Public comments from David Pakman (President and CEO of eMusic) are always interesting even when he’s repeating his favorite mantras (e.g., about eMusic and Apple being the only two services that can sell music for iPods). Since I often find myself quoting from them, I thought I’d provide links to various of Pakman’s interviews, speeches, and other public comments, both for my own use and as a public service: “Music With No Strings Attached” (Forbes, April 21, 2007). A very interesting and informative interview in the wake of the Amazon rumors (to which Pakman responds “there are no talks right now with any strategic buyer”). Pakman also addresses eMusic’s market niche (“Our differentiation will not be in the format. It’ll be who we serve as customers”), notes that eMusic would be interested in only a portion of EMI’s catalog, downplays the threat of labels leaving eMusic (“We’ve got 13,000 labels on the service. Fewer than five have ever left.”), explains eMusic’s subscription model and the motivation behind the Connoisseur plan (“For us, subscription business optimization is about making sure customers are never always maxing out their plans.”), and even speculates about possible eMusic interest in “long-tail television.” A must-read interview. “Startups eye Apple-EMI pact” (Red Herring, April 2, 2007). Pakman praises EMI’s willingness to license music in DRM-free formats, and looks forward to eMusic doing a deal with EMI. “Gigs & Bytes: eMusic’s Pak Attack” (Pollstar, March 30, 2007). Pakman riffs on the standard topics: the importance of interoperability, the reluctance of major labels to experiment with their back catalogs, and eMusic as a music discovery service. Most notably, he claims the eMusic has plenty of room to grow the business (“We really do believe there are 3 million to 5 million potential eMusic subscribers just today”) and has no near-term plans to sell out to someone else. He also claims that the average eMusic customer spends $14 per month, which combined with a subscriber base of “well north of 250,000” gives a revenue estimate for eMusic of almost $50 million per year. “Apple gets behind the album offer with new format” (Reuters, March 29, 2007). Pakman reacts to Apple’s announcement of the new “Complete My Album” feature of the iTunes Store: “The premise that the album is dead is only true among the youth segment, which is really the iTunes customer.” The article also notes that “over 60 percent of all [eMusic’s] downloads were full-length albums,” although it doesn’t clarify what this actually means. (My best guess is that 60 percent of the tracks downloaded from eMusic were downloaded as part of a complete album download, rather than as individual tracks.) “eMusic CEO: DRM Will Be Dead by 2008” (The Independent, February 23, 2007). Pakman continues on his anti-DRM crusade, claims Steve Jobs was “a bit disingenuous” in his comments on DRM, and pleads that “If we’re still talking about DRM in five years, please take me out and shoot me.” “EXCLUSIVE: eMusic CEO Speaks Out On DRM And Consumer Dissatisfaction” (Hypebot, June 12, 2006). “Music Ally Debate, London: Buzz Of The Indies” (paidcontent.org, July 19, 2006). Summary of Pakman’s comments at the Music Ally event. Interesting tidbits: “Pakman said [eMusic] pays an average $5.62 per customer, per month, back to [independent] labels.” “Pakman quoted 4.5 million downloads per month and a catalog of 1.5 million tracks.” “Making money selling music without DRM: the rise of eMusic” (Ars Technica, May 22, 2006). Many Pakman comments sprinkled throughout an in-depth article on eMusic. “Q&A: eMusic’s David Pakman” (MP3.com, January 27, 2006). Interview by Jim Welte. “Why DRM Everything? A Sensible Approach to Satisfying Customers and Selling More Music in the Digital Age” (Groklaw, December 31, 2005). Article by Pakman. “eMusic’s Pakman: Does he think the iPod is holding back overall music sales?” (BusinessWeek, December 21, 2005). Interview by Peter Burrows. “5 Hypebot Questions with eMusic’s David Pakman on the Sony Rootkit Controversy” (Hypebot, November 23, 2005). “FMC: New Economics in the Music Creation and Distribution Chain” (PaidContent.org, September 12, 2005). Summary of Pakman’s comments at a conference panel discussion. “Streaming Media East 2005 Wrap-Up” (StreamingMedia.com, May 19, 2005). Summary of Pakman’s comments at the Streaming Media East 2005 conference. “eMusic updates it’s business to focus on really promoting independent labels and artists as well as merely selling their tracks” (Inside Digital Media, Inc., September 27, 2004). Audio interview by Phil Leigh, with a lot of interesting information on Pakman’s background prior to joining eMusic. Warning: requires installation of the WebEx Java client.

This is Money, a UK web site by the publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper, recently published an article “The Best Music Download Sites,” in which they rated the iTunes Music Store, Napster, MySpace, SpiralFrog, PlayLouder (a UK-specific service), the online sites for Virgin and HMV, and band and label sites in general. eMusic received the highest rating (5 stars), along with the iTunes Music Store. The article references the new eMusic UK pricing, mentions iPod compatibility (but not the use of the MP3 format and the lack of DRM restrictions), characterizes eMusic as being for “fans of indierock, modern classical and jazz,” and delivers the overall verdict “Excellent site for the true collector.” ...

Courtesy of Google News I found an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal apparently about a new Naxos initiative in partnership with eMusic. It’s behind the subscriber wall and (as a non-subscriber) I couldn’t see the full text, but I managed to get the following tidbit: On Tuesday, classical label Naxos will unveil a dozen new albums in a line it’s calling MPkey. The albums are packaged in CD-sized boxes and will be placed on store shelves at Borders. Inside each box, however, customers will find not a CD but a card with an access code and a booklet of instructions for downloading the album from eMusic. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 1, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related topics. The Mozilla Foundation will be supporting the Mozilla accessibility hackfest meeting in Cambridge MA October 10–12, including sponsoring travel costs for selected attendees. Next action(s): Work with attendees of accessibility hackfest to get travel arrangements sorted out. ...

In a prior post a while back I talked about how job postings were useful clues to what a company’s up to. Well, I found some more eMusic job postings, courtesy of the ever useful Digital Music News; there are not many clues to eMusic’s future, but it’s always interesting to see what’s involved in running eMusic. Here are the current positions (warning: as these positions are filled I’d expect the URLs to stop working): ...

Really, everyone getting excited about SpiralFrog’s announcement should just stop reading fevered pronouncements like “a huge blow to established music stores such as iTunes, eMusic, and Urge” and see what Bob Lefsetz has to say: Rental, and make no mistake, SpiralFrog is rental, it’s just that you pay for it with your eyeballs/time as opposed to cash, has been proven to be a failure. . . . ...

This is the second in a series of posts about eMusic’s pricing strategy. (See also part 1.) In this post I discuss the possible motivations behind eMusic’s price points for the various subscription plans and booster packs, and including selection of the price points and the spacing between them, selection of per-track prices, and the use of “.99” prices. As every eMusic US subscriber knows (or should know), the three subscription plans offered by eMusic in the US are $9.99 for 40 tracks, $14.99 for 65 tracks, and $19.99 for 90 tracks. I suspect that eMusic first chose $9.99 and $19.99 as psychologically attractive price points, and then interpolated $14.99 as the “Goldilocks price” halfway in between. I also presume that eMusic first selected the number of tracks for the $9.99 price point to achieve the magic figure of 25 cents per track, and then chose the number of tracks for the $14.99 and $19.99 price points to show a clear discount from the base plan. ...

I happened to read a blog post by a John Zorn fan ruminating about whether to buy albums from Zorn’s Tzadik label from eMusic or elsewhere. So he asked Tzadik for guidance: I emailed Tzadik to ask if they had a preferred way that fans buy their music. I was told their preference was “definitely the purchase through our own web site.” In regards to eMusic, I was told that they offer downloads as an “alternative.” ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending August 25, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Sunbird and SeaMonkey. I did some more work related to trademark issues for Sunbird and SeaMonkey (working with the respective teams), including creating a EULA for Sunbird similar to the Firefox EULA. Next action(s): As appropriate. ...

In my original post on eMusic Europe I noted that the prices for the Basic plan in Europe increased significantly more versus the US price than the corresponding prices for the Plus and Premium plans: the Basic plan price for eMusic Europe (excluding VAT) was 42% higher than the US price, while the Plus and Premium prices were 24% and 23% higher respectively. The price differential for eMusic UK was even higher: 46% higher for the eMusic UK Basic plan (excluding VAT) vs. 30% and 22% higher for Plus and Premium respectively. ...