eMusic raises prices as it signs Sony deal

Music subscription service eMusic has always puzzled me. While it was the first site to offer DRM-free downloads, I never downloaded enough music to justify paying even the lowest subscription rate. The fact that it makes you navigate a long sign-up screen and enter a credit card number before showing you the song selection and other features of the site--even if you just want a free trial--drives me nuts. But despite my skepticism, the site has some big fans among voracious consumers of indie music.

eMusic subscribers are not your typical music fans.

(Credit: Touchstone Pictures via IMDB)

Judging from the angry comments on the site's message board, some of those fans are up in arms. The company announced a deal Monday with major label Sony to add catalog tracks--that is, music released more than two years ago--from Sony artists. But eMusic barely mentioned the fact that it's raising prices at the same time. Specifically:

The lowest-priced Basic subscription ($11.99) now offers only 24 tracks per month (50 cents per track) instead of 30 (40 cents per track). Existing customers will be grandfathered into the old 30-song allotment, according to an eMusic spokesperson cited by the Los Angeles Times.

The mid-tier Plus subscription goes from $14.99 to $15.89 and offers only 35 tracks (45 cents per track) instead of 50 (30 cents per track).

The high-end Premium subscription goes from $19.99 to $20.79 per month and offers only 50 tracks (42 cents per track) instead of 75 (27 cents per track).

Subscribers may be angry, but they shouldn't be surprised. eMusic has periodically raised prices since introducing an all-you-can eat download plan for $10 a month back in 2000. Just look at the prices in CNET's review from 2004 (updated in 2006), and you'll notice that the company has cut download allotments almost in half since the review was written.

Subscription-based music is still an experiment. The royalty structure of the music business was set up to sell individual physical recordings. It's easier to translate that business model to individual downloads than it is to subscriptions. Still, raising prices during the worst economy in more than 50 years doesn't strike me as the best idea.

What really seems to be throwing eMusic fans off, however, is the timing: fair or not, they're blaming the Sony deal for the price increase. Most eMusic fans I've heard from are real music nuts, and are there to sample a wide range of music from relatively unknown cutting-edge acts, not to download music they could find anywhere. Imagine the clerks in High Fidelity suddenly being told that their favorite mail-order distributor is raising prices, but in exchange will now let them order ABBA and Chili Peppers records just like the chain stores in the mall.

Follow Matt on Twitter

[Taylor McLaren]

Those last two sentences are very true: while there's doubt some neat stuff somewhere in Sony's catalogue, it's not as though it isn't available from every other online music retailer. It doesn't look like eMusic is trying to spin the change as a we'll-double-your-bills-but-look!-SONY! change, though: they're mostly trumpeting changes like their new "album pricing" that will only ding you twelve download credits (presumably per disc) for an album with lots of short songs. Anyway, I'm not thrilled to see their pricing leaping so much closer to Amazon/iTunes territory, but they were surely finding it harder and harder to keep even the indies interested by paying about a quarter of what the competition did... and it was a sweet ride while it lasted.

[voldemeg]

Hm, when are these price changes supposed to happen exactly? Just two days ago I upgraded my eMusic account to their new 24.99 every-three-months plan where you get 100 songs, at 0.25 a song, hopefully that price isn't one of the ones being raised. So far, eMusic has been the best music service I've ever used, mainly because of the low cost and their wide selection of music, indie and non. And I can get all the mainstream music I want by ripping it off discs from my public library anyway so who needs Amazon and iTunes?

[dcspinks]

voldemeg - I have the same subscription ($24.99 for 100 songs every 3 months [0.25/song]). As you probably know by now, this plan is being changed to $19.99 for 48 songs every 3 months (0.416/song), over 66% increase. This is a plan that is not even being offered to new subscribers as far as I can tell from the list of subscription options.

[stpilot]

As a long-time eMusic subscriber, perhaps I can shed a little light on the frustration.

Yesterday, I went to log in to my account and was greeted by a message that said "Major Catalog Expansion - We are excited to announce that in early July eMusic will begin rolling out a major addition to our music catalog..." Notice no mention of the price change in that greeting. Only by looking further across the page did I see that, in the process, they are changing my plan from $96 per year to $192 and reducing the number of tracks I can download from 480 to 420.

So rather than tell me they have to raise prices due to market forces beyond their control, they tell me how great the new tracks from Sony will be and oh, by the way, we are going to change your rate from $0.20 per track to $0.45 per track, which of course you won't mind, since it's only an extra $100 per year for less than you got before. No apology or explanation needed, I suppose, because they present it as though they are doing me a big favor.

Given their ham-handed approach to informing their subscribers that they are effectively more than doubling prices, I think a bit of frustration is understandable.

[dadsgravy]

You're all dweebs with a horrible taste in music. Treating music like it's a 20¢ per throw ***** shows you have no taste and no class.

[Vavinco]

Your comment shows your ignorance and lack of class as well as lack of taste.

[Cousinchris]

This is pretty sad. I've been a strong eMusic proponent for a while now, because I thought the value I got from my account was pretty incredible. I also love the subscription model - since you've already paid, you don't think about how much songs/albums cost, you just download whatever you are interested in, totally facilitates music discovery. Now, my monthly song alotment is being cut almost in half. I am paying the same amount and getting half as much back in return. Wow. If I cared about downloading Sony artists music I would not be on eMusic. Pretty ironic blog post title from the eMusic CEO to announce this too "More of the good stuff" - I think "F you subscribers" might be more apropos

[scottarino2000]

This will effectively kill off e-music as we know it and just might pave the way for a new "mainstream" e-music for people who don't know about music so it can compete with the ignorant i-tunes user.

[coprock]

This is not the end of the world. I will take a wait and see approach. There is a lot of major label stuff that I need to fill holes in my collection that I would never pay $.99 a song for and certainly won't purchase from itunes. I recently dowloaded songs from Amazon and was disappointed by the sound quality at 256k. Emusic bit rates are often lower however they use the lame encoder that sounds good and I have never been disappointed with emusic sound quality.

[okaysee]

That's because you probably haven't downloaded some of the older albums in their catalog. Old albums seem to have the most issues on emusic.

[pneligan]

I have been with emusic since the beginning. Due to its low cost I have tended to use the service to explore new music - it is fairly low risk, often music with good reviews.One of the frustrations with the service is that some albums have 25 or more songs (some 1 minute intros) and there is no distinction between albums and songs. They appear to have fixed this with their new strategy. In addition, I often end up with 8 downloads left and want to download 9 tracks. They make you buy a booster to download 1 track, or else you have to wait till the following month. Alternatively, and annoyingly, I often end up with 1 or 2 orphaned downloads at the end of the month. Once I lost 22 downloads because the month expired before downloading. I cannot understand why tracks do not rollover. With the new pricing strategy, this really needs to be resolved. The typical longterm emusic subscriber is a music nut and tends to download albums rather than songs (unlike the typical itunes subscriber). I have never bought a single copy-protected track and never will. Indeed, not infrequently I have gone out and bought the cd of albums downloaded from emusic - to get the artwork and of course lossless music. With the new pricing I am going to have to be more conservative with my downloading. I wonder if they are shooting themselves in the foot trying to capture a wider audience. However, their current catalogue is very limited and I often struggl to download my quota (90 downloads) each month.