I just signed up with eMusic a few weeks ago. If you're into the kind of music that gets a lot of talk around here, it seems to be a good deal for LEGAL downloading.

They have a very limited selection of popular music and classic rock, but they do have a lot of indie stuff including quite a few of the big ones like The White Stripes, Pavement, Pixies, Yo la Tengo, Sufjan Stevens, etc.

The cost equates to about 20-25 cents per song (as opposed to 99 cents at iTunes). They charge by three monthly plans, depending on how much you will download (40, 65, or 90 songs a month). When I signed up, they were also giving you 25 free downloads. The files are 192 kbps mp3s, so they should play almost universally.

One word of warning though: If you live outside the US, you may not be able to download a number of the albums listed, as evidenced by many customer comments I've read.

Is anyone else here a member? Do you think it's a good deal, or is there some catch I haven't discovered yet?

eMusic

I'm not a member, but my brother is, and he's always been really happy with the service. They don't have everything he wants, but they have enough to make it worthwhile. And he won some contest there recently and has a free year of downloads. So that's cool.

I just signed up for the free 25 song trial so I could get Gimme Fiction by Spoon and Powder Burns by The Twilight Singers (I needed my Dulli fix). Damn this faux city in which I live. No decent record stores!! But that is a rant for another day. eMusic seems like a good thing, though I couldn't get It Still Moves by My Morning Jacket. Thumbs Up is my verdict.

I have eMusic. It is quite good. I use it mainly for albums I'm undecided on, because it's so cheap.

quote:

Originally posted by Crowdiggs:
eMusic seems like a good thing, though I couldn't get It Still Moves by My Morning Jacket.

You may also want to check out yourmusic where you get one CD each month for $5.99. They have "It Still Moves" over there. That comes out to 50 cents a song, plus you get the bear artwork and pure CD quality sound! (I promise I don't work for yourmusic or eMusic.)

The main reason I joined eMusic is for the plethora of albums out there that have a few songs I like but I wouldn't pay for the whole thing. Plus, they have some singles/EPs, which I never buy (Radiohead's "Airbag" and Grandaddy's "Signal to Snow Ratio" being the exceptions). And, as I'm sure joji's aware, they have The Microphones!

They don't have any Radiohead singles .

I have been overwhelmingly impressed with the eMusic service. I started out with 100 free downloads (visit this link: 100 free downloads for signing up.) about six months ago, and stuck around, starting at 40 downloads but very quickly realizing that I needed 65 downloads a month.

When you run out of your montly downloads, you can buy booster packs, which range from 10 mp3s for $5, 25 for $10 and the best deal, 50 downloads for $15. Here's the way I think of it: for $15, about the price of one CD, I can get about four 13-track albums that I would have just ripped straight to my hard drive anyway for the same price.

Even better, eMusic as a service is uniformly excellent (as long as you live in the U.S. and can access 95% of their catalogue.) If you lose a song, you can redownload it directly from your account page, no questions asked. You can easily download your music you buy to your laptop and your desktop computer this way without having to burn any CDs. Also, the website has user ,reviews in-staff reviews for most major current releases and its own in-house end-of-year lists and best-of-genre lists. More importantly, the interface is clear and easy to navigate (can't say the same for Rhapsody or Napster), so you'll actually get a chance to read these things.

And the selection! Here's just a sampling of what I've been able to download: Beirut, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, The White Stripes, Sufjan Stevens, The Pixies, Sleater-Kinney, Bjork live albums, Antony and the Johnsons, Animal Collective, The Streets, Congotronics, Xiu Xiu, Elbow and Thee More Shallows, along with the debut albums from Nine Inch Nails, Sigur Ros and Broken Social Scene. For indie-music, this just can't be beat. Here's a neat fact: out of the 15 "Best New Music" choices on Pitchfork.com right now, you can download 8 of them on eMusic.

eMusic can be very addicting... It's hard to resist moving up to the 90 downloads for $19.99 a month, and weekly I have to fight off temptation to buy another booster pack. My "Save For Later" folder has 100 entries on it, and I have to constantly delete stuff out of it to make room for new releases.

I may sound like an overly excited rep for eMusic right now, but as a user of iTunes and a trial-user for Rhapsody and Napster, I feel that I'm qualified to say that eMusic is the best thing happening in legal music downloading right now.

I used to subscribe to eMusic when it was $25 a month for unlimited downloads. It was a good deal then. It's still the best legal deal on the internet but I can't stand being limited to a certain number of tracks regardless of length. It should go by the album or single. 10 albums a month for $20 sounds better to me than 90 tracks. In any case, even though I subscribed years ago, they won't give me any newcomer deal so I won't be going back any time soon.

eMusic is great, and in tandem with second-hand CD stores, it's how I get my music.

I've been on the 90 song a month plan for a while, and have gotten some of my favorite new albums off of that program. I'd suggest it to anyone who doesn't mind dropping $20 a month for downloading.


(plus you can sign up new accounts as long as you change your credit card number and email address. just Google "50 free downloads emusic" or something, and click on the links to do it. er, not that I, uh, know or anything but uh, when you have 4 people living in your house, with an average of 2 credit cards apiece, you get a formidable amount of free downloads, and you can cancel your subscription when your done without charge... um, not that I've, uh, done that though... of course not...



and "hearsay" tells me that you can sign in your profile on other people's computers, download the installer onto their computer (for free), and re-download your songs onto their hard drive for free...

ahh yea, the best download site on the internet. Ok, it doesn't have any major label artists, subpop, and some other smaller labels but the selection is still huge. I'm on the 40 downloads per month plan for 9.99 - this is equivalent to 3 or 4 cd's for 10$. The best part is there is no annoying DRM.

quote:

Originally posted by benjiru:
I've been on the 90 song a month plan for a while, and have gotten some of my favorite new albums off of that program. I'd suggest it to anyone who doesn't mind dropping $20 a month for downloading.


(plus you can sign up new accounts as long as you change your credit card number and email address. just Google "50 free downloads emusic" or something, and click on the links to do it. er, not that I, uh, know or anything but uh, when you have 4 people living in your house, with an average of 2 credit cards apiece, you get a formidable amount of free downloads, and you can cancel your subscription when your done without charge... um, not that I've, uh, done that though... of course not...



and "hearsay" tells me that you can sign in your profile on other people's computers, download the installer onto their computer (for free), and re-download your songs onto their hard drive for free...

It seems kind of pointless to do all that for free downloads. You might as well stick with file sharing. If you want to support the artists, I figure you should take the initial free downloads and pay for the monthly service thereafter.

Well, as a college student with too much time on his hands, I had nothing better to do...

Plus I can't get limewire to work on my computer.

I was going to start a topic about eMusic. I'm glad someone already has.

This is a great service if you are into the sort of indie music that is talked about a lot on these boards. eMusic specializes in indie labels. I have picked up a ton of the most talked about albums from eMusic:

Spoon - GaGaGaGaGa
Okkervil River - The Stage Names
of Montreal - Hissing Fauna . . .
Menomena - Friend and Foe
Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends
Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
etc, etc.

The best part is that the downloads are cheap. Depending on the subscription plan you sign up for, the download prices range from $.35 to $.45 per track. I have a Premier subscription, which gives me 75 downloads a month (the equivalent of 6 full length albums) for $19.99 (what you would pay for 2 albums on iTunes).

At the risk of this sounding like a commercial, if you sign up, they give you 50 free downloads. (If you give them my username: tlmucla, I get 50 free downloads too).

But, I'm not posting this for the free downloads. I think it's a great service that many of you would love.

If any of you check it out, let me know what you think.

I use eMusic too. I'm on the cheaper plan (30 downloads @ $10/mo), but it's still a good deal. As a place to download music legally, I like it much better than iTunes. It's cheaper, and they give you mp3s in a DRM free format.

Don't "misunderstand" me here, I love emusic for all the aforementioned reasons, and I have enthusiastically referenced the service numerous times in my posts [again - PM one of us if you plan on joining so we can get some extra downloads!]; however, there are some areas of concern I'd like to play devils advocate on.

One is that the pricing tiers are subject to drastic change. IMPORTANT: They let you keep the one you currently have. However, this is a disadvantage if you want to upgrade to more downloads or if your 'waiting' on joining. I have been a member for over a year, back when it was 40 downloads for $10 (you got screwed eric). Now the lowest tier is 30 downloads for $10, which on a per song basis is a nearly 33% increase - more than is justified for inflation. If you read the above posts, it appears that the pricing tiers were even lower in years past which makes me wonder how soon it will be until it is a $1 a download.

I think it has been made clear by now, but the sites selection only consists of albums released on smaller, so-called "indie labels", so you won't find anything from Sony's million dollar labels (Interscope) or the RIAA giants. Something to keep in mind though is that often the popular "indie" artists tend to change labels frequently, and if they jump to a major or an independent label not partnered with emusic, of which there are a quiet a few, then it's a little frustrating (I'm looking at you: White Stripes, Decemberists, Interpol, New Pornographers, TV On the Radio...etc).

Sometimes when a band apparently sticks with a label, its new release doesn't appear on emusic or it doesn't appear until months later ('Blonde Redheads - 23' didn't show up until like 5 mos. after its US release). While you have a seemingly unlimited number of downloads of a track once you've already purchased it (extremely helpful), it's worth it to note that if a band or it's label doesn't contract with emusic anymore, that download becomes unavailable (it's happened to me on occasion).

The rest: as mentioned, there seem to be a lot of restrictions for subscribers outside of the US; their new download manager is painfully sluggish and uses up unnecessary memory; sometimes there are 'ripping' errors in the downloads; your unused downloads don't transfer at the end of "your month" - so pay attention to the date that your downloads refresh and use them up BEFORE that date (as it may refresh anytime on that specific date).

Nevertheless, this is an amazing service and I very much recommend it to anyone who enjoys music. It's unrivaled in giving VBR mp3's (frequently in the 200kbps range) with no DRM restrictions. I use it as much to discover new and often obscure music as I do to download from my favorite artists. The home page has "personalized" recommendations, which I've found great artists through, and they aren't necessarily contemporary or still together anymore.

Another unmentioned perk is that every now and then there are 'free' sampler albums, which often show up in the charts but can otherwise be difficult to locate - like the Marmoset sampler, Pitchfork festival mix, and 'friendly fire recording sampler', to name a few which I think are still available. There used to be a 'free download of the day' with an internet explorer (only) toolbar, but I don't use IE so I'm not sure if that is still around.

Also, though I DESPISE 'exclusive' album tracks (like itunes only, best buy only, etc.), emusic is one of those promotional outlets with 'emusic only' exclusive tracks, like with the new Andrew Bird, Bloc Party, and Okkervil River this year, among others.

Okay, there's my two cents for now.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Where Is My Pixies?,

Winston Churchill once said that democracy was the absolute worst system out there . . . except for all the rest.

That's the way it is with eMusic. It's not perfect. But it's still the best on-line music store for independent artists out there.

On the con side: I'm still waiting for the New Pornos' Challengers to come out. You have to be careful with their "subscribe now" buttons so you don't get put into a subscription you don't want (but, at least customer service is quick to reverse charges if you accidentally sign up for anything).

But on the plus side, I'm getting 90% of my downloads from them for dirt cheap (somewhere around $.35 a track). They are not DRM encoded. I can download the same album an unlimited amount of times on an unlimited amount of computers. And the selection, though not comprehensive, is still pretty good.

As far as the likes of the White Stripes, the Decemberists, and Interpol moving on to bigger labels, their back-catalogs are still available on eMu. You can get everything from the White Stripes' self-titled debut to Get Behind Me Satan, everything through Picaresque from the Decemberists, and Interpols' Turn on the Bright Lights and Antics.

Forgive me if I gush, but I love eMu.

I think the pluses far outweigh the minuses. The biggest negatives for me are:

1. Lack of selection, which is a relatively minor quibble, because I can always find the album for sale elsewhere, I'll just have to pay more.

2. I wished your number of downloads carried over, but I understand why it doesn't. It forces me to go on downloading sprees once a month.

quote:

Originally posted by ericg75:
I think the pluses far outweigh the minuses. The biggest negatives for me are:

1. Lack of selection, which is a relatively minor quibble, because I can always find the album for sale elsewhere, I'll just have to pay more.

2. I wished your number of downloads carried over, but I understand why it doesn't. It forces me to go on downloading sprees once a month.

Your second point bothers me too. I can't tell you how much money they're making off me since I forget to download my 40 songs until it's too late. It's my fault, but it's still annoying.

quote:

Originally posted by IBleedPixies!:

The rest: their new download manager is painfully sluggish and uses up unnecessary memory

Update: I just got an email from emusic saying that they are allowing users to return to using the old emusic download manager rather than the newer emusic remote that I was complaining about above. While it's still annoying to have to use unnecessary software to obtain downloads, that is a much needed relief. If your system can handle it, the new 'emusic remote' shouldn't be too problematic. It's essentially a way to compete with browser inclusive dl managers like itunes and songbird. Still, it's quirky (in a bad way) and, IMO, the added features are useless.

Also, to balance out the negative, I can give you my top 10 emusic album list for 07 that I submitted in their poll. While this list was just spontaneous and not necessarily what my final 07 list will look like, it should help clarify what 'indie' availability on emusic really means.

1. The National - Boxer
2. Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond
3. The Broken West - I Can't Go On, I'll Go On
4. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
6. Caribou - Andorra
7. Okkervil River - The Stage Names
8. The New Pornographers - Challengers
9. Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War
10. Namelessnumberheadman - Wires Reply

Even that is leaving off the Apostle of Hustle - National Anthem of Nowhere, Beirut - The Flying Cup, Calla - Strength in Numbers, Field Music - Tones of Town, Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends, Minus the Bear - Planet of Ice, Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full, Pela - Anytown Graffiti, Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover, The Ghost Is Dancing - The Darkest Spark, Thee More Shallows - Book of Bad Breaks, and the tons of other 07 releases that I DIDN'T DOWNLOAD (like Neon Bible and None Shall Pass).