Why would the labels come back? I share @soulcoal's puzzlement.
Given what one label has said about not only non-payment, but also non-reporting, why would anybody believe the labels would come back?
Even more ironic is that they are now promoting to artists to sign directly with eMusic and bypass labels altogether, claiming it will make more money for the artists. What artist is going to trust eMusic to pay them when they haven't been paying any artists or labels for months or years? A bad reputation is extremely tough to overcome when there are so many options available for artists these days.
I find it beyond comprehension that eMusic would claim the reason they aren't paying their bills to labels and artists is because they are using the money to build their blockchain. Say what? Paying your bills and maintaining good standing in the industry among artists and labels (and consumers) ought to be the TOP priority if you are planning to build a blockchain to sign artists directly.
My current hold ends towards the middle of January. I've added three albums to my wish list since going on hold, if they are still there so I'll probably get those. Then I will almost certainly leave, given there seems to be a near zero chance of getting labels back yet. I left earlier this year for about six months, very easy to get back with offers, so I'll do that again, but I doubt I'll return once more if like now. Emusic has introduced me to some amazing music over the years, so I've got plenty to keep me going for a few years.
I've used up all but £24 of my £84 since my hold finished about 10 days ago. That was mainly going ape on Intakt Records and few other jazz jolies like the recent Mingus set. Even so I would normally have spent up and been buying extra credits by now, I just don't feel the need or desire despite there being more Intakt to buy. (Ingrid Laubrock has been floating my boat of late). You know the worst thing that can happen to my account? Christmas. Give me a few days at home and I'll have the energy to kill my sub for good. Even last year I was hoovering up Wire EOY recommendation, can't see that it's even possible let alone desirable. Hey Ho!
I went through an extreemly complicated verification process and stopped when they wanted a shot of my passport without any reason I could find.
- If this is the condition to continue with Emusic, I'm out
Got an email saying:
“Thanks for your submission! Unfortunately, we have reviewed your documentation
and were not able to verify some parts of your KYC process. As part of our Know
Your Customer (KYC) process, which we use to keep the sale of eMU Tokens
compliant to all necessary regulation, we may need some extra information from
you or require you to get in touch with eMusic Support.”
- And replied to support:
Just to say that I stopped the verification process when I was asked to send a
shot of my passport. This is out of the question and if it is a condition
for staying with Emusic, I am very sorry to say that I can and will no longer
subscribe.
- Besides, the majority of the music I subschribed for, is no
longer available anyway.
- And got this Reply:
Apologies for any confusion. While it is a
requirement to buy our new token, it is not a requirement to stay with eMusic.
This is a new venture, and will not effect your current subscription.
Me Answering:
Apologies accepted.
But it leaves me confused at a very high
level.
All that has come from Emusic for a very long time is the new
Emusic with Blockchain, tokens, Saving the music industry, and god knows
what.
And now you tell me that it has nothing to do with Emusic ? ?
?
Is Emusic so occupied with that Blockchain thing so there’s nothing
left to care about the content ? . . . As I wrote: There’s hardly anything
left for me to justify a subscription.
Emu answer:
Its another aspect of our service that will serve as a revenue stream and an
opportunity to revive our catalog. But eMusic member’s are not obligated to
purchase the token, to purchase music.
- So, all the Emu eggs lies in the Blockchain basket. . . . Nothing new, really.
But it's good to know that, if Emusic survives, subscribers won't have to fiddle around with Emu tokens.
That is good news BN, I was under the impression, obviously mistaken, that eventually, after a year or so, all of us would have to go over to Blockchain. The bad news of course is that there is no news about when their catalogue will improve. At the moment I feel that the effort to find something I want is outweighing the cost advantage
OK,
technically I don't think there are enough real labels left at eMusic
to refer to any losses as a "cull", but I noticed that Brownswood
Recordings disappeared this week in the US (except for a stray single
still remaining under that name). So beware UK, it may be gone soon for
you, too.
Remember a year ago when the catalogue was merely decimated, vs.
non-existent, as it is this year? I wasn't sure then if eMusic would
last through all of 2018, but they are close to reaching eZombie status -
the walking dead that cannot be killed and will wander the earth
forever. :-) To their credit, if they can keep subscribers with
less new music than an average garage sale, they may indeed be able to
go on forever.
Thanks for the notice soulcoal. Brownswood are still in the UK. I might cancel my hold a month early, as they have a couple of newish releases I'd like that I was waiting until January, when my hold ends, to get.
I've been off emusic for about six months, but I still check in every now and again and add a thing or two to my wish list. Enough things still seem to be there that I might join up again for another splurge, but I'd only do it if they're still having some sort of booster sale. Anyone know if they have any offers on currently?
I've just discovered that whilst on hold you can add Extra Credit to your account.I'd happily continue like this indefinitely, but normally you can only be on hold for two periods of three months per year.
My fascination with eMusic's current arc could also be described as a fixated repulsion. I find their persistent vague-speak surrounding their bitcoin/token thing strongly resembling the linguistic gymnastics of con men and neighborhood bullshit artists. But I still can't help but wonder what the hell it is they hope to achieve.
This whole anti-label thing is pretty disrespectful. Most of the labels that have made a home on eMusic over the decades are small label outfits that provide serious value to the artists as far as recording the album and/or promoting and retailing it, helping with media and touring. They aren't screwing anyone. eMusic trying to write them off as some sort unnecessary "middle man" is disingenuous... especially when eMusic talks about partnering with Spotify... a company that has truly been hurtful to musicians.
This whole focus they've had on The Independent Musician is weird. They keep throwing that language out there, and even have this odd interview on their reddit page, like they're trying to promote their commitment to The Independent Musician. But self-produced musicians have been retailing their albums on eMusic forever. Musicians could do the dual-distribution thing with eMusic and CDBaby and sell their music on eMusic... is eMusic saying they'll pay these self-produced musicians more than they were before? That seems very unlikely.
If I had to guess, eMusic doesn't care about the musicians who were previously retailing their album on eMusic. They already have those musicians (well, except for the many who have abandoned eMusic). I think eMusic is hoping to capitalize on the musicians who aren't retailing on eMusic or anywhere. They're going for the Soundcloud uploaders. They're trying to monetize the Soundcloud-based music, and why not, since Soundcloud has been unable to figure out how to do it themselves.
And I think this whole "community" of token users that eMusic wants to build will include people offering studio services and editing services and promo services and try to sell these Soundcloud uploaders on the idea of instead of taking cash for whatever sales they make, to spend those tokens with these recording/production/promotion services, and make their mixtapes and cover songs professional sounding and shit. It also wouldn't surprise me if many of the early adopters of the tokens among those recording/production/promotion services have some sort of eMusic tie-in... related companies or some sort of co-ownership or special contractual relationship. Meanwhile, with all of these tokens going back and forth, eMusic is getting a cut of it, and never having to pay any real cash out.
That's what it seems like to me. Everything I typed could be wrong, but since eMusic keeps sticking with the vague bullshitter type of answers, and making evasive comments on their reddit page to some very intelligent questions posed by customers (including some people on this site), then eMusic forces people to make educated guesses with what's going on.
I still believe this is simply an autopsy/experiment that is meant simply to be a bullet point on some of these "advisers" selling pitches when they approach others companies to hire them as "advisers" for cryptocurrency projects following eMusic's collapse. And I find their forced optimism rather sad. It's like their house is burning down but all they keep saying is, hey, come hang out in the basement, it's great... no flames!
I don't think you're completely wrong (in fact, mostly spot on), but I would add the following:
First, I think the whole blockchain/token thing was/is simply a means to an end. They seem to have run out of money (based on all their alleged unpaid bills to labels) and somebody somewhere seems to have told them that doing anything with blockchains and their own token is "free money" without the messy details of issuing stock or dealing with the SEC. And certainly they are not alone in the "blockchain magic" belief - lots of startups have tried bypassing traditional VC/investment cycles (you know, where you actually have to show a credible business plan to get money) in hopes of gettings lots of speculators to buy their tokens without having to issue any security or collateral in exchange. The lure of "free money" is always powerful.
Second, if you accept my first premise, then everything else is a matter of working backwards from point one. You now have decided you will issue and sell your own "vanity tokens" and, therefore, you now have a contrived need to promote some type of blockchain solution where the coins can be used. You could try just moving your existing retail site onto the blockchain, but that has it's own challenges, not the least of which is that you have little content left and would have to pay lots of money from your new hypothetical pile of "free money" from your ICO to just get back to square one and restore content. And then you'd still have a broken business model that is an even tougher sell than before because now any consumer using it will have to go through appalling "know your customer" protocols and divulge absurd amounts of personal information just to get some tokens with which to buy the same music they used to buy with cash. So, hey, let's scratch that whole B2C thing. They can just screw the labels they owe money and keep all of the hypothetical ICO free money. So what can they do instead? How about some type of "eMusic-for-Artists" service? They know artists are unhappy with what they are making from streaming, so they make some fancy (but unsubstantiated) claims that they can get artists paid instantly if they sign up with the blockchain. (Never mind that the only place they could actually guarantee such a thing would be on their own retail store, which they just finished burning to the ground. They certainly are not going to make Amazon or Spotify pay instantly, so I really don't know what possible basis they have to make that claim. Are artists really that dumb? I doubt it).
Third: OK, so now a massive amount of inertia has been generated from the decision to raise cash by issuing tokens and then having to come up with some contrived "faux-distribution" story to make the scheme sound plausible to ICO participants (and remember, selling tokens in unregulated markets to whoever buys large sums of tokens seems to be the engine driving this train all along). Except ICO markets have slowed almost to a halt as regulators start catching up with the alt-token sales, crytocurrencies have plunged in value, and speculators who got in early and drove up the bubble have now moved on to greener pastures. And eMusic has gone "all in" on their blockchain story - despite all the gaping plot holes - so now they are stuck with a truckload of lipstick and enough pigs to supply the world's bacon needs for decades. How do you walk back a story that never made any sense when you are months into what is supposed by your fundamental get-rich-quick scheme of selling vanity tokens in sketchy markets worldwide? You don't. You can't. So you double down on the story and just keep crossing your fingers that you can raise enough in the ICO to keep the lights on and live to fight another battle on another day.
So that's pretty much my take on how they got where they are at the moment - with a dead retail business and a blockchain story that makes no sense but for which they are still spending almost anything they have left to promote. Can they raise enough to have a "do over" on their business? Time will tell, but I doubt it. Will enough artists sign directly with eMusic to make them a credible "knock-off" distributor/"community label" (as they are branding themselves of late)? Time will tell, but I doubt it. As others have noted, why would an independent artist want to sign with a company with no distribution experience, a history of not paying for the music it sells, a history of poor business practices, and who are offering to pay less (50%) than literally any other independent outlet in the industry? (Bandcamp pays 85%, Amazon pays 70%, Apple pays 70%, etc.). It's a hot mess, to be sure, but I'm guessing it can all be traced back to some bad advice that claimed that having an ICO with their own alt-coin and a blokchain story was a great way to raise lots of cash without having to deliver anything more than a white paper and lots of Medium articles hyping all things blockchain. Once they joined the legions of companies chasing blockchain with no viable business model, the outcome was all but assurred.
Yeah, there is an active thread about it on their subreddit. eOstrich keeps putting its head in the sand and pretending they have no control over the labels leaving, despite the fact that the labels are leaving solely because eMusic is literally stealing from them and refuses to stop stealing.
I think this has been mentioned previously but - just in case.
I lost an external hard drive that contained a lot of my own ripped cds N-Z and similar Emusic purchases last year. I kept meaning to redownload said purchases from My Music. Imagine my joy to find (and I've only just put a toe in the water of 56 pages of Emusic purchases) that companies that have left Emusic has resulted in album purchases now containing 2 or 3 tracks out of the total album track count.
Now I could understand if the album simply wasn't there, but to leave a twitching stump of a purchase seems cruel. I'm specifically at this point looking at albums from Clean Feed and Tzadik but there will be lots of others.
Funny thing being, this was the one thing I wanted to do before leading Emusic to the knackers yard and cancelling my £39.99 a month sub, so as to spend it with people who aren't quite so obviously thieves.
I guess we are beyond an Emusic solution to this, I'm not even bellyaching about hundreds or maybe thousands of £ spent, but just you know, raising a red flag.
@djh I would contact customer support if music you purchased in the past few years is missing from your "My Music" catalogue. They have acknowledged that purchases made many years ago under different ownership (e.g. before the whole TriPlay "MyMusicCloud" convergence) may have long gone away, but anything you've bought since TriPlay took over should still be there, regardless of whether the label is still available for purchase on eMusic. Essentially, once you make a purchase it's your music that you are just storing in their cloud.
That said, it's a good reminder that when a company is as messed up as eMusic is, counting on their cloud storage is probably unwise as a primary backup method. I back up my music (incl. eMusic purchases) in a couple cloud locations as well as on (large) flash drives. The eMusic storage is convenient, but I've always assumed once the fork is fully inserted and they are officially finished (which, honestly, could be any day/week/month now), the cloud storage contents may disappear without notice. Hopefully your experience isn't an indication that this is already happening...
(Update: Just after posting I went and checked my own catalogue, and as best I can tell from a quick look, it is intact. But I did see and recall an idiosyncrasy that has long plagued their storage, and might explain some of what you were seeing... Sometimes albums get split into multiple copies, each with a different subset of tracks. I suspect it has something to do with metadata not being entirely consistent across all tracks. In any case, if you find an album that seems to have tracks missing, and you know you purchased the entire album, try searching by artist and/or album title - sometime have to try both - and see if you find multiple entries that add up to the whole album).
@djh I would contact customer support if music you purchased in the past few years is missing from your "My Music" catalogue. They have acknowledged that purchases made many years ago under different ownership (e.g. before the whole TriPlay "MyMusicCloud" convergence) may have long gone away, but anything you've bought since TriPlay took over should still be there, regardless of whether the label is still available for purchase on eMusic. Essentially, once you make a purchase it's your music that you are just storing in their cloud.
That said, it's a good reminder that when a company is as messed up as eMusic is, counting on their cloud storage is probably unwise as a primary backup method. I back up my music (incl. eMusic purchases) in a couple cloud locations as well as on (large) flash drives. The eMusic storage is convenient, but I've always assumed once the fork is fully inserted and they are officially finished (which, honestly, could be any day/week/month now), the cloud storage contents may disappear without notice. Hopefully your experience isn't an indication that this is already happening...
(Update: Just after posting I went and checked my own catalogue, and as best I can tell from a quick look, it is intact. But I did see and recall an idiosyncrasy that has long plagued their storage, and might explain some of what you were seeing... Sometimes albums get split into multiple copies, each with a different subset of tracks. I suspect it has something to do with metadata not being entirely consistent across all tracks. In any case, if you find an album that seems to have tracks missing, and you know you purchased the entire album, try searching by artist and/or album title - sometime have to try both - and see if you find multiple entries that add up to the whole album).
Hi Soulcoal - I'd already spotted the split albums and your surmise about differing metadata is almost certainly correct.
I'll chip away at things and see what I feel like once I have a reasonable list of problem albums. I was basically a chump for wanting to sort my collection onto two drives and rip my cds at the same time BUT I wanted it to be at a suitably advanced date before backing up to a third larger external drive, ah well. I'm pretty philosophical about this. If a physical collection had been lost in a basement flood or house fire I'd be glad to get out with my life and the opportunity to start over. It isn't as though I don't have so much music I could play it all more than twice before falling off my perch :-) And with that cheery thought it's off to work on a Friday Morn.
Hola, eMusers! I'm mostly over at the eMusic subreddit, but I know Soulcoal from there, and I'm sure there may be some overlap between the two forums. I'm here because... well, I don't quite know what to make of this, but today, the mods over there deleted not one but two posts. The first was from Soulcoal himself, and the second was me, just reposting something he added to that thread.
Now, this is strange. We've posted our gripes there before, no problem, and although some people (who shall remain nameless here) occasionally got a bit insensitive over what was some supposed to be constructive criticism, I've not witnessed any attempt to block or delete negative posts there. And let's be honest, given the trajectory of things over the last year and a half, if they did delete everything that was negative, there wouldn't be much of a forum left.
So I don't know what's changed. Maybe things have hit crisis mode, with the departure of Domino and its affiliated labels. The posts in question contrasted eMusic with Bandcamp, finding much to praise in the latter, so maybe the posts were deleted because the mods thought they were promoting the competition? In any event, I was encouraged to return here, where I've only been an occasional lurker. At least, it is good to know that critical commentary won't get the boot here.
Welcome, @HelloCthulhu ! Emusic woes aside (and, yes, they do still get discussed here, mainly in this thread, blissfully free of the eMusic thought police), I've found emusers to be a great community for finding new music, discussing music, etc. Hopefully some others from the iron-fisted/ham-fisted eMu reddit forum will move over here, too...
Comments
This is out of the question and if it is a condition for staying with Emusic, I am very sorry to say that I can and will no longer subscribe.
- Besides, the majority of the music I subschribed for, is no longer available anyway.
Me Answering:
But it leaves me confused at a very high level.
All that has come from Emusic for a very long time is the new Emusic with Blockchain, tokens, Saving the music industry, and god knows what.
And now you tell me that it has nothing to do with Emusic ? ? ?
Is Emusic so occupied with that Blockchain thing so there’s nothing left to care about the content ? . . . As I wrote:
There’s hardly anything left for me to justify a subscription.
Emu answer:
- So, all the Emu eggs lies in the Blockchain basket. . . . Nothing new, really.
But it's good to know that, if Emusic survives, subscribers won't have to fiddle around with Emu tokens.
OK, technically I don't think there are enough real labels left at eMusic to refer to any losses as a "cull", but I noticed that Brownswood Recordings disappeared this week in the US (except for a stray single still remaining under that name). So beware UK, it may be gone soon for you, too.
Remember a year ago when the catalogue was merely decimated, vs. non-existent, as it is this year? I wasn't sure then if eMusic would last through all of 2018, but they are close to reaching eZombie status - the walking dead that cannot be killed and will wander the earth forever. :-) To their credit, if they can keep subscribers with less new music than an average garage sale, they may indeed be able to go on forever.
Third: OK, so now a massive amount of inertia has been generated from the decision to raise cash by issuing tokens and then having to come up with some contrived "faux-distribution" story to make the scheme sound plausible to ICO participants (and remember, selling tokens in unregulated markets to whoever buys large sums of tokens seems to be the engine driving this train all along). Except ICO markets have slowed almost to a halt as regulators start catching up with the alt-token sales, crytocurrencies have plunged in value, and speculators who got in early and drove up the bubble have now moved on to greener pastures. And eMusic has gone "all in" on their blockchain story - despite all the gaping plot holes - so now they are stuck with a truckload of lipstick and enough pigs to supply the world's bacon needs for decades. How do you walk back a story that never made any sense when you are months into what is supposed by your fundamental get-rich-quick scheme of selling vanity tokens in sketchy markets worldwide? You don't. You can't. So you double down on the story and just keep crossing your fingers that you can raise enough in the ICO to keep the lights on and live to fight another battle on another day.
Now, this is strange. We've posted our gripes there before, no problem, and although some people (who shall remain nameless here) occasionally got a bit insensitive over what was some supposed to be constructive criticism, I've not witnessed any attempt to block or delete negative posts there. And let's be honest, given the trajectory of things over the last year and a half, if they did delete everything that was negative, there wouldn't be much of a forum left.
So I don't know what's changed. Maybe things have hit crisis mode, with the departure of Domino and its affiliated labels. The posts in question contrasted eMusic with Bandcamp, finding much to praise in the latter, so maybe the posts were deleted because the mods thought they were promoting the competition? In any event, I was encouraged to return here, where I've only been an occasional lurker. At least, it is good to know that critical commentary won't get the boot here.