Massive drop at the other place

2

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  • Also a veritable treasure trove of stuff I got for free from Guvera during the Great Guvera EMI Giveaway.

    That was a good time.

    I was thinking the same thing. Most of them are albums I wouldn't pay those prices for anyway. How many of those EMI albums were on Amazon for under 4 bucks for months?
    Edit: one I'd get that wasn't at Guvera, but I since found it on cd: Out to Lunch.

    Pretty funny, same thing here. I found it used a couple weeks ago and have been spinning it in my car for the last few days.
  • edited May 2011
    germanprof, in reference to your Pink Floyd query, I wondered the same thing but later remembered I saw some news thing that all the Floyd albums are coming out in new remasters in September or so, with some deluxe versions, and a humongo-box. Don't recall what label auspices, but we may not see the rest of the catalog as a result.
    Where the heck are the first 5 Procol Harum albums in all this too? Not that I need them but many young'uns out there could use some schooling.
  • edited May 2011
    Rats. From what I've seen of various other artists in the drop, deluxe versions means $7.50 per album for the addition of some odds and ends you didn't need. Would have been nice to fill some Floyd holes.
  • Dibs on "Floyd Holes" as a band name.
  • What's all the fuss? We had perhaps 200 new additions yesterday, no EMI, Blue Note etc. But I am sure most emusers here would prefer to be where those of us in Europe and Canada are in terms of emusic. I still pay 20 pence (32 cents) per track and always find plenty to download each month. My £19.99 (around $32) for 100 tracks per month usually means I can download around 9 albums each month. That works out at about $3.50 to $4 per album. If the bonus I get on my grandfathered plan dissappears when we get the majors, at current prices I'd be paying around 70 cents per track or $8 per album - way too expensive in my view to stay with emusic.
  • AFAIC, it's a case of "another major label added, another bullet dodged". I'm paying less than 19 cents per track, and to be frank if emusic never added another new album I'd still be around for several years before I started to run out of things to get. So the major labels and their associated price increases can stay the fuck away from me, thank you very much.
  • I'm thinking the strategy now is to clear out major-label things on the S4L. It surely won't be long before Sony et al want to get themselves to the new 6.49 baseline, in a de facto price increase.
  • edited May 2011
    I second you on that, doofy. As I've said I've seen some price creep - good phrase that - going on with some other non-UMG/EMI labels lately, and I think it's not going to be long before the gang's all aboard.

    Only other thing to say is shop around - found a selection I popped for yesterday at eMu over at Amazon - where it was a few dollars more but the CD was the same price as their digital. Rats.
  • Yes, it is certainly worth shopping around. In the UK I wamted to get Martin Carthy's Essential album. On Emusic it is £14.28. Amazon have it for £11.49 and itunes is £11.99. Unlike new members I get a decent emusic bonus, so it did work out cheaper for me. But it is a lesson for all those that want the majors this side of the Atlantic - emusic prices will then creep up
  • Ultimately this addition to emu's catalog won't seem so extreme, like WEA, affirming trends rather than instituting changes. Some of those price suck, but I've seen some good prices as well, like Nick Cave's Abattoir Blues and Sonny Criss' Imperial Sessions.
  • I wasn't attempting to make a statement or bitchslap the man, but I must admit to gaining a warm satisfaction, that on the day EMI dropped on emu, I used my remaining credits on an album by DoF.

    There's still so much music on emu to be found.
  • That Sonny Criss collection looks great. Someone upthread mentioned the 3-disc Live at the Lighthouse set by Lee Morgan, that's a favorite of mine. A Night at the Village Vanguard with Sonny Rollins is a couple bucks less than Amazon.
  • Rollins at the Vanguard is pretty good.

    Never was able to get into Rollins like many others, but there are a few of his albums that I really enjoy. His Alfie soundtrack is pretty good, too.
  • edited May 2011
    doofy, here's what we're talking about - I guarantee this puppy was not $7.20 when I put it on the SFL last year (it was of course 12 credits)- Solid Bond by Graham Bond, and it's a Rhino/Warner product. 1970 vintage, 12 tracks, eleven at $0.49 and, oops, that 11 minute 12th track is Album Only, and now we're at $7.20 for old catalog that was here well before the UMG drop. Hmmm....
  • edited May 2011
    This is starting to look like the plan all along. Emusic can technically claim that it has not introduced a price increase because album pricing is set by the labels. But they instituted the mechanism for everything to creep up at a rate of their or the labels' choosing. The only thing in their favor is that it is still possible to find albums for two or three dollars from some labels that are not jumping into the trough. Generally, though, $5.99 has quickly become the low end rather than the new norm.

    Another thing I've noticed with the EMI drop is that you have to be careful which version of a lot of albums you're buying - remastered editions are often priced higher than first releases, for example The Golden Age of Wireless by Thomas Dolby from 2003 at $6.49 and from 2009 at $7.50. On the one hand you could argue that the latter, deluxe edition gives you 9 more tracks for a dollar more, and that's true. On the other hand it's actually a 1982 album, both versions are the same price at Amazon (albeit both higher), and the extra tracks are added filler so getting more may not represent a bargain. (In fact for some albums of similar vintage the only version available is the deluxe one with a bunch of lost demos or live cuts that are of little interest, meaning the only option is the premium price for a 20 year old album; seeing things called "work in progress mix" makes me think the barrel is being pretty thoroughly scraped. I'm much less likely to shell out top-level prices for a nostalgia listen with extra crap thrown in than if they had priced it at the lower end and let me have the original; the thing I don;t get about "deluxe" versions is that if I want to re-buy an album from my youth I want it to be the way it was then, not with a bunch of extras).

    So another chore on finding an older album is to make sure there are not other versions of it at other prices. (This did occasionally happen in the credit days, but it's getting more widespread).
  • edited May 2011
    I'm finding myself going through this weird mental loop.

    "Cool, that old album I used to have/wanted years ago is on emusic, I can grab it now".

    "Wait a minute, a week ago you were not motivated to buy it at essentially the same price from other sites. Why is is suddenly a priority now?"

    "Oh yeah, emusic's not cheap any more. As you were."

    "How long till Guvera refreshes?"

    (I'm just done grading. Wheels spinning.)
  • I haven't seen a lot of movement on the jazz albums in my S4L...few on the major labels, most pretty obscure. And yet I might take a little stroll through the jazz and older rock listings to see if there's anything I want to grab at 5.99. It would be particularly heartbreaking if Rhino (esp Rhino/Atlantic) jacked up its prices. Nothing has moved on the smaller jazz and "world" labels that make up most of my S4L, knock wood.
  • edited May 2011
    Not part of EMI drop but recent and just discovered - this Harvey Mandel comp, at $4.40, and he also appears on this $4.40 Don "Sugarcane" Harris comp, which some dunce over there has listed under The Don. Good stuff.
  • edited May 2011
    EMI's Pink Floyd catalog will be added in June.

    From this - linked by someone on the other board in relation to this matter:
    the company is finalizing plans with labels to allow its customers to enjoy full-song previews instead of the current 30-second previews

    Interesting piece actually. It also claims:
    Customer churn is down 14% year-over-year and average revenue per customer is up 22% in the last six months, he says.
  • Words fail me at that "customer churn" statistic.
  • Germanprof, you write re: the deluxe reissue ofThe Golden Age of Wireless, "the extra tracks are added filler so getting more may not represent a bargain."

    This is one of my favorite albums of all time, so I know more about it than is seemly. Some of the bonus tracks are indeed of questionable value to some people, but note: some of those extras are absolutely critical for longtime fans. There were FIVE separate releases of this album between 1982 and 1984 in the US and UK. While the UK CD was the same as the second UK LP release, neither of the US LPs ever made it to the US CD. All three of these are different than either of the UK releases.

    The first US release would be the one WITHOUT She Blinded Me With Silence, and WITH Urges and Leipzig. The latter two were the A and B side of Dolby's first UK single, never released in the US. They were cut from the original US LP for the second version, replaced with Blinded. The first US release had a terrible synthpop version of Radio Silence, complete with Lene Lovich's helium-voice squeak, which was replaced on the second US release by a much more rock-oriented version that had first been released as a UK b-side.

    This was in fact the version I bought in 1983: included Blinded and "guitar version" of Radio Silence; did not include Leipzig and Urges. (And those two were never on a UK album or CD release - ONLY as singles.)

    No US version ever included The Wreck of the Fairchild, which was on the first UK LP, but not on the second UK LP, which was also released as the UK CD. All 3 US versions contained only the UK single version of "Airwaves," never the original UK album version.

    You may not have followed the math, but the CD version in the US was different than either of the previous LP releases, so no matter which version of the LP you heard, the CD was not only different, but measurably inferior.

    So this 2009/new to emu edition is the first time that both US and UK buyers can put together the necessary pieces to finally have the version of the LP that they originally bought, as well as some fully finished, already released somewhere but "new to you" versions that are often really wonderful. (Except for the Lene Lovich version of Radio Silence, which is still worth hearing in a bonus track kind of way.) What might be filler to you is as precious as gold to me.

    Acknowledging again that this is more than most people want to, or probably even SHOULD want to know, this is a deluxe reissue that is definitely not a waste of time for anyone who cares about the record at all.

    Anyway, as repugnant a phrase as "customer churn" is, lowering that is a critical step toward profitability. Keeping customers is cheaper than acquiring them. But it's also a measure that the "improvements" are working for a majority of the people finding their way to the site. And certainly others of the improvements like a better site (although previous improvements have often made things worse) and song-length previews are things I've seen asked for for years. And it doesn't bother me at all to see hardcore business terms in an article about the business aspects of the company.

    What really jumped out at me is that the majors are seeing that emu is making them new money that they wouldn't have had otherwise. My jaw dropped. It's hard to believe that our merry band of 400,000-ish people is moving the needle for them, but it is. For all that so many of the changes over the years have had so many negative impacts on us, it may be that we're achieving equilibrium (*overall* prices are still lower; if $6.49 is the new 5.99 here, 9.99 is the new 8.99 at Amazon), and indeed, getting some of what we've wanted for years, like full-track previews.

    Whatever. Everything sucks more over time. Everything. The rate of new suckitude at emu seems to finally be slowing a bit. Businessmen suck. All of them. Even me. But at least I finally have all the pieces I need to construct the perfect version of The Golden Age of Wireless.


    PS. The versions of Wireless without Blinded are all better than the ones with, and I really LIKE that song. But it's a goofy addition to a record that in general is quite intimate and emotionally rich.
  • edited May 2011
    Another interesting point is the comment about how customers share information. Presumably they are going to update the message board. About time too! This site totally shows up their current message board. With regard to the churn rate, the comment 'statistics, statistics and damn lies' comes to mind. Presumably those of you getting offers to remain are counted as customers?

    I was also interested to see that Adele is availablein the States. They are in the middle of a marketing campaign in the UK using computer and photography magazines as well as music magazines, offering 50 free tracks. The advert has 14 album covers on it, inclluding Adele 19. I did download it here but it is on one of the Beggar group labels now missing. So I think it is a bit ingeneous still using it on a new advert, unless, of course, they know somewthing we do not. Currently emusic is aboutr the only place on the UK where you can't hear Adele - one of her tracks was played as background music on a gardening programme on TV last night, for example, 21 was being played in the restaurant we ate in on Saturday evening etc
  • @tim OK, I repent of using The Golden Age of Wireless as my example. I did know some of the release history of that album, but am less concerned with getting all the versions (and I think I actually prefer The Flat Earth, but I have not listened to TGAoW in a long, long time so perhaps I am toiling in the dark there also. She blinded me with science is after all these years still a song that I love or hate depending on mood. I was excited to get the 12" version of Windpower from Guvera recently though.) Clearly most deluxe editions are going to be important to some folk, and I confess to being very happy when the deluxe re-release of Vienna by Ultravox had the 12" version of All Stood Still among the extra material - loved hearing that again, though I bought it as an individual track from Amazon rather than buying the whole deluxe package.

    That said, I still kind of suspect that for most folk in any given instance being made to buy the bonus material does not represent a significant benefit. Vienna was my absolute favorite album for several years, but that 12" was still the only track I wanted from the deluxe release. And I do have the feeling that I just want Vienna itself to have the same tracks as when I used to own it on vinyl (clearly this logic does not apply with The Golden Age of Wireless). To me, the note on which a (good) record ends is part of its design - hearing another track start after the last one changes the experience. (Yes, I know I can remove the extras myself if I am downloading, so this is not a particularly relevant point).

    And then there are the ones like Rage in Eden that I also mentioned before. In retrospect I suspect that this was one of those albums that I had to persuade myself was really good because I was so invested in the band. I am not much interested in spending current release prices to get a deluxe version of it. But I would put down a bargain price to hear it again a couple of times. But I can't, so I suspect it will live on the SFL until there is a very slack (or impulsive) month.

    Anyway, the points I'll stand by are: 1. you have to be careful now because a bunch of albums are on emusic in more than one version with different prices and the more expensive one might be more expensive because of tracks you don't want; 2. it's a pain when the deluxe version is the only one there and you don't need the extras but have to pay for them; 3. I suspect that in most cases the number of people who don't need the extras is larger than those who do, which makes it better to have both versions available - or would make it even better to have the deluxe version be 2-disk set with the option to buy the disks separately (which is not going to happen). While I understand how the use of adding "bonus" material to deluxe CD releases works as a marketing ploy, it is less clear to me that it is a great strategy in the download world (see Rage in Eden above - it's costing them a sale).
  • "There is a huge sense of momentum here at eMusic," CEO Adam Klein told Billboard. The addition of EMI comes as eMusic has made improvements to the site, switched from a credit to currency-based pricing structure and put greater emphasis on its editorial content. Customer churn is down 14% year-over-year and average revenue per customer is up 22% in the last six months, he says.

    Notice that this doesn't give the total customer number; if a bunch of people leave, and a bunch of people replace them, that's churn right? So if you lost a bunch of people, and didn't replace them, you could say that "churn is down." Revenue per customer also provides an inadequate picture of success; If for example you lose 30% of customers, then increase per customer revenue by 22%, you're still down almost 15% overall. Not that I can say this is what's happening - it's just interesting what they're not saying - they're not saying customer base has increased, and they're not saying that overall revenues are up.

    And after all what they call improvements to the site - like the horrible new artist page that won't let you view all albums without taking you to the long list of compliation albums - are not at all what I'd consider improvements.
  • I also suspect that the release of extra material comes from when albums that were originally released as 40-45 minute LPs were rereleased on CD, and seemed rather short for what they were charging compared to newer CDs, that tended to be around 70 minutes. So as a marketing ploy this bonus material was added to justify the extra cost compared to LPs when both were still being sold. As an example a lot on earlier Van Morrison LPs were released as CDs with added bonus material. I for one am really glad that the Beatles remastered CDs have kept to the original UK LP track listings, when they could have added Anthology tracks as a bonus
  • Recent stories have also (as they have since I've been paying attention) said that the subscriber number is steady at 400K. One suspects the "churn" thing is partly related to fewer people signing up, then immediately canceling because of lack of selection (eg, non-majors). Which may mean that fewer people are signing up period...perhaps as you might expect, as the trial offer is less attractive than it used to be.

    The increased revenue per subscriber might possibly be explained by, oh I don't know, the fact that they raised their prices! I've done enough business writing to know that when companies start throwing numbers like this around, it means they don't have the numbers they'd like to have: revenue and profit.

    Btw, link to weekend NYT story: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/an-indie-music-retailer-embraces-the-mainstream/?scp=1&sq=emusic&st=cse I lazily assumed this was the story that Germanprof was linking to upthread.
  • edited May 2011
    @amclark2 I had the same thoughts. And wondered whether the 'come back for a month for 99 cents' is part of masking churn. And maybe churn a year ago was worse than usual (because of past changes) - in that case a 14% reduction *year-on-year* might still not be good - where is it in relation to, say, a 5 year average? And revenue per customer might mean we're all buying more boosters (I think that's actually true in my case - I am less able to get what I want within my subscription) or just that they are creaming more profit every time I hit download. Or it might just mean that the subscription levels went up by that margin on average when we all switched to new plans that were not the same as the old ones (I know I moved up a few dollars because I could see that I would not be able to get the same number of albums as before without doing so). And one can't help wondering why revenue per customer (not overall revenue) is the figure touted - does that mean that the overall revenue and total customer numbers are not so great? Even the, what was it, 10,000 album sales with the essentials promotion - at 400,000 members that means, what, 2.5% of members downloaded one of those, and given the subscription model they did not download a different album instead, so this is not a revenue claim - it's a claim that within a few weeks they managed to shift 10,000 member album downloads to major label titles.

    All speculation of course, and it may well be for all I know that the new model is succeeding and making more money for them - the folk on this board are not, I think, a good cross-section of the music-buying public - and that that was necessary for survival. But I agree that one can't take those figures at face value.
  • @Doofy
    they are widely estimated in the industry to be about 400,000.
    (from the article you linked) - that means nothing for actual figures in the last 6 months, it's just a word of mouth number with no time stamp. Another interesting piece though - interesting the discrepancy re full album downloads. That does suggest a different demographic. I wonder if Amazon's deals of the day and month are shifting that figure any for them? I know I almost always buy full albums from emu and go to amazon to cherry pick single tracks - unless it's a deal of the day.
  • Anyway, the points I'll stand by are: 1. you have to be careful now because a bunch of albums are on emusic in more than one version with different prices and the more expensive one might be more expensive because of tracks you don't want; 2. it's a pain when the deluxe version is the only one there and you don't need the extras but have to pay for them; 3. I suspect that in most cases the number of people who don't need the extras is larger than those who do, which makes it better to have both versions available

    My being a dick about TGAoW notwithstanding, you're right. And it's not just that there's a regular and deluxe version. Sometimes there's more than one version of the same release, sometimes just because there's a new catalog number or something. You really do have to be much, much more careful than before.

    Also agreed that normal people don't want most bonus tracks. I often do for these major re-releases, but I've found some recent releases where 2 extra tracks add 3 or 4 extra dollars. Those are just annoying. So when downloading, by all means, measure twice, cut once.
  • edited May 2011
    The first US release would be the one WITHOUT She Blinded Me With Silence, and WITH Urges and Leipzig. The latter two were the A and B side of Dolby's first UK single, never released in the US. They were cut from the original US LP for the second version, replaced with Blinded. The first US release had a terrible synthpop version of Radio Silence, complete with Lene Lovich's helium-voice squeak, which was replaced on the second US release by a much more rock-oriented version that had first been released as a UK b-side.
    Wait a minute, I have a US release on Harvest/Capitol (ST-12203), with the big round stage cover (not the "Spring Issue" cartoon cover) that has "Urges" and "Leipzig" along with the guitar version of "Radio Silence," and doesn't have "Blinded." The running order is (side 1) Europa, Flying North, Weightless, Leipzig, Windpower, (side 2) Commercial Breakup, Urges, Airwaves, Radio Silence, Cloudburst.

    So that's three US versions - have I got some sort of rarity, then? I agree on most of the other particulars, btw... Urges and Leipzig are clearly essential, as they were produced by Andy Partridge (I believe this may have been his first producer credit, in fact). Whereas "Blinded" was produced by some other dude, possibly Dolby himself, I don't remember. In fact, "She Blinded Me With Science" is what made me stop collecting his stuff; up until that point I'd been buying his material pretty much as soon as each release showed up in the bins, and afterwards, nada.
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