed.com

Download some music and see how it works!!

At least i've been with emusic for a year and had time to download everything that i like.

But i tried and discovered so much...now with these limits the one or two customers who will stay (!) will only download what they already know. No good for the artists either.

Do you think this new policy could be a trick to make emusic close in order for people to buy more regular cds at record stores? It's a bit strange to me to see a company acting so dumb with so many loyal customers.

Anyway emusic was really a wonderful site for music maniac.
jacq

Boy, you ain't kidding about the demise of Emusic. I may have been able to tolerate the limits on downloads, but the icing on the cake: I've tried for 3 days to download "Ave Maria", by M. Wolffe featuring Warren Zevon. Instead, I get something like "We Wish you A Merry Christmas" by Kenny Rankin. Please note that this was downloading from a holiday CD that is featured on EMusic's homepage! I am sorry to leave what was a formerly good service, but this is capitalism in action - we cast our votes with our pocketbooks & wallets. I'm going to spend mine somewhere else.

Emusic may not be the unbelievable deal it was back in the unlimited days, but it's still a GREAT deal. Prices work out to about $3 for a typical 12 song album--how can you complain about that? Now artists, their labels and emusic can actually make money and pay their bills while still giving listeners a very fair price. The slow downloads that some have been complaining about have been fixed now--the problem was the huge increase in traffic from all the people trying to get what they could before the new pricing schemes went into place, and not Emusic's fault. Downloads now are actually quite easy and fast. Emusic is still going to get my money because there's no better deal out there.

"Hi! had the same email today! just replied to it in flames … a Private Equity group IS buying INDIE music supplier! what a shame! I won’t remain into that crap! cancel NOW! and go to fountain of complaints ;)"

In response to the above: Do you even know what indie means in reference to music? It means music that isn't released on a label owned by one of the big 5. All indie labels either are companies or are owned by some other company. Emusic being bought doesn't have anything at all to do with its indie status. In fact, before Emusic was sold to the private group, it was owned by Universal Music Group, so now, it oculd be said Emusic is more of an indie distributor than it was before. Why do people make such a big deal about stuff like this? As long as you aren't supporting the RIAA, buy whatever you want--and Emusic is supporting the RIAA less now than it did before, so for people concerned about such things, this is actually a better situation now.

yeah uh, screw mp3 and all these online services, they all suck, emusic is ok, they have best deals, but to bad most their music blows and what good ones they do have are old or not original recordings, live shows ect..well, not all but screw all that anyways.

heres what you do, go to yer local pawn shop, buy cds there. usually 2 bucks a pop and they have everything..least here in vegas. so i buy 20 cds for 40 bucks cant beat that, i dare you to.

itunes is worse though..i have to stick that in here..damn monopoly on aac, wont let you download mp3 versions and ill eb damned if im gonna pay apple 300 bucks for their shoddy ipod..rio rules way more.

i want to cancel emusic services please now! i dont want this service no more! is there a way you guys can cancel it its great with me and if you dont please sednd me a website a place or phone number i can communicate with guys to cancel this service please
thank you ver much,
Ma Petra Navarrete