eMusic discontinues unlimited downloads...

David Lawson · 10-09-2003, 10:38 AM

Your $9.99 per month will now get you a whopping 40 songs instead, as of November 8:

http://www.emusic.com/messages/qanda.html

While a quarter per song isn't unreasonable, it will nonetheless be an adjustment. I've gotten into the habit of downloading all available albums of a specific artist and throwing them on an MP3 disc in chronological order so that I can listen to his musical progression over the course of a few days while I'm driving around town. The new policy doesn't exactly lend itself to sampling entire albums from new artists, either.

I'll stick with them, but I fear this is the beginning of the end. There will undoubtedly be a number of subscription cancellations, but I highly doubt that eMusic can go back to its original "unlimited" download service (at anywhere near the same monthly fee, if at all) and expect to survive.

John_Berger · 10-09-2003, 11:25 AM

I got that e-mail today as well. I'll still keep my membership with them since it comes down to about $3 per album, or even less if the album doesn't have a lot of tracks. I'll just make sure to download what I absolutely want before November 8. Looks like most of their customers are doing that as well since the downloading is choppy at best.

Oh, well. It's still a better financial alternative than a $15 CD.

MickeS · 10-10-2003, 12:35 AM

I'm on the fence about keeping it... while I understand where they're coming from, I don't like it, and I'm not sure it's worth the money to me anymore. Right now I'm leaning towards cancelling. Very disappointed.

SteveK · 10-10-2003, 11:10 AM

I received the bad news yesterday. I'm hoping this will be a temporary situation and they'll revert back to an unlimited plan when they see how many ex-subscribers they suddenly have. I realize their new plan still costs less than other download services, but it is a HUGE change from their current unlimited plan. Why couldn't they have just increased the price of their unlimited plan? Let's face it, $10 per month for unlimited downloads is probably too low of a price, but why not $20 or $25? I'd certainly be willing to pay that. But I'm not willing to pay $50 for 300 downloads, even though that works out to about 16 cents per song.

What bothers me is that I knew about emusic.com several years ago, but wanted to wait until I had high-speed internet access to subscribe. Now that I finally have DSL, they change their business plan just a few months after I subscribed. Granted, I've been able to download a lot of albums during that time, but there are hundreds more I'd like to download as well.

Emusic.com was great for trying new artists and styles of music, but that experimentation is much less likely once they impose a limit on downloads. If they're going to impose an arbitrary limit on downloads, they should at least lengthen the "samples" they offer. Thirty seconds of a song is certainly not enough to decide if you like it. Why not offer the entire song in a low-fidelity stream? That way, you could at least hear the entire thing rather than a brief 30-second clip.

I'm hoping that a huge majority of emusic's subscriber base will cancel; maybe they'll be forced to rethink the 40-song limit.

For now, I'm extremely disappointed. It was great to download LEGAL mp3 songs, as I have no intention of messing with any of the P2P services available.

Steve K.

John_Berger · 10-10-2003, 11:17 AM

Quote:

What bothers me is that I knew about emusic.com several years ago, but wanted to wait until I had high-speed internet access to subscribe. Now that I finally have DSL, they change their business plan just a few months after I subscribed.

I'm in the same boat. I subscribed only last month. I'm also hoping that they rethink the limit, maybe as a way to filter out the "leeches" and reward those who decided to stay. We'll see.

**HTF Ads**

John_Berger · 10-10-2003, 11:52 AM

Here is the letter that I sent to eMusic:

Quote:

Whereas I understand your need to go to a more stringent pay schedule with limited downloads because of the recent tactics of companies like the RIAA, I want to express my dislike for the structure that you've provided, not because it's necessarily unfair but because the way that you're implementing it is too sudden and too restricting.

The sudden transition from unlimited downloads to 40 tracks, which might count for no more than three compete albums, for the same price is extreme, particularly in comparision to your "unlimited" model which you have had for years.

It is my hope that after November 8, you will do one of three things (or perhaps all).

The first is to increase the number of downloads as a "thank you" for those of us who stay after November 8. I can understand from a stratgic point-of-view why announcing a 40 download cap would be good to "weed out" the leeches. That strategy will prove to be very effective in getting rid of those who would be the least profitable for your company. However, increasing the number of downloads to those who stay as a "thank you" for staying would go a long way to repairing what customer service damage is being done my this removal of your unlimited download plan and would help to retain those few people, like myself, who have decided to stay.

Second, you should implement a rotating payment option where the customer's billing cycle is automatically recycled once the maximum limit is reached. I know that I would be upset if I attempted to downladed a 12-track album with only 11 songs left in my monthly allocation and thereby be forced to wait until the next billing cycle to complete the album.

Finally, a "rollover" schedule would be wonderful. Because of the situation that I mentioned above where a complete album cannot be downloaded because of insuffucent number of tracks remaining, you should implement a policy where the amount of remainig tracks from the previous month get rolled over into the next month.

Considering that you've been operating with unlimited downloads for years, none of these suggestions are unreasonable in any way. I would find it impossible to believe that you cannot implement one or all of the suggestions above, particularly since each of these suggestions will help to strengthen the loyalty of the few subscribers who will remain after November 8.

Thank you for your attention.

SteveK · 10-10-2003, 01:17 PM

That's a good letter, John. It will be interesting to see if it does any good. Unfortunately, I think about the only thing that will convince them that so severely limiting the number of downloads is a bad idea is if they lose almost 100% of their subscriber base within the first 30 days of making this "cold turkey" change.

As I said previously, I could understand a price increase, and would willingly pay $20 or $25 per month for the luxury of downloading legal mp3 files. It's easy to see how charging less than the price of one CD for unlimited downloads isn't a good business model. But to suddenly change the unlimited downloads to a 40-song limit for the same price is simply too drastic of a change.

The only consolation is that this move makes my $9.99/month subscription to XM seem that much better. For $9.99/month, I can either download a total of 40 songs, or have my choice of 70+ music channels 24/7. It's been great having both, but I'll stick with XM and forget emusic.com, unless they offer a better deal.

Again, I'm extremely disappointed.
Steve K.

David Lawson · 10-10-2003, 04:09 PM

Steve brings up an interesting scenario. Had it not been for eMusic (and my in-dash CD/MP3 deck), I would have been an XM subscriber for quite some time now. I couldn't justify having both, and still can't.

Will three new albums per month instead of "unlimited" new albums make me reconsider? You bet it will.

Jeff Ulmer · 10-10-2003, 07:00 PM

Assuming this service is actually paying royalties (which is about the only way they can be legit), I can fully understand why they need to limit the number of downloads offered. If they are paying the industry rate for mechanicals, that works out to somewhere in the order of 10 cents per song per copy, which doesn't go very far for $10, especially when you have bandwidth overhead and administration to consider. If they have thousands of people downloading thsands of songs a month, it won't take long beore they are bankrupt.

This also has nothing to do with the RIAA's "tactics."

John_Berger · 10-10-2003, 07:19 PM

oh gee i am so shocked that any negative comment about the blessed by god riaa would be picked up by jeff like a bloodhound on sombody's trail oh gosh oh golly i am so surprised listen to the shock in my voice how dare anyone say anything negative about the riaa oh my oh golly

Jeff Ulmer · 10-10-2003, 07:47 PM

Well John, if you actually knew what the RIAA were (not a company) or what they did, perhaps I wouldn't need to keep correcting you.