The Death of eMusic

This week I reached the decision to end my eMusic subscription after years of happy listening. I was a huge fan for a long time, and while I'm happy to see the company grow and succeed, the service also no longer supplies what made me love it's earlier incarnations.

For those who aren't familiar, eMusic has a rather long and complicated corporate history, but when I found the site in 2006, they were focused on offering DRM-free, indie-label music on a monthly subscription basis. Your $20 bought you 40-50 monthly downloads, so it was less than half the price of iTunes, and it was much more geared toward music discovery. TV on the Radio, Okkervil River, The National, The Black Keys, Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, The Avett Brothers - I found them first on eMusic. There are so many more, too, that I could make a post just listing them all.

The editorial comment, the best of lists, the thoughtful user reviews - all these made the site valuable, but if I'm honest, I think it was the subscription model that made it so addictive. The money was already paid, so it encouraged me to explore, and try things without hesitation. I spent hours wandering through the site, clicking 'save for later' on all the albums that interested me. I knew exactly when my downloads reset every month and I would use them all in a day, getting the music that I had been looking at for weeks. Then I would spend the rest of the month listening, digesting, and occasionally falling in love.

There were losers in what I downloaded - 'Oneida' inspired strong emotions from some members, but I found it unlistenable. And there were others that I respected but never ignited my passion or that I enjoyed for a few weeks but didn't make a lasting impression. But then, hidden among all these bands, I would find the obsessions - the albums that would catch me on the first listen, and then grow like a weed into my brain with each pass until it was all I could listen to for days, even weeks on end. And it was those albums which inspired me to start writing about music.

When eMusic first took on a major label, I was not concerned - there was good music there that I looked forward to exploring. I like indie music because I often find it more inventive than what's on the big labels, but I'm not a label-snob. Still, increasingly eMusic has been taken over by the chart-toppers. And the price has gone up time and time again. Now, a $14 subscription buys $16 with of music, and the per-track price is barely lower than iTunes. eMusic claims their prices are half of iTunes, but that only seems to be true of the most obscure items. And now Amazon's prices are frequently as good or better.

I can't blame eMusic for what they are doing - they are a company like any other, and who can hold it against them for wanting to grow and succeed? But for me, I guess I'll be hunting down my next obsession elsewhere.