Merge and Beggars Group say leaving less painful than staying

Music Lover

"We will lose some income, but we accept that, as a price ... less painful [than] what we see the outcome of accepting the new terms would be."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2010/11/17/131388154/download-service-emusic-unveils-new-pricing-model-indie-labels-jump-ship


(Feel free to post link to article at at eMusic, if not already there.)

Music Lover

This link (above) would be a perfect reply to this post (http://www.emusic.com/messageboard/viewTopic.html?topicId=266390#), if I could post at eMusic, but I cannot post at eMusic since I no longer pay them the big bucks for that privilege....

Music Lover

amclark2,

You are the Cat Power's meow! Thanks much!

kargatron

ML, just fyi, these quotes and information in teh article most definitely made the rounds weeks ago. It would be nice to see more detailed information about the nature of the terms, but none appears forthcoming.

Doofy

I just wish that eMusic had been in charge of the negotiations between Derek Jeter and the Yankees.

If so, Jeter would be a Cardinal today. (I understand some Redbird fans were allowing their daydreams to stray in that direction...!)

ScissorMan

I would have thought that after two weeks, somebody from one of the major-indies who bailed (actually just two, since Matador is part of Beggars) would have leaked something about what eMu was asking them to accept. Apparently these days it's easier to find out what goes on in US Embassy intelligence briefings than it is to find out online-distribution pricing structures for MP3's.

"It's not that we don't like tiered pricing," Wheeler said in an email. "We do that with many services ... it was how eMusic wanted to impose the tiers onto our catalogue that was the issue."

He demurred from discussing his specific concerns with the changes eMusic had made. But Wheeler made it clear that as eMusic brought major labels into the fold, it hurt his bottom line.

"They have been an important partner for us," he wrote, "but since adding the Sony and Warner catalogues it has affected our revenues, (and) with the addition of Universal's catalogue we expect the revenues to decline again."

So we can probably assume that eMu demanded two things: First, eMu insisted on being able to price new (and/or "popular") releases higher, even if the labels didn't necessarily want them priced higher. Second, that "breakage" revenues were being doled out in proportion to the sheer amount of content each label had made available on eMu, not in proportion to actual sales.

If you read between the lines, it seems clear that the second demand by eMu must have been imposed about a year ago, to entice Sony, and later Warner's, to sign on. Likewise, the first demand was probably done at UMG's insistence, because UMG didn't want to be "undercut" price-wise by the indies. The people who run UMG know exactly zero about how music-buyers actually think, in that they believe that a "typical" Yo La Tengo fan, if presented with a Britney Spears track at the same price, will naturally choose the Britney Spears track over the latest by YLT, and will only choose the YLT track if the price is lower.

Still, should that in itself have been enough to justify their bailing on eMu? Personally I doubt it - this was more along the lines of "making a statement." They're also going to see if their own online shops will make more money with the eMu option eliminated, and if they don't, they'll probably sign back on in a year or so. The fact that they're not making angry statements (and are in fact making practically no statements of any kind whatsoever) suggests to me that they don't want to make a complete break with eMu, not yet anyway.

Music Lover

ScissorMan,

makes sense.

choiceweb0pen0

And from Beggers mailing list:

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