I have to say, I have never felt "forced" to purchase something I don't want. In fact I kind of stockpile album picks of different prices so that I can find something to fill out the month. Much easier when you are buying mostly jazz, of course. Likely the rationale for that strategy will be GWTW after Nov.
It's a good point for many, I think, but I'm like Doofy in that I'm always comfortable with what I end up with - with the reduced downloads from the last change, it's more that I'm uncomfortable rejecting stuff I can't squeeze in. My grandfathered 2-yr prepay just ended in August, and I'm still getting used to having only 35 (which will statistically be reduced further next month). To match some semblance of my previous eclectic months, I have been grabbing half albums to complete later, to have more records to sample in a month.
Did I see it coming? Sort of....As part of a discussion about the incentives for converting to annual earlier this year:
I wondered if part of the goal was to lure us old grandpas off our nonstandard plans. Or is that giving them too much credit? Even after 2 years, the annual plan is a far better deal...0.29 per track! Not to mention they could yank my grandfathered plan at any time. Getting harder to talk myself out of this...of course, if you go annual, you're assuming eMu is going to be around next year!
Glad I resisted, as it turns out. Of course I didn't get the 100 bonus DL's, but then I'm not tied to eMu for another 9 months.
With over 1000 titles on my various SFL lists I've never had to feel compelled to download something just to use up the monthly allotment. It's more of a struggle figuring out what to download. Obviously not everything on those lists is going to be serious contender but there are enough to keep me busy - I chalk it up to being interested in moldy old music, you know, blues, jazz, bluegrass, folk, international, more than popular modern music. What I do find is that when I have culled a bunch of titles off those SFL's recently they tend to be artists I'm not familiar with, the lesser known, precisely the kind of things I might have taken a chance on back when my eMu downloads were both cheaper and more plentiful - with higher costs and fewer downloads I'm weighted towards a known quantity - so the spirit of exploration and expansion that was one of the primary things the service had in its favor back then is taking it on the chin. That is a real shame.
with higher costs and fewer downloads I'm weighted towards a known quantity - so the spirit of exploration and expansion that was one of the primary things the service had in its favor back then is taking it on the chin. That is a real shame.
My feelings exactly. If the exploration and discovery (or thrill of the hunt) is gone for me, I'll just shop elsewhere. No point in recurrent prepaying for music.
If the exploration and discovery (or thrill of the hunt) is gone for me, I'll just shop elsewhere.
What? Rampant drama and vituperation aren't enough to justify the monthly fee?
Seriously, I suppose sometime next month they might actually get back to talking about music over there. Or not, since there hasn't been as much of that lately. That sense of community has been rather diminished it seems.
pipher: Which kinda sucks, because I just discovered all of you over here on this forum after 5-6 years with emusic.
I don't think this community is going away any time soon. I expect we'll be here talking about great music, great deals on music, and other ephemera regardless of any drama in the online music business.
@pipher - Since my original membership kicked the bucket back in January, I have not been a regular subscriber. But I'm still very active here. Probably more so than before. Our connection via eMusic is just the starting point.
So the 50% off that they offered me works out like this; Instead of paying $20.79, I'll pay $9.99 for three months, and get an $8.00 bonus credit, for a total of $17.99.
I know that it's incredibly small and petty of me but I have to note that $8 is not 50% of $20.79, or even of $19.98.
I also seem to have lost my rights to my monthly $3 "loyalty" credit, which means I get 42 of the cheap songs instead of 48 if I were to go back to my $20.79 account.
I can't complaint about free stuff, but it just seems typical of emu's math.
The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me:
For me the angels sing-a-ling-a-ling,
They've got the goods for me.
Oh! Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?
Oh! Grave, thy victory?
The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me.
amclark: Figures. This further adds to my sense that they have some investment in "un-Grandfathering" us.
I've been a member since 2001 with no interruptions so I'll be staying, probably to the bitter end like it was with Amie Street. While the pricing makes me a tad anxious the fact is, like BigD, I'm into the old moldy stuff and the setup of eMu beats the snot out any of the other retailers in terms of being able to turn over rocks and find new gems. So maybe it'll be off to Amazon to see what the hipsters are up to but it'll be back to the basement at eMu to find that next gem out of Central Africa circa 1970.
I'm probably gonna stick around emusic for the change, just to see what happens. My credits roll at the end of October, and they say they won't change to the new pricing scheme until mid-November, so I figure I have another round of downloading. If I'm at zero credits when they make the switch, it won't cost me anything to look around and I can bail before they charge me again if that's the best decision.
Emusic lost its sense of community for me right around the Sony drop, if not a little before. I still check the new releases every day for something I might want, but don't otherwise participate there. (In fact, work has been so busy lately, I don't participate much anywhere at the present).
The only reason I keep the lists up at diehippiedie.com is because *I* use them to keep an eye on the new music, which is the whole reason I came up with them in the first place. They broke for about a week a bit ago, but I realized how much I depended on them and fixed them.
As for the new increased prices, I wonder how much of this is due to the originally Sony deal, rather than the new deal. My reasoning is that they lost a lot of customers with the Sony deal. If they'd kept customers, or increased them, then they wouldn't have to change the entire structure for this new deal. But they need to come up with new income because the Sony thing was handled so poorly and they have a shitty website, and they are using the new deal to justify the change in pricing... am I even making sense?
Anyway, just dropped by to say hey and maybe I'll come back a little more often.
Yeah, I hadn't thought of that but it does make sense. Because they can't admit they screwed up the first time, they think the only way to fix it is to do the same thing, but just try to be nicer about it. But who wants nice? I think what bugs me is not the price increase so much as it just seems dumb. We lost an eighth of a relatively small customer base by bringing on a major label and jacking up prices. How do we fix that? Let's get another major label and jack up prices.
I genuinely believe that the old subscription model of smaller labels/lower prices was untenable, or in any case "ungrowable." Or at least, the way it was marketed (eg, Pizza Hut), going out to sign up large numbers of subscribers who then turned out to be disappointed by the limited selection. They might have been able to secure a nice little niche by marketing to snob appeal ("indie iTunes")...we'll never know. But they didn't want a little niche!
The only reason they're still around is that they were in the game early. Now they're trying to play catch up, with a subscription model that seems pretty wobbly. I'm not really there for new releases, so I missed the thing where new albums were going to priced $7.49 for the first year. I find it really difficult to believe people are going to view that as sufficient savings to sign up for a sub. Maybe, *maybe* they can get some nibbles if there is an ala carte option. Oh, you want to buy the new Sufjan (or Justin Bieber or whoever)? You can have it for $9, or join our club now and get it for $7.50. Maybe.
How do we fix that? Let's get another major label and jack up prices.
Pure ill-informed speculation n my part but is it quite possible that eMusic is also under pressure from the indies to raise prices? My fuzzy and dim memory seems to recall several large indies leaving prior to the Sony drop with much grumbling about payouts and then returning to much fanfare when consumer prices were raised. My guess is that all the labels, big and small, want a price floor across all the services.
From a business aspect, my concern is that eMusic is fixated on iTunes as their competitor which couldn't be farther from the truth. Now it might be that they don't want to outright name the true threat to their viability but I get the feeling that by ignoring Amazon, and to a lesser degree 7Digital, that they are going to loose the fight for mindshare regarding pricing value. While the price floor begins to level out amongst all these services eMusic needs to push hard to differentiate itself from it's nearest competitors. iTunes is largely singles driven and it is damn near impossible to discover music through and the average user of iTunes is likely not to become one of eMusic. Amazon, while nodding towards the singles market, really pushes albums and is sort of curating albums in its own way and that is encroaching on eMusic's market.
At the end of the day, the really underlying issue with how eMusic is run could be that the parent firm is a private equity company and their goals for the last 7 years has been to try and sell it.
Yes. But I doubt anybody else wants to sell subs, and that's all they've got.
That's why I think we are experiencing all this ham-fisted pricing maneuvers, subs give a predictable revenue stream which is exactly what a firm like Dimensional wants to see but the attraction of the sub, like everyone has pointed out, is that it needs to give the consumer some benefit in terms of overall pricing. With the contortions over the past year and that benefit is being erased. Honestly, what might help make a sale or maintain viability is to split it up into a club membership suggested above, discounts for pre-paying (or being a patron) and regular rates if you just want to fill your cart and go. Sort of like the Amie Street model which benefited from people depositing money and then not spending it right away.
This all smells of a new CEO just making his mark and "fixing" things for the future, not so much an effort trying to repair the negative effects of the Sony deal. From what I've read about this guy, he obviously seems to have come in with solutions looking for a problem, as they say. He is following the typical trend of changing for the sake of change, rather than improving. That said, emusic did lose about 7-8% of their subscribers post-Sony, which I can assume was offset by the price increase to keep them at about the same level revenue-wise - not a bad thing to aim for in this economy where other similar services are having to sell or die off.
Well, somebody hanging out on the sidewalk in front of the old record store pulling on a brown paper bag just reminded me about eMusers.
Oh, yeah. I do appear to be registered here. Must be from one of the other big (post-Mixtaper) traumas.
Anyway, good to see a bunch of y'all again. I've already opined "over there" about the latest screwing until I'm sick of listening to myself. Nothing to say that hasn't been articulated three or four times already in this thread.
Guess I'll go burn off my remaining downloads and quit to see what kind of "bone I can't refuse" they toss my way.
Just so you know I got my offer from somebody in customer service reading on the message board that I cancelled. It may pay to be vocal over there about your cancellation.
Also I seem to have lost my loyalty bonus of $3 per month by cancelling so that's something to keep in mind.
From a business aspect, my concern is that eMusic is fixated on iTunes as their competitor which couldn't be farther from the truth.
This brings up memories of being stuck in the international lounge at Heathrow, the speaker blaring about how the products are "20-30% off London street price" (or something like that). Anything at London street price is an awful value, and a fraction of that awful value is still awful.
Just so you know I got my offer from somebody in customer service reading on the message board that I cancelled. It may pay to be vocal over there about your cancellation.
Those offers were only good the first day after the announcement. Now, customer service is so sick ofthe bitching, they're not reading any more.
Comments
Quantum field theory?
I have to say, I have never felt "forced" to purchase something I don't want. In fact I kind of stockpile album picks of different prices so that I can find something to fill out the month. Much easier when you are buying mostly jazz, of course. Likely the rationale for that strategy will be GWTW after Nov.
It's a good point for many, I think, but I'm like Doofy in that I'm always comfortable with what I end up with - with the reduced downloads from the last change, it's more that I'm uncomfortable rejecting stuff I can't squeeze in. My grandfathered 2-yr prepay just ended in August, and I'm still getting used to having only 35 (which will statistically be reduced further next month). To match some semblance of my previous eclectic months, I have been grabbing half albums to complete later, to have more records to sample in a month.
My feelings exactly. If the exploration and discovery (or thrill of the hunt) is gone for me, I'll just shop elsewhere. No point in recurrent prepaying for music.
What? Rampant drama and vituperation aren't enough to justify the monthly fee?
Seriously, I suppose sometime next month they might actually get back to talking about music over there. Or not, since there hasn't been as much of that lately. That sense of community has been rather diminished it seems.
Craig
I don't think this community is going away any time soon. I expect we'll be here talking about great music, great deals on music, and other ephemera regardless of any drama in the online music business.
Over there, of course, not over here.
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We'll be over, we're coming over,
And we won't come back till it's over
Over there.
Sorry. I tend to free associate.
I know that it's incredibly small and petty of me but I have to note that $8 is not 50% of $20.79, or even of $19.98.
I also seem to have lost my rights to my monthly $3 "loyalty" credit, which means I get 42 of the cheap songs instead of 48 if I were to go back to my $20.79 account.
I can't complaint about free stuff, but it just seems typical of emu's math.
Me too.
amclark: Figures. This further adds to my sense that they have some investment in "un-Grandfathering" us.
amclark: yeah, bad math, plus they left out a bit of the small print. That's downright shifty.
i hope all you dudes -- and dudettes -- stay or return.
I'm probably gonna stick around emusic for the change, just to see what happens. My credits roll at the end of October, and they say they won't change to the new pricing scheme until mid-November, so I figure I have another round of downloading. If I'm at zero credits when they make the switch, it won't cost me anything to look around and I can bail before they charge me again if that's the best decision.
Emusic lost its sense of community for me right around the Sony drop, if not a little before. I still check the new releases every day for something I might want, but don't otherwise participate there. (In fact, work has been so busy lately, I don't participate much anywhere at the present).
The only reason I keep the lists up at diehippiedie.com is because *I* use them to keep an eye on the new music, which is the whole reason I came up with them in the first place. They broke for about a week a bit ago, but I realized how much I depended on them and fixed them.
As for the new increased prices, I wonder how much of this is due to the originally Sony deal, rather than the new deal. My reasoning is that they lost a lot of customers with the Sony deal. If they'd kept customers, or increased them, then they wouldn't have to change the entire structure for this new deal. But they need to come up with new income because the Sony thing was handled so poorly and they have a shitty website, and they are using the new deal to justify the change in pricing... am I even making sense?
Anyway, just dropped by to say hey and maybe I'll come back a little more often.
Yeah, I hadn't thought of that but it does make sense. Because they can't admit they screwed up the first time, they think the only way to fix it is to do the same thing, but just try to be nicer about it. But who wants nice? I think what bugs me is not the price increase so much as it just seems dumb. We lost an eighth of a relatively small customer base by bringing on a major label and jacking up prices. How do we fix that? Let's get another major label and jack up prices.
The only reason they're still around is that they were in the game early. Now they're trying to play catch up, with a subscription model that seems pretty wobbly. I'm not really there for new releases, so I missed the thing where new albums were going to priced $7.49 for the first year. I find it really difficult to believe people are going to view that as sufficient savings to sign up for a sub. Maybe, *maybe* they can get some nibbles if there is an ala carte option. Oh, you want to buy the new Sufjan (or Justin Bieber or whoever)? You can have it for $9, or join our club now and get it for $7.50. Maybe.
From a business aspect, my concern is that eMusic is fixated on iTunes as their competitor which couldn't be farther from the truth. Now it might be that they don't want to outright name the true threat to their viability but I get the feeling that by ignoring Amazon, and to a lesser degree 7Digital, that they are going to loose the fight for mindshare regarding pricing value. While the price floor begins to level out amongst all these services eMusic needs to push hard to differentiate itself from it's nearest competitors. iTunes is largely singles driven and it is damn near impossible to discover music through and the average user of iTunes is likely not to become one of eMusic. Amazon, while nodding towards the singles market, really pushes albums and is sort of curating albums in its own way and that is encroaching on eMusic's market.
At the end of the day, the really underlying issue with how eMusic is run could be that the parent firm is a private equity company and their goals for the last 7 years has been to try and sell it.
Yes. But I doubt anybody else wants to sell subs, and that's all they've got.
@katrina, what, you don't rock out while you're mopping? I find that hard to believe.
/armchair CEO
Oh, yeah. I do appear to be registered here. Must be from one of the other big (post-Mixtaper) traumas.
Anyway, good to see a bunch of y'all again. I've already opined "over there" about the latest screwing until I'm sick of listening to myself. Nothing to say that hasn't been articulated three or four times already in this thread.
Guess I'll go burn off my remaining downloads and quit to see what kind of "bone I can't refuse" they toss my way.
Woof!
//edit: Switched to BBCode for formatting
Just so you know I got my offer from somebody in customer service reading on the message board that I cancelled. It may pay to be vocal over there about your cancellation.
Also I seem to have lost my loyalty bonus of $3 per month by cancelling so that's something to keep in mind.
Those offers were only good the first day after the announcement. Now, customer service is so sick ofthe bitching, they're not reading any more.
Hey there beachdog! Meow~!!