It was a tough decision, but after four and a half years with eMusic (since Feb 2007), I've cancelled my subscription. I hovered over the cancel button for some time before I finally clicked it, but I've convinced myself that it's the right thing to do.
For a few months now, using my monthly quota of downloads has become a bit of chore. Not because I'm starting to dislike music (although I am in a bit of a lull at the moment), but I'm having difficulty finding things to download. It had got to the point where, a few days before the monthly roll-over, I'd be downloading just for the sake of ensuring I got my money's worth.
The decision wasn't helped by the fact that I was on a grandfathered price plan. I was paying £14.99 per month which entitled me to 75 download credits (or £31.50 worth of music in the current pricing system of 42p per track). It was a good deal - if I had that much to download each month - and there was an incentive to stick with it just because that offer is no longer available. In the end though, I found by the end of each month, I'd sometimes barely made a mark on my credit. I wasn't even getting my payment's worth of music without struggling.
It was good whilst it latest though. My emusic folder consists of 4,711 tracks and at least 340 albums. I've discovered some artists that have become favourites of mine including The National, The Duckworth Lewis Method, Teenage Fanclub, Stornoway, Nada Surf, Midlake, Fleet Foxes, British Sea Power - these are just some that jump out at me as I scroll through the list.
So now I've cut my ties, I can either save myself some money each month or re-invest it. Perhaps I'll buy more CDs each month, or start shopping with 7Digital more (particularly if their FLAC selection improves). Alternatively, I'll spend it on ebooks since they are my latest thing!
Early February marked the one year anniversary of my sign-up with the online independant music retailer eMusic - and I couldn't be happier with my subscription so far!
Each month I have constantly discovered music by artists I would have had little chance in discovering otherwise - certainly since my radio listening has decreased dramatically over the last few years. It's fair to say that prior to February 2007, my musical awareness was decreasing fast.
My music downloads started off with a hunt for something familiar. I was aware that this was an independant music retailer and as such would not contain music from the major labels (little top 40 music), but I needed somewhere to start. Browsing through the collection I came across songs by Eddy Grant, The Raconteurs, Keane, The White Stripes, Badly Drawn Boy, Presidents of the United States of America, America and Steeleye Span - not bad for a site where I expected to find little I knew.
Before long however, I started to browse the site not only based on my favourite musical genres, but based on ratings and this is when I started to discover artists I'd not heard of previously. I also came across the eMusic message board and although I rarely post, I did find many recommendations there.
So I thought it would be good to look back over the past year and list some of the artists and albums that I have either discovered thanks to this service, or would not otherwise have bought:
That's a list of nearly 40 albums covering Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Pop, Rock, English Folk, Ambient and Electronic music. It's not everything I've downloaded but that is most of the complete albums I have bought.
If I was to name favourites from that list, I would definately say Beirut, Blitzen Trapper, Nada Surf, Pernice Brothers, Spoon, The Bluetones and The National would qualify.
So now I just wonder - what music will I be exposed to over the next 12 months. It's very exciting!
Each month I have constantly discovered music by artists I would have had little chance in discovering otherwise - certainly since my radio listening has decreased dramatically over the last few years. It's fair to say that prior to February 2007, my musical awareness was decreasing fast.
My music downloads started off with a hunt for something familiar. I was aware that this was an independant music retailer and as such would not contain music from the major labels (little top 40 music), but I needed somewhere to start. Browsing through the collection I came across songs by Eddy Grant, The Raconteurs, Keane, The White Stripes, Badly Drawn Boy, Presidents of the United States of America, America and Steeleye Span - not bad for a site where I expected to find little I knew.
Before long however, I started to browse the site not only based on my favourite musical genres, but based on ratings and this is when I started to discover artists I'd not heard of previously. I also came across the eMusic message board and although I rarely post, I did find many recommendations there.
So I thought it would be good to look back over the past year and list some of the artists and albums that I have either discovered thanks to this service, or would not otherwise have bought:
- AC Newman - The Slow Wonder
- Apartment - The Dreamer Evasive
- Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
- Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
- Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation
- Blonde Redhead - Misery Is A Butterfly
- Breathe Owl Breathe - Ghost Glacier EP
- British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
- Eliza Carthy - Rice
- Fauxliage - Fauxliage
- Feeder - Echo Park
- Flogging Molly - Drunken Lullabies
- Frightened Rabbit - Sing The Greys
- Jenny Lewis - Rabbit Fur Coat
- June Panic - A Child's Treasury Of June Panic
- Lemon Jelly - '64 - '95
- Loreena McKennit - The Visit
- Nada Surf - The Weight Is A Gift
- New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
- Modern Skirts - Catalogue Of Generous Men
- Mofro - Blackwater
- North Mississippi Allstars - Shake Hands With Shorty
- Office - A Night At The Ritz
- Pernice Brothers - Live A Little
- Rusted Root - Cruel Sun
- Sia - Some People Have Real Problems
- Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
- The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are A Dark Horse
- The Bluetones - Luxembourg
- The Bluetones - The Bluetones
- The Levellers - Truth & Lies
- The National - Boxer
- The New Amsterdams - At The Foot Of My Rival
- The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
- The Rakes - Ten New Messages
- The White Stripes - Icky Thump
- Trembling Blue Stars - Alive To Every Smile
- Victory At Sea - All Your Things Are Gone
- Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
That's a list of nearly 40 albums covering Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Pop, Rock, English Folk, Ambient and Electronic music. It's not everything I've downloaded but that is most of the complete albums I have bought.
If I was to name favourites from that list, I would definately say Beirut, Blitzen Trapper, Nada Surf, Pernice Brothers, Spoon, The Bluetones and The National would qualify.
So now I just wonder - what music will I be exposed to over the next 12 months. It's very exciting!
I might have been jumping the gun just a little bit yesterday, when I criticised the eMusic website for having problems with file extensions. Alarm bells probably should have been ringing when I said I was apparently the only person on the message boards to have experienced such issues.
For reasons unknown to me (because I felt like it, in other words), I decided to see if the problems of the emx files appearing instead of emp files occured using the KDE browser Konqueror. I'll be frank. The problems did not occur.
It seems something was amiss with the Opera web browser. Now whether this has occured because of the recent eMusic changes or not, I don't know but I did a full clean re-install of Opera and the problem persisted. I then put Firefox onto my system, and that worked, and continues to work fine.
As a result, I have scrapped Opera and gone back to Firefox which is good in another way - I can have the eMusic toolbar, giving me quick and easy access to the daily free download amongst other features.
So my faith in eMusic is reaffirmed; and because of that, I have used my remaining 8 downloads for the month getting two thirds of an album by the Trembling Blue Stars. The remaining songs on the album will have to wait until my account refreshes.
For reasons unknown to me (because I felt like it, in other words), I decided to see if the problems of the emx files appearing instead of emp files occured using the KDE browser Konqueror. I'll be frank. The problems did not occur.
It seems something was amiss with the Opera web browser. Now whether this has occured because of the recent eMusic changes or not, I don't know but I did a full clean re-install of Opera and the problem persisted. I then put Firefox onto my system, and that worked, and continues to work fine.
As a result, I have scrapped Opera and gone back to Firefox which is good in another way - I can have the eMusic toolbar, giving me quick and easy access to the daily free download amongst other features.
So my faith in eMusic is reaffirmed; and because of that, I have used my remaining 8 downloads for the month getting two thirds of an album by the Trembling Blue Stars. The remaining songs on the album will have to wait until my account refreshes.
There have been a couple of alterations at my favourite music downloading service over the last few days, one of which I don't really care about, but the other has been causing some minor headaches.
eMusic has launched an audiobook downloading service; separate from its music downloading service, but integrated into it's website. This is the part that I don't care about since I'm unlikely to start downloading audiobooks unless it includes copies of the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy or something equally as good.
However, the launch of the audiobook service has led to a launch of a new download manager called eMusicRemote. Prior to the launch of Audiobooks, I had used this software in it's beta offering and thought it was alright. Okay, it's basically another copy of the Firefox browser tailored to eMusic with a download manager bolted on, but that didn't bother me too much. It worked and was quite interesting.
With the release of version 1 of the DLM however, problems have started to occur; the main being that I can no longer preview tracks within the DLM and have to use my normal browser (Opera in this case). When it comes to actually downloading the tracks however, I have found that thanks to a change of file format (now with the emx extension instead of the emp extension), I cannot use the old unofficial Linux download manager (eMusic/J) and have to use the new DLM. This means logging in twice and running two browsers when navigating eMusic.
The strange thing is, that file format problem does seem to be a bit intermittent. Sometimes the extension is emx, and at other times the extension is emp allowing me to use the eMusic/J again. It also appears, according to the message boards that I am the only person having this particular problem, although others are having problems of their own.
Now don't get me wrong, I still love emusic and have no intention of cancelling my account. In fact, I have been toying with the idea of uping my subscription to 75 downloads per month, since my current 40 doesn't seem to be enough. It's just a bit irritating.
I'm confident though, that these issues will be resolved in one way or another. And if it doesn't, well I can go back to downloading straight MP3 files from the website. I used to do this before I discovered eMusic/J. It just makes downloading albums more awkward since the browser will ask where to save each and every MP3, and I'll need to name the files correctly.
eMusic has launched an audiobook downloading service; separate from its music downloading service, but integrated into it's website. This is the part that I don't care about since I'm unlikely to start downloading audiobooks unless it includes copies of the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy or something equally as good.
However, the launch of the audiobook service has led to a launch of a new download manager called eMusicRemote. Prior to the launch of Audiobooks, I had used this software in it's beta offering and thought it was alright. Okay, it's basically another copy of the Firefox browser tailored to eMusic with a download manager bolted on, but that didn't bother me too much. It worked and was quite interesting.
With the release of version 1 of the DLM however, problems have started to occur; the main being that I can no longer preview tracks within the DLM and have to use my normal browser (Opera in this case). When it comes to actually downloading the tracks however, I have found that thanks to a change of file format (now with the emx extension instead of the emp extension), I cannot use the old unofficial Linux download manager (eMusic/J) and have to use the new DLM. This means logging in twice and running two browsers when navigating eMusic.
The strange thing is, that file format problem does seem to be a bit intermittent. Sometimes the extension is emx, and at other times the extension is emp allowing me to use the eMusic/J again. It also appears, according to the message boards that I am the only person having this particular problem, although others are having problems of their own.
Now don't get me wrong, I still love emusic and have no intention of cancelling my account. In fact, I have been toying with the idea of uping my subscription to 75 downloads per month, since my current 40 doesn't seem to be enough. It's just a bit irritating.
I'm confident though, that these issues will be resolved in one way or another. And if it doesn't, well I can go back to downloading straight MP3 files from the website. I used to do this before I discovered eMusic/J. It just makes downloading albums more awkward since the browser will ask where to save each and every MP3, and I'll need to name the files correctly.
I have discovered a musical sanctuary that defies the muscle of the major music labels and stands up with the independents to offer music with no DRM, in MP3 format!
So, no restrictions on what MP3 player to use. No restrictions on the number of CDs that can be burnt. No restrictions on what computer or other hardware is used to play the music. Just legal downloads with the freedom of a CD.
Of course the major music labels don't want a part of this (although it's reported that individual executives may think it's a great idea). They are all sticking to their iTunes and DRM-drenched AAC downloads. So there's not much in the way of chart music. There's no manufactured pop artists (although some would argue that's a plus point), and no music from the likes of U2 or the Scissor Sisters.
But there is music from Snow Patrol, Coldplay, Keane, The Raconteurs, The White Stripes, The Kinks, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Eddy Grant, Bloc Party, Belle & Sebastian, The Gotan Project, America - the list does go on.
And above all, there is a wealth of music just waiting to be discovered. A musical gold mine of songs from across the genres. These are all signed artists. They just don't get the air play. This is raw music. Music for the love of the medium and nothing else.
And what does this cost? A monthly subscription starting at £8.99 for 30 downloads (40 before 20 February 2007). That's about 30p per song. Compared to 79p per download offered by iTunes, it's a pretty good deal.
I know this is a blatant advert for the service, but it's such a good find. I've discovered music by Ambulance Ltd, Belle & Sebastian, The Decemberists and the Gotan Project and that's just in one week!
So, no restrictions on what MP3 player to use. No restrictions on the number of CDs that can be burnt. No restrictions on what computer or other hardware is used to play the music. Just legal downloads with the freedom of a CD.
Of course the major music labels don't want a part of this (although it's reported that individual executives may think it's a great idea). They are all sticking to their iTunes and DRM-drenched AAC downloads. So there's not much in the way of chart music. There's no manufactured pop artists (although some would argue that's a plus point), and no music from the likes of U2 or the Scissor Sisters.
But there is music from Snow Patrol, Coldplay, Keane, The Raconteurs, The White Stripes, The Kinks, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Eddy Grant, Bloc Party, Belle & Sebastian, The Gotan Project, America - the list does go on.
And above all, there is a wealth of music just waiting to be discovered. A musical gold mine of songs from across the genres. These are all signed artists. They just don't get the air play. This is raw music. Music for the love of the medium and nothing else.
And what does this cost? A monthly subscription starting at £8.99 for 30 downloads (40 before 20 February 2007). That's about 30p per song. Compared to 79p per download offered by iTunes, it's a pretty good deal.
I know this is a blatant advert for the service, but it's such a good find. I've discovered music by Ambulance Ltd, Belle & Sebastian, The Decemberists and the Gotan Project and that's just in one week!