Edited by author 04-30-2003 07:40 PM
I don't know. I've used eMusic for a couple of years now and I really like it. I also like the Apple Music service. I do wish they had an "all you can eat" price, but it's 1.0. Let's see where it goes from here. Apple has been pretty responsive lately.

Not sure I agree with this assessment. I did a search of 10 relatively popular alternative bands on Apple and then on eMusic. Not one came up on eMusic. Also, I don't like subscription services where I have to commit for a time period...in this case a year. On Apple's service, I get what I pay for when I want it...and I am pretty sure the library will be extensive. With the eMusic service I pay $120 a year no matter how much I use it...and there is no guarantee that they will have the most current selections I want.

I might try eMusic for the 3 month service...perhaps the two combined are the perfect solution.

I completely agree. Emusic is *amazing*. Now I've only got a problem with space left on the home server; 'cause I'm downloading music like crazy.

That 'lack of selection' has actually really worked in my favor; for rather than downloading stuff I knew about, I tried out a lot of stuff that was released on labels that had other acts I liked, and have found many many new bands that I'm totaly fans of now, like The Detriot Cobras. It's also gotten me into music that I probably wouldn't have gambled $20 on at the CD store, like Javanise Gamilon Folk Music recordings from the 20's. That I'm really diggin'. Who knew? :)

Well, it's interesting. As for selection, Emusic is great for people who are into more obscure stuff, such as myself. The iTunes Music Store is better if you're looking for mainstream things. Also, by definition, Emusic is better for exploration - you've subscribed already, so why not download that funky polka jam you've never heard? iTunes, of course, only has a 30-second sample - anything more and you have to pay up. So, on one level, Emusic is superior.

But Apple will end up with far more business and revenue. Here's why: although if you do the math, Emusic is a far superior value, psychologically, most people will be much more receptive to the iTunes Music Store because they only have to pay once for any given song. You can't just make an "impulse buy" on Emusic, because you either subscribe, or you don't. Most people never consider long-term costs of buying song after song, they just think of it as one payment, multiplied a few times. So I think Apple will make more money than Emusic. I'm not saying that it is better, just that it will be more successful.

EMusic average page load time and response to queries - about 2 minutes.

Number of bands I searched for that they had - zero. (Granted I looked for some oldies - but very popular stuff like J Geils, Seal, Wilson Pickett all came up nil - not to mention "Music like J Geils" linked me to Quiet Riot?).

Not too impressed.

Emusic has been great for me. I started with a 3-month subscription and switched to a 12-month when that ran out.

I download far more than one album a month that I enjoy, so it more than pays for itself that way.

That said, it really works if you're willing to explore the obscure stuff. And since it's flat rate, why not?

There's an HP promotion, which will get you 100 free tracks off emusic (instead of the normal 50), if you want to try it out:
http://www.emusic.com/promo/hppavilion/index.html?fref=36663

I love E-music. It's a good thing they exist, if only to demonstrate how much all the other attempts suck.

Why does Apple think they can charge $1 per track? Will people really pay that? They're cutting the manufacturing, distribution, and retail costs to near zero and then charging about the same price you'd pay for a CD? Then they throw in some DRM at no extra charge. What a deal.

ventedspleen, that 2 minute delay for page load and searching is ridiculous, and I've never had to suffer through any times like that in the months I've been with eMusic.

But yes, the collection is oddly limited. I'd suggest that newcomers browse the charts area and get a feel for what's popular there. I've downloaded some cool stuff I was always curious about but never wanted to pay import prices for (Belle and Sebastian).

Edited by author 05-01-2003 12:38 AM
ventedspleen, there are a lot of 'oldies' there; probably just not the ones you were looking for. I've downloaded the entire box set of the Suprimes; A ton of stuff from CCR, a ton of stuff from Richie Valens, a ton of live MC5 and Iggy Pop, heck they have lots of Del-Fi SoCal goodness and lots of Staxs soul. and more 'oldies'. Also another thing i really love about emusic is the fact that they have a lot of really hard to find stuff, like the Pixies very first *demo tape* that is simply amazing!

So, yeah, it's limited; but man! so much stuff you've never heard just waiting! Have you ever listened to any Richie Valens beyond his *one* song the odies stations play? I was totally blow away by how good his other stuff was!

Emusic seems to fit those best who are really into always trying new bands, rather than those looking to replicate/replace albums they have or have had in the past....

What I don't understand is what their (eMusic) business model is...I mean how do they make money...and yet pay for the songs. Let's just say I downloaded $500 in music...how do they take my $10 fee and pay all those labels and artists? Anyone have a bead on that?

Having used Apple's service in a trial capacity a bit (and talked with people who have bought tracks), I don't find a lot of these points hold much weight.

Point by point analysis is on my blog. Little too long for a comment. :)

Tonight, right now, page fetch's on EMusic are taking minutes or timing out. Maybe they didn't used to, but they are now.

As for getting lots of obscure music - I've got enough. Thanks to a friend at MCA records I've got nearly everything Chess ever put out along with a boat load of great jazz, and some killer R&B.

But I want to find some more mainstream stuff.

I will be interested to see if Apple's service provides a means for indies to get distribution. I won't deal with them if they lock up the channel like the big guys do. I'm also not buying until I get a CD burner (which I don't have just now - need a new TiBook). Its just not sensible to not have hard backups of that stuff.

Still, doing window shopping with the Apple service was a joy and I can see me blowing a lot of cash pretty fast if I'm not careful. Performance was excellent and the preview functions were great.

Biggest bummer - there are a bunch of "partial" albums up there. Not cool. Put up the whole album.

Re: No overhead for Apple's music store

www--aaaahhhhh?

5 Programmers @ $200k/each
10 lawyers @ $200k/each
5 QA guys @ $100k/each
10 IT staff @ $200k/each
20 grunts @ $100k/each
20 customer service / billing reps @ $100k/each

That's about $10M in sunk costs so far, or about $5/song.

Sure Apple will make this money back, but there's a LOT of overhead involved in this -- credit card billing fees, customer service allowances (one customer service call can wipe out the profit on 500 dl's), bandwidth & server maintenance, not to mention the CONTENT OWNERS' cut of that $0.99!

I didn't say NO overhead, but it's certainly a lot lower. Okay, 50 guys to run a website versus thousands of record stores, warehouses, shipping crew across the world. Hmm.... which is going to cost more?

Just for perspective, take the numbers from Steve Albini's "The Problem With Music". Wholesale price is said to be around $6.50. Less the $2.20 he gives for manufacturing and distribution is $4.20. Apple music store charges $10, so that's >100% markup for Apple, without even touching the huge profit margin of the record company.

But they'll charge whatever people are willing to pay, I suppose. Fair enough. Still, I'll stick with E-music.

"...I have not signed up for their service, nor do I have an OS X Macintosh."

Just what the 'Net needs: more objective, experience-based criticism.

Cheers, Mark, to the Cheap Suit Serenaders.

I played in a band (mandolin and banjo-mandolin) and we covered fine artist blues, shopping mall blues, and many other serenaders songs. Great stuff.

Working up my tenor banjo chops these days.

Jobs did an interview in Time where he talks about how they had to start with the major labels and work back through independents. The criticism I'm seeing here and in Slashdot is like people clamoring to stop medical marijuana because all drugs should be legalized. Pick your battles.

I was a long time eMusic subscriber(a year or so), and I quit. I think they have a good service, and I really appreciated their selection.

Here is why I quit:
1) Really poor sound quality (128-bit non-VBR encoding across the board). This could be coupled with poor source quality. I encode my CD mp3's at 160 or 192 VBR in iTunes and they sound pretty darn good, and they aren't that much bigger.

2) I wasn't getting my money out of it, because the browsing and aquiring process is so conveluted. On MacOS X you need to download the playlist, then use seperate software to download the songs.

Here is why the iTunes Music Store has got my money

1) The 128 bit AAC files I have downloaded so far sound better than 128 bit Mp3 files. There quality control must be quite good as far as source and encoding.

2) If I don't buy anything, I don't get charged.

3) I expect(really hope) the selection will improve over time. There is a lot of "main stream" stuff missing right now. There is an increadible void of non-major label stuff.

4) The overall quality of the recordings available is better. No rare bootlegs? This is good and bad I guess.

Here is where eMusic is better:

1) Right now selection. There is so much great great outside the mainstream stuff available on eMusic.


It would be really interesting to compare the quality an Mp3 downloaded from eMusic to a CD, to something rippped off the CD, to a AAC downloaded... is there any overlap that would make this possible?

Finally, the damming criticisms I've seen of AAC are not based on the current encoder/decoder versions in Quicktime 6.2 and iTunes, so in my book the jury is out. To my ear the stuff I have downloaded in iTunes from the shop sounds really great. I have not done double blind listening tests, and probably won't have time to "go there" any time soon, but I assure you I have B&W 601 speakers and a nice amp!

Ok,

I got some ammo for doing a blind listening for AAC. I own a copy of the X, Beyond and Back CD.

I am going to rip Hungry Wolf at 128 Mp3 and an AIFF uncompressed in iTunes 3 on my girlfriends computer... my iBook's DVD drive is hosed at the moment.

I still have a 190 VBR mp3 that I ripped quite some time ago.

I just bought the track from the Apple Store.

Then I am going to rip an AAC in iTunes 4 (Quicktime 6.2 Pro). I can also rip a Quicktime 6.1 AAC I think using my girlfriends computer

I will let you know what I think. If i have time to listen to it.

Bucky - the reason you're thinking there's better quality control on Apple's stuff is because they're ripping the tracks directly from the masters, not from a CD.

Not sure what eMusic does, but Apple has made a big deal out of this.

I've subscribed to Emusic three times over the last three years, each time cancelling because the quality of the mp3s is awful. It's sad, I think they offer a lot of great music and a plan that makes sense, but the mp3s sound like realaudio files, and I'm not paying money for that.

emusic announced this morning that it will be offering MP3s encoded with a higher bitrate.

Hmmm... after reading through eMusic's board a bit. I wish it didn't have to be an either or thing. PC vs. Mac, iTunes vs. eMusic, Playstation2 vs. XBox.

You know, I think they are a cool company. Adding VBR and a higher bitrate would be a huge step to draw me to re-evaluate thier service.

Version 2.0 of their unified cross-platform download software sounds like it has some problems. I might wait for 2.5 :) If it becomes more of a one-click afair where you see the "CD" you want and click download, and it works, then great! The flow of the 3rd party sofware I was using left a little to be desired.

One of the main reasons I dropped the service is because I lost my job, and I was not downloading music that often, and I thought I could use that $10 a month(?) for something else... lowering my overhead so to speak.

Apple and "the Big Five" have the money to go to master recordings. Emusic might be stretching to keep up with their bandwidth costs... especially if they are going to increase the bitrate. Their partners at small independent lables probably don't have many resources here either.

If the source material is a bootleg cassette tape, then 192-bit VBR might not make some things much better... "Listen to that realistic tape hiss!" Demos and Bootlegs can be cleaned up, it's just another costly, expensive proposition.

Hmmm... if Apple was to approach eMusic...
I'll bet they could bring a huge chunk of the missing independent music to the table, and Apple could bring the capital to find master recordings or clean up the bootlegs? That would screw the Windows and Linux users for the time being... like I care ;)

It was odd, watching the Steve Jobs presentation, he named a couple music services I've never heard of, and didn't name eMusic... I think the comparision of services would have been different, because eMusic is not DRM oriented and the ones he mentioned where.

Hmmm... on reflection I think I would rather have eMusic remain a competitor than be swallowed by Apple.

Has anyone else with iTunes had a problem with iTunes 4 deleting most of your song titles? After I updated on Mon. night somewhere between half to two thirds of my song titles dissappeared from the iTunes window. If I play the track the song title appears, but that means I've still got to click on over 1000 songs for the title to reappear. It's not a hideous problem, but it's still annoying. And it seem to be mostly stuff I've imported through iTunes not the stolen mp3's that have the problem.