Of COURSE they screwed it up

Nereffid

Someone on the eMu boards highlighted an album that was capped at 12 downloads... but it's not capped in Europe. I didn't think we'd be getting the album caps until Sony arrived, so no surprise there.

But I started looking at yesterday's new arrivals.

Hmmm...

http://www.emusic.com/album/Julia-Doyle-MONTEVERDI-C-Madrigals-Sweet-Torment-I-Fagio-MP3-Download/11470561.html
Is a 10-track album from Chandos. The last track is over 32 minutes long, and it's ALBUM ONLY.

OK, fair enough. I tend to be an album-only downloader anyway.

http://www.emusic.com/album/Ivor-Bolton-BRUCKNER-A-Symphony-No-3-1889-version-Salzb-MP3-Download/11497935.html
Is a 4-track Bruckner symphony. Three tracks are ALBUM ONLY.

OK, fair enough. People would tend to want the whole symphony.

http://www.emusic.com/album/Michael-Korstick-BEETHOVEN-L-van-Piano-Sonata-No-15-Pastoral-MP3-Download/11497990.html
Has 32 tracks, of which 21 are Beethoven's Eroica Variations. And the first track - the first movement of the Pastoral Sonata - is ALBUM ONLY.
Are they serious? If you just want the 4-track sonata, it costs you 32 tracks.

A cursory glance indicates that Chandos, Naxos, Supraphon, Oehms, Claves, Ricercar, and ECM New Series (those are the ones I've seen so far) are making all 10-minute tracks album-only, whereas BIS, Harmonia Mundi, and Ondine aren't.

Jesus!
You get an idiotic situation like
http://www.emusic.com/album/Michael-Studer-Michael-Studer-The-Legacy-MP3-Download/11078958.html
81 tracks spread over 6 discs - you can't download the discs individually like before - and 11 of the 81 tracks are album-only. How much do you want Michael Studer's recording of Schumann's Papillons? Enough to spend 81 downloads on it?

What a shame: This is another blow against the old eMusic ethos of casual exploration.

brittleblood

higher prices: good for you. good for me.

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the magic wanderer

cafreema

I'm just trying to ignore this stuff and focus on the fact that Double Nickels on the Dime is now a 12 track download.

Stressing about the rest of it isn't going to do me any good, so you can call me "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."

Craig

Televiper

It seems that those of us outside North America got sort of a double burn today. We're only seeing half the change. We're seeing the "album only" tracks but not the caps. The Minutemen album is still 24 credits for me.

I figured eMusic would be following Amazon's pattern for long tracks.

They are seriously hosing this roll-out though.

cafreema

The more I look around the less I can be "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."

Sigh.

Craig

thomnottom

81 credits is also more than the any monthly subscription will allow. Yes, I know there are booster packs, but you shouldn't have to buy multiple booster packs to get a single track.

Nereffid

The thing is, though, that - having by now made my peace with the eventual price hike - album pricing could prove a big advantage for me. I've found the average number of tracks per album in classical music as a whole to be about 16. So if albums tend to be priced at 12 credits, that would be an improvement. Obviously there are various ifs in there.

Well, put it another way. Right now I'm still grandfathered at 21.4 cents (euro) per track. So one average 16-track album is just under E3.50. Going up to 40 cents a track makes it close to E6.50. Capping it at 12 brings that down to under E5. Which I don't think is a bad price.

Given that apparently there's so many albums that have album-only tracks, and so many that are priced at 12 credits, it could make sense for eMusic to further rebrand itself as "Great albums for a fiver!"
At least that would be more honest than the current lame attempt to convince us it's the same old eMusic.

thomnottom

Yeah, there's a number of areas in which I'll benefit for the time being. But I'm really glad at this point that I went on a major jazz bender over the last year. And I'm also disappointed that my cherry-picking will be much more limited than expected.

frogkopf

It looks like eMu more or less labels the option of either having album pricing or not. In the first case, they either slap tracks over 10 minutes with an album only label,or do it randomly if the album only has shorter tracks. My reason for thinking this is wholesale is that even 3-4 song EPs are now going for 12 credits.

If you live in Europe, I would recommend that you grab any albums with few tracks that have album only tracks ASAP - vritually all these album have gone up to 12 credits in the US, and will be the same in Europe sometime in the future .

xtrev

To be fair (not sure why!) I suspect they've just screwed it up in their usual incompetent fashion and the singles/EPs will probably get re-priced to sane levels at some point.
Maybe when they introduce the lower priced 'album prices' - 6 and 9 tracks I think was mentioned?

The album only tracks I've noticed so far in the UK store are all on things where I was probably going to get the whole album anyway, so hopefully this isn't going to be a major hassle for me.
But if they haven't sorted out album pricing in an acceptable way by the time we get it in the UK and my annual account expires, I'll definitely just quit.

Televiper

They could relieve a lot of aggravation right now if they simply raised the "album-only" track length threshold to about 15-20 minutes. That seems to be a more reasonable point between a long track, and something that was intended to fill a significant portion of an album, for example an entire side of a record. This of course doesn't include tracks end loaded with silence but you probably don't want those as individual downloads anyway.

Nereffid

Heh, I just realised...
All those Nereffid's Guide lists that included the number of tracks on the album.
Just as well I got rid of them when I did. They'd just be upsetting everyone now.

JFLL

Yeah, Nereffid, and remember those "Great One-Track Wonder" threads on the Classical board which were so useful when you'd got a few downloads to play with at the end of the month? Phut! or maybe Zut!

kez

For those who like baroque, you can still download all of Concert de l'Hostel Dieu's Stradella: La Bellissima Speranza on a single-track basis. Somebody evidently really doesn't like this album at all (only 1 rating and it's a 2-star), but I strongly disagree. I couldn't find too much on the internet about this recording, but I found the entire album very, very well done and enjoyable to listen to. The singers are all excellent. The sonata (tracks 9-14) is a fine example of baroque playing, and track 8 is a very gorgeous aria performed by a very, very good baritone or tenor; whichever he is, he is excellent.

RonanM

You get an idiotic situation like
http://www.emusic.com/album/Michael-Studer-Michael-Studer-The-Legacy-MP3-Download/11078958.html
81 tracks spread over 6 discs - you can't download the discs individually like before - and 11 of the 81 tracks are album-only. How much do you want Michael Studer's recording of Schumann's Papillons? Enough to spend 81 downloads on it?

This album is incredibly cheap to buy on CD - six disks for the price of one. I got it - splendid piano player, I think. But your point's well make - eMu¢ic is discovering new ways of screwing up every day.

frogkopf

Here's a good deal 15 CDs for $30.

Any comments of the performances? Will that much harpsichord music damage the synapses in your brain?

TimMason

As one of the reviewers says, it's not all harpsichord music: you get some orchestral works and some Bach cantatas thrown in. He says that the Goldbergs have been remastered, and that is probably a good thing: I have found that some of Leonhardt's recordings were less than wonderful, sounding as if they had been recorded while he was playing in the next room.

I have all of this music, some of it by Leonhard, so I won't be buying it. Should you? I'd say by all means at that price - but I know I actually prefer more recent performances in most cases.