It might also explain why we haven't yet got the majors here - Cathy promised we'd get them within a year nearly two years ago.
Yes, It could also have to do with that Europe is difficult to do business with.
AFAIK. the Danish branch of IFPI has some difficult rules that prevents distributors of digital music like Amazon, Mtraks and many more to get into the Danish market.
- I don't miss the majors, I'm quite happy with my grandfather plan with 90 tracks for about 0,23 per track.
:-)
I don't know why you guys are always so down on eMusic. Look at this new Hip-Hop album I got.
I didn't even know I liked hip-hop. I guess that guy in the middle is like the head gangsta. If that's not an exciting new world of music discovery, I'd like to know what is!
I adore those new-fangled albums that tell my how many minutes of music I'm getting! Wow!
Hmpf. Locked out of the daily download. Nothing was up yesterday and today I see a track, but it keeps going back to the signup page. I hope they didn't "fix" it.
First month in quite some time I haven't had some bonus credit to play with. The "regular" credits don't go so far without a little something something on top - the bonuses have made a big difference in my perception of whether I'm getting my money's worth from eMu. Maybe there will be a Twitter deal around Labor Day.
All 60 minutes of that Staples album are awesome, btw - Makes me want to look for a collection of their gospel stuff
@BT - Well, how's about Old Country Songs, Volume 1 or 2, third row down on this page. Both 100 songs for $5.84. Unable to listen to samples currently but I bookmarked one of them over the weekend.
Well, all righty then, I found these two albums at Amazon so I could hear some samples and I just might have to get them - not bad, not bad.
Hard to resist anything with a chicken on the cover - I got this one and it rocks.
Ah, McGoo, they've done it again - the latest thematically dubious sale, Back To School, $4.99 each. I can't really see a lot here that you probably didn't already have if you had ever thought about it at all, but maybe something will speak to you. Solo Monk looks like the one for me, and I'd rec the extended version Sweetheart of the Rodeo by The Byrds and the Legacy Edition Time Out for anyone who didn't have them.
Dumbest theme for a sale yet. However, there are a few classics that are a good deal for $5, I do not have that particular Peter Tosh album and I am tempted by the Clash (in oh so many ways). Two ELO albums seems excessive, but then who does not love Jeff Lynne?
Good news, bad news - there's a Labor Day Weekend sale coming Friday, 35+ working class classics for $4.99, but if you click on it you get Page Not Found. Let's hope somebody can find it by then.
Cutting and pasting this here for people who don't read the other place.
The soundtrack to the documentary El Gusto arrived today (NB: I am in Australia, your mileage may vary).
I was pretty excited about this as I saw the film at the Sydney Film festival earlier this year and it was fabulous. The promotional material describes it as Buena Vista Social Club of Algeria or something which I guess gives you a vague idea. Its about chaabi, a mix of Andalusian and Arabic music popular in North Africa. The film is basically about the musicians who used to be stars back in the day playing the music and the road to a reunion of them. It was played by Jewish and Muslim musicians alike but during and after the Algerian war of independence basically the Jews all left for France so that was that. Even the players who stayed in Algeria had drifted apart, some of them out of music altogether.
I was first introduced to chaabi a number of years ago when I downloaded from eMusic Descarga Oriental by Algerian/French pianist Maurice el Medioni and Latin trumpeter Roberto Rodriguez. Its still one of my favourite albums. El Medioni is in the film.
So I started reading about chaabi and read an article in the Guardian about a reunion concert in Paris of chaabi musicians who in many cases hadnt seen each other for decades. I realised part way through the film El Gusto, that it was leading up to the reunion I read about which was cool.
Even though I get pissed off with eMusic regularly for reasons we are all familiar with, Im still incredibly grateful to it for all the music I wouldnt have discovered otherwise.
The film is great if you get a chance and the soundtrack is also worth a look.
Even though I get pissed off with eMusic regularly for reasons we are all familiar with, Im still incredibly grateful to it for all the music I wouldnt have discovered otherwise.
Ditto that, and when it comes to music from far away places, well, here's looking at you, kid, and we'll always have Chicha.
Even though I get pissed off with eMusic regularly for reasons we are all familiar with, Im still incredibly grateful to it for all the music I wouldnt have discovered otherwise.
Me, also - emusic has totally changed the music that I listen to most regularly now. And without emusic I wouldn't have found emusers too!
Re emusic: I am finding a weird inversion taking place. When I joined emuisc it was the place to find obscure stuff that often was not on other sites, and people complained about the majors not being there but that did not bother me at all. Now, I think mainly because of the proliferation of other small outlets and labels online, I am in what seems like an increasing number of instances finding it is obscure independent stuff that interests me that I can't find on emusic, but can find on, say, bandcamp.
For instance, emusic has three of Wil Bolton's releases (one misfiled as a single; I was going to write emusic has two, but Amber Studies just arrived), Amazon has the same three, bandcamp has eight. I would love to buy the six I don't have from emusic, since I have credit sitting there to spend, but I can't.
This is exactly the kind of music that 6 years ago I would only have discovered through emusic; now emusic is by no means always the best place to find it. I would say the instances in which I want to buy something but can't find it on emusic might have increased in some areas (because of the trails I'm following more than because their catalog has failed to grow).
I'm still finding just about enough to use emusic for, but it's waning I think, grateful as I am for past discoveries.
Yes, some of it is definitely time lag, but there are also still small independent labels not using emusic at all or very selectively. As if to underscore the point I just got interested in an artist called Nacht Plank via a mention on Wil Bolton's site; Nacht Plank has several albums on several labels going back a few years available on Boomkat - most of them are not on emusic. Not all the missing Wil Bolton stuff is new - in fact the newest is the one emusic just got. I seem to keep finding interesting obscure new artists and maybe being able to get one or two of their albums at emusic and then finding the trail leads elsewhere for the rest.
This makes me miss Amiestreet again, where sometimes you'd find that if it was really obscure it was also free.
What I am suggesting is that many labels would withhold albums that they felt could garner money at other venues before they hit emusic. In this sense, eMusic was the last in line. In several cases I'm familiar (mostly classical, folk and jazz), labels go through long periods of not releasing anything to emusic and then dumping dozens of albums over a few weeks.
Have you considered, though, that you are a more sophisticated listener than when you started at emusic and, perhaps, you have outgrown it?
Yes, I think that's part of it too - I keep following trajectories beyond what emusic has; when I started the fact that they had any (e.g.) obscure ambient albums at all gave me fields to explore, but I am more often bumping against the limits. I just have more music quantitatively as well, and since so much of it came from emusic it follows that what they have is more often what I have already in a given niche. And that still leaves the parallel fact that bandcamp and some other venues (including labels selling via their own sites) have grown a lot over the same time period, making emusic no longer quite as central a location to find the less mainstream music that was its original bread and butter. Several things have shifted. What sparked the thought was the irony that when I first found emu the stereotypical issue was looking for mainstream stuff and it not being there, when now I keep looking for alternative stuff and not finding it there; surely a mixture of me and the wider environment changing as much as emusic, whose catalog has far from shrunk.
I'm still rather attached to the subscription model. I like it as a way of setting aside budget in a way that both limits overall spending to some degree and at the same time frees it by making the point of download feel less like spending. I think if bandcamp had a subscription model I'd be pretty interested.
The Bandcamp V E Music choice is simple, on Bandcamp you can hear the full albums before you buy. Take a label like Ultimae, on E music you hear a 30 sec sample which bears no resemblence to the track, but hearing the full track on Bandcamp you can decide to buy the album.
My Budget is about £20 a month which was a great deal when E Music had the full range of the indies, now due to the loss of them and the nightmare of the web site it makes it so hard to find any good stuff. My reseach on Bandcamp has found the new music I used to look for on E music. Yes I go back to E Music once every 3 months or so to pick all the music that would hit my budget but that means they only a quarter on revenue that they should have, Add to this the shoddy way they treat their UK clients means that the interest in them is diminshing.
How long Bandcamp can keep its model will be interesting but for musicains it is serving a purpose and the fact more mainstream artist are using it will hopefully means is a even better selection. For Klien and and his co-horts it should be a reminder of what should be able to achieve and maybe try to get out of bed with the majors, stop competing with I Tunes and Amazon and get back to its original roots before its too late.
I was being snarky, sorry GermanProf. I have got a ton of great music from AmieStreet, although the model seemed flawed from the beginning. I spend $20 and get at least five times that back in recs...I talked to two different musicians with music posted to Amie without their knowledge, and the never received a dime from the site. To be fair, I doubt either makes anything from iTunes or Amazon either.
If eMusic disappeared tomorrow, I could adjust using Last.FM or Spotify for music discovery, Amazon and Bandcamp for downloads (or binsearch, but that is another thing altogether). I use magnatune as well, but mostly for classical music, occasionally new age / ambient. Most of the time, I get musical satisfaction out of eMusic; Amazon is for musical gluttony (yeah! another 100 top hits of Mozart!)
I've certainly become much more discerning since joining emusic, and my tastes have developed in ways I'd never have predicted. But this is the beauty of the emusic model where, at the price I'm still paying, I get 100 tracks for £20 per month, so I'm happy to try something different. But I think emusic has missed the boat trying to compete with itunes and Amazon. In genreal the kind of person wanting to buy the majors will always start with those two. I feel that instead of competing with those two emusic ought to be best in its niche market - which it was two years ago. It seems as though they have lost about a third of their subscribers since then. I'd miss emusic if it went, but I'd now use other sources to get plenty of quality music - probably Bandcamp and Noisetrade, with Amazon or 7 digital for others (which is already the case for anything I want from the majors and big indie labels anyway) Emusic has led me forward but I'd miss it less now than say two years ago
@Plong42, no offence taken. I actually think Crimson Razorback et al were part of the charm. Maybe what I miss most about Amie is that unlike any music site I know of right now, it was a fun place to spend some time. The combination of watching for things to get added to as to catch them for free, watching for things to get added that were suited to predatory use of recs, the resulting creeping up of the account balance as recs ripened into free credit, finding good obscure stuff that was free or almost free because so few had bought it, the constant chance of finding hilariously bad things, the long samples... it was as much a game as a music site because of the acquisition of points and the focus on the right moment to pounce. With its demise and emusic becoming significantly less fun (and I am not sure Amazon or iTunes were ever fun) it left a gap only partially filled by Bandcamp: music purchase as a form of interactive amusement.
One thing that is good about Amie going under is that I my Tuesday mornings are a lot less stressful. No more trying to rec things fast, hoping foolishly to someday catch Frogkopf.
New World was the best of all, I probably have 20GB of modern classical for about $20 real money. Some very enjoyable music I would have never sampled otherwise.
Comments
AFAIK. the Danish branch of IFPI has some difficult rules that prevents distributors of digital music like Amazon, Mtraks and many more to get into the Danish market.
- I don't miss the majors, I'm quite happy with my grandfather plan with 90 tracks for about 0,23 per track.
:-)
I didn't even know I liked hip-hop. I guess that guy in the middle is like the head gangsta. If that's not an exciting new world of music discovery, I'd like to know what is!
Hmpf. Locked out of the daily download. Nothing was up yesterday and today I see a track, but it keeps going back to the signup page. I hope they didn't "fix" it.
All 60 minutes of that Staples album are awesome, btw - Makes me want to look for a collection of their gospel stuff
Well, all righty then, I found these two albums at Amazon so I could hear some samples and I just might have to get them - not bad, not bad.
Hard to resist anything with a chicken on the cover - I got this one and it rocks.
Me too BN!! I'm getting 100 tracks @ 20p each - about the same cost as you pay BN
The soundtrack to the documentary El Gusto arrived today (NB: I am in Australia, your mileage may vary).
I was pretty excited about this as I saw the film at the Sydney Film festival earlier this year and it was fabulous. The promotional material describes it as Buena Vista Social Club of Algeria or something which I guess gives you a vague idea. Its about chaabi, a mix of Andalusian and Arabic music popular in North Africa. The film is basically about the musicians who used to be stars back in the day playing the music and the road to a reunion of them. It was played by Jewish and Muslim musicians alike but during and after the Algerian war of independence basically the Jews all left for France so that was that. Even the players who stayed in Algeria had drifted apart, some of them out of music altogether.
I was first introduced to chaabi a number of years ago when I downloaded from eMusic Descarga Oriental by Algerian/French pianist Maurice el Medioni and Latin trumpeter Roberto Rodriguez. Its still one of my favourite albums. El Medioni is in the film.
So I started reading about chaabi and read an article in the Guardian about a reunion concert in Paris of chaabi musicians who in many cases hadnt seen each other for decades. I realised part way through the film El Gusto, that it was leading up to the reunion I read about which was cool.
Even though I get pissed off with eMusic regularly for reasons we are all familiar with, Im still incredibly grateful to it for all the music I wouldnt have discovered otherwise.
The film is great if you get a chance and the soundtrack is also worth a look.
Me, also - emusic has totally changed the music that I listen to most regularly now. And without emusic I wouldn't have found emusers too!
For instance, emusic has three of Wil Bolton's releases (one misfiled as a single; I was going to write emusic has two, but Amber Studies just arrived), Amazon has the same three, bandcamp has eight. I would love to buy the six I don't have from emusic, since I have credit sitting there to spend, but I can't.
This is exactly the kind of music that 6 years ago I would only have discovered through emusic; now emusic is by no means always the best place to find it. I would say the instances in which I want to buy something but can't find it on emusic might have increased in some areas (because of the trails I'm following more than because their catalog has failed to grow).
I'm still finding just about enough to use emusic for, but it's waning I think, grateful as I am for past discoveries.
This makes me miss Amiestreet again, where sometimes you'd find that if it was really obscure it was also free.
And sometimes it was Crimson Razorback.
Have you considered, though, that you are a more sophisticated listener than when you started at emusic and, perhaps, you have outgrown it?
I'm still rather attached to the subscription model. I like it as a way of setting aside budget in a way that both limits overall spending to some degree and at the same time frees it by making the point of download feel less like spending. I think if bandcamp had a subscription model I'd be pretty interested.
My Budget is about £20 a month which was a great deal when E Music had the full range of the indies, now due to the loss of them and the nightmare of the web site it makes it so hard to find any good stuff. My reseach on Bandcamp has found the new music I used to look for on E music. Yes I go back to E Music once every 3 months or so to pick all the music that would hit my budget but that means they only a quarter on revenue that they should have, Add to this the shoddy way they treat their UK clients means that the interest in them is diminshing.
How long Bandcamp can keep its model will be interesting but for musicains it is serving a purpose and the fact more mainstream artist are using it will hopefully means is a even better selection. For Klien and and his co-horts it should be a reminder of what should be able to achieve and maybe try to get out of bed with the majors, stop competing with I Tunes and Amazon and get back to its original roots before its too late.
If eMusic disappeared tomorrow, I could adjust using Last.FM or Spotify for music discovery, Amazon and Bandcamp for downloads (or binsearch, but that is another thing altogether). I use magnatune as well, but mostly for classical music, occasionally new age / ambient. Most of the time, I get musical satisfaction out of eMusic; Amazon is for musical gluttony (yeah! another 100 top hits of Mozart!)
New World was the best of all, I probably have 20GB of modern classical for about $20 real money. Some very enjoyable music I would have never sampled otherwise.