I'm Saying Good-Bye to emusic.com

Last week I took a step that was in the pipeline for a long time now - I unsubscribed from the emusic.com download music service. I did that despite believing that emusic is the best, correction: the only real download music service. In contrast to many systems that kind of let you "lend" the music while pumping it full of copy protection crap, limiting you by what you can do with the tracks (or even how long you can play them) emusic lets you download real, unencumbered MP3s. They also have a lot of good music (but they don't have mainstream top ten stuff). So why did I leave? A monthly subscription just doesn't fit my listening habits, read on for an explanation...

As far as I know emusic is the cheapest legal downloading service. Their subscription scheme basically lets you decide on a plan that gives you 40, 65, or 90 songs per month for 10$, 15$, 20$ (prices for European customers are higher, due to VAT). That's not much compared to some other download services. Lots of people complain that they can't find their music on emusic, which invariably means they are looking for anything on the charts and pushed out by the big labels who have tube raised those consumers. Not my problem, I discovered good stuff on emusic (check out for example what my friend saad is recommending for your listening pleasure)

I've downloaded from emusic such gems as stuff from: Tone Loc, Philip Glass, Tony Allen and Fela Kuti, Vince Guaraldi, Zeromancer. Stuff I had known before and searched on emusic, and other stuff I discovered by accident. If you like to tune in outside the mainstream, likely you will find good downloads on emusic.

So, why did I leave? Because even with the smallest plan (40 songs per month) I was downloading much more new stuff than I listened to. Many times I had downloads expire at the end of the 30 day period (which is stupidly not tied to the month, so you have to be careful on which exact day it expires). It's not a big loss, but it kills the fun. Worse is that feeling of pressure "I have to download 20 songs in two days now or they will expire". I think that was what gave me the last push in the end. When I took the time and searched, I always found something worthwhile to download, but I wasn't always inclined to search and busy myself with music. But if you're really into music, I can recommend emusic. Myself I will be busy listening to my downloads for a while still.