I have a hunch on what is going on with "complete album" pricing. Album pricing is discounted by pro-rating tracks you have purchased if you purchase the track *now*. The album discount doesn't work for tracks that you have purchased in the past, even though eMusic indicates on the album page that they know you have purchased the track. So the feature works going forward, but won't work for past purchases. At least that's how it is behaving for me.
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Interesting as I have just written again detailing the lack of new material here in the UK, I have written to the customer team 3 times but again no response. It is interesting that Polyvinyl and Domino are available in the US, but it seems that here in the UK we are lacking a lot of new stuff. Hopefully a response will come from the team
From your pic, it appears that Posi-Tone Records has made a return. That Jon Davis is definitely a new release... I just listened to the promo not that long ago.
It also looks like Sunnyside is back, too, 'cause I can see the Gardonay and the NDR recordings in that pic.
And one of the problems for many of the new emusic jazz releases are they are not that new, way too many various artists compilation albums or anonymous artists.
@gregIt is worse than that, as I believe that except for the Rotem Sivan album and one or two others, the albums on the eMu page are royalty-free music collected under different titles (lounge, chill, etc). So perhaps 2/18 legit jazz releases on new releases day
eta, Is Pi a new addition? Can't recall, but possibly yes. Priced a couple bucks cheaper than Bandcamp
I've just been trying to spend my final credits before going on hold for 60 days. My plan is to come back mid September to see if more jazz is available. If not I'll then go on another hold until the end of the year or just leave. The new site really is not as good as the old for jazz releases. I'm prepared to give them time, but I don't see any point wasting time and money searching for things and downloading albums that I don't really want.
Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I'm really surprised by how often I put together the retail links on my site's write-ups and discover the album isn't for sale on eMusic. I mean, it's almost never these days. Anecdotal, yes, but considering the volume of new releases I go through...
The "Complete my album" feature is now live. Note that it doesn't actually say 'Complete my album for $Price" but you will notice the price is lower with every track that you buy.
We will soon change the messaging around it as well so it will be more clear.
So they seem to be trying something new, but I can't see why anyone would do it. A new "$3.99" tier that doesn't seem to give you any credit, but does allow you to buy at the discounted member rate. I guess it's targeted at users like me who sign up, load up on booster packs, and then cancel?
I just got an email about that, but hadn't yet looked into it. Your hypothesis makes sense, though I'm not sure why a person wouldn't just join at the $6.49 level for just a couple bucks more, receive the full credit, and then load up on booster packs.
This wouldn't be the first time, however, that eMusic's motives confused me.
I haven't actually looked at the emu "Plans" page for awhile, but here's what new members would choose from...
Curious all this talk about "tracks." Are new accounts reverting back to the old-school downloads measurement instead of currency? Or are they just trying to highlight how many songs a person could buy with their membership+bonus?
Also, that open access is showing a 4.99/mo price, so I guess they're offering it to current members at a discount. Yeesh, paying emusic $60/year just for the option to buy music on their site, it seems silly. Maybe emusic is hoping people view it as an annual charge for storage and the option to buy discounted music as icing on the cake? Dunno. Strange days at emusic. And honestly, fuck them for even trying to tell me to be patient and hang around for better days (like I haven't heard that one before). It looks to me that they're more interested in finding ways of locking in people through storage charges than they are offering a decent music retail option.
I don't know. I personally would not be drawn to a fee for a la carte purchasing. But the historical logic makes some kind of sense to me. From time to time at the old board people have complained about having to be locked in to a monthly plan and wanted a la carte purchasing, an album at a time. Thing is, the emusic model has always been built on having regular monthly income as a basis for discounting. So the economically viable alternatives on the face of things would seem to be the one that I think they already tried for a while (you can buy a la carte but if you are not a member it costs more than the member price, pretty much iTunes price), or to have a fee just for membership like the new tier, or to stick with emusic only being for monthly plan holders. Like I said, I would not pay for the new tier myself, but it has a kind of logic as perhaps the latest effort to woo a few of the plan-averse folk. After all, paying a fee for discounts is not an unusual model (I just learned the other day that United airlines has a thing where you can join for $25 and get $5 off each flight you book), and for some folk it could save money while allowing the monthly buying level to vary wildly (one album one month, six the next).
I can see the logic in having a monthly fee for access to the discounted prices, and, if I actually paid the discounted price, I might be attracted to it. Some months there are only a handful of albums I want whilst other months there are many more. Often I spend credits on things I play once and then never again just to use up my credits. But I don't actually pay the discount price on my grandfathered plan, it is actually much less. I am surprised that they have left such plans as long as they have. In effect I only pay £2.40 for a 12 track album.
I hear what both of you are saying, but that open access doesn't exist in a vacuum. For an extra two bucks a month, you can have all those discounts but also get to keep your cash (via the Basic plan).
I mean, if you're a music buyer who would buy so great a volume that it's worth paying the $5 monthly fee for "access" to the discounts, then which of these two annualized plans seems more appealing:
Plan A (basic): Hey music fan, for $84/year, you get huge discounts, storage, and all the music you can buy with $84.
Plan B (open access): Hey music fan, for $60/year, you get huge discounts, storage, but we're gonna keep that $60... you have spend other money to actually buy music.
I mean, you're paying just $24 more to get $84... you're talking about 3.5:1 on your odds. In poker, you make that call.
And, shit, maybe that's the point. Like how a fast food joint doesn't really expect you to buy a "small," but it's out there as a price point just to make it seem more logical to get one of those insanely larger sizes. Hey, honey, why bother with that Open Access when for just a little bit more, we get tons of cola to drink until our diabetes falls out.
Yes, I know that sentence makes no sense, but I love it, so it stays. #DealWithIt
But, shit, if eMusic sells a bunch of those O/A plans, more power to them.
Yes, if anything gets more customers in, it can only be good, surely, for the rest of its customers? On a different point I'm actually enjoying being on hold for a couple of months. I don't have to feel that I need to go through new releases every few days just in case there is something I might want to download.
Comments
From your pic, it appears that Posi-Tone Records has made a return. That Jon Davis is definitely a new release... I just listened to the promo not that long ago.
It also looks like Sunnyside is back, too, 'cause I can see the Gardonay and the NDR recordings in that pic.
I mean, that Rotem Sivan "Antidote" is a really good album, but, yeah, that's a real poor new release section. Embarrassing, actually.
P.S. Rotem Sivan is also selling that album on Bandcamp.
iTunes still has the best weekly new jazz releases list, IMO. Obviously curated (or at least weeded) by a person.
Pi back catalog did show up on eMu last week, at increased prices.
eta, Is Pi a new addition? Can't recall, but possibly yes. Priced a couple bucks cheaper than Bandcamp
https://www.emusic.com/album/667724/Various-Artists/The-Best-Of-Godzilla-1954-1975
You can listen on Bandcamp - https://alicecoltrane.bandcamp.com/album/world-sprituality-classics-1-the-ecstatic-music-of-alice-coltrane-turiyasangitananda
This wouldn't be the first time, however, that eMusic's motives confused me.
Curious all this talk about "tracks." Are new accounts reverting back to the old-school downloads measurement instead of currency? Or are they just trying to highlight how many songs a person could buy with their membership+bonus?
Also, that open access is showing a 4.99/mo price, so I guess they're offering it to current members at a discount. Yeesh, paying emusic $60/year just for the option to buy music on their site, it seems silly. Maybe emusic is hoping people view it as an annual charge for storage and the option to buy discounted music as icing on the cake? Dunno. Strange days at emusic. And honestly, fuck them for even trying to tell me to be patient and hang around for better days (like I haven't heard that one before). It looks to me that they're more interested in finding ways of locking in people through storage charges than they are offering a decent music retail option.
I mean, if you're a music buyer who would buy so great a volume that it's worth paying the $5 monthly fee for "access" to the discounts, then which of these two annualized plans seems more appealing:
Plan A (basic): Hey music fan, for $84/year, you get huge discounts, storage, and all the music you can buy with $84.
Plan B (open access): Hey music fan, for $60/year, you get huge discounts, storage, but we're gonna keep that $60... you have spend other money to actually buy music.
I mean, you're paying just $24 more to get $84... you're talking about 3.5:1 on your odds. In poker, you make that call.
And, shit, maybe that's the point. Like how a fast food joint doesn't really expect you to buy a "small," but it's out there as a price point just to make it seem more logical to get one of those insanely larger sizes. Hey, honey, why bother with that Open Access when for just a little bit more, we get tons of cola to drink until our diabetes falls out.
Yes, I know that sentence makes no sense, but I love it, so it stays. #DealWithIt
But, shit, if eMusic sells a bunch of those O/A plans, more power to them.