Emusic

Back in February I discussed eMusic’s failure to provide more information about the artists whose music it sells, and suggested some ways it could do better. Now Fortune reports on eMusic’s attempt to do just that. This is gratifying, to say the least (though I doubt my post had any influence on eMusic’s plans). It will be interesting to see how well the new eMusic web site features match up with my and others’ visions of what eMusic could do in this regard. In my original post I wrote that ...

Sometimes I can’t help but agree with Bob Lefsetz’s thesis that the music industry is well and truly f*cked, and this is one of those times. As every eMusic subscriber knows, not too long ago eMusic did a deal with ABKCO to sell the early Rolling Stones back catalog under standard eMusic terms (DRM-free MP3s sold at 33 cents per track or even less depending on your subscription plan). eMusic pulled out all the stops to promote the releases, eMusic subscribers were ecstatic, and by eMusic’s account the folks at ABKCO and Universal Music Group (ABKCO’s distributor) were “incredibly impressed” by the amount of business generated—business that was likely almost pure profit from the point of view of ABKCO, UMG, and everyone else involved, and that almost certainly wouldn’t have been generated under the standard iTunes 99 cents per track model. (As I and others have noted many times, eMusic caters to dedicated music listeners who spend a lot of money on music and prefer paid downloads over P2P, but are very price-sensitive.) I’m by no means a Stones fan, but even I took advantage of the opportunity and purchased Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet (the full albums, not just the singles). ...

I don’t have time to follow every little bit of eMusic news, but I do find it interesting to look at eMusic’s press releases from time to time. One that recently caught my attention reports the hiring of Kip Morgan and Anna Punsal as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Vice President of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) respectively. There are at least two interesting aspects here. The first is that this is a sign of where eMusic finds itself now that the rumored Amazon deal has fallen through (if it ever existed in the first place) and no new buyers appear to be showing up (at least if published rumors are any indication). As I’ve written multiple times, eMusic is not a Web 2.0 darling that can sell itself at an inflated valuation based on hype and promise; it’s a pretty conventional online service with a straightforward business model and a valuation that can be reasonably well estimated based on its financial results. (In fact, if I ever have the time I might take a shot at doing this myself; the result would likely be off by almost an order of magnitude, but the process itself might be interesting and educational, for myself if no one else.) ...

Now that I’ve gone and hyped eMusic Selects, I feel I’ve earned the right to make a suggestion, for any eMusic poobahs who may be reading this: As I understand it, eMusic will have monthly Selections, which at two per month adds up to 24 Selections per year. eMusic also has a fairly substantial group of people into classical music, and has been successful in getting subscribers to try out classical releases (as noted in this recent story). ...

I thought I should say a little bit about the new eMusic Selects program. eMusic really wants people to know about this; in addition to a link on the eMusic home page, there’s a press release, an eMusic Magazine article, a 17 Dots blog post, and a message board post. Presumably the folks at eMusic feel that eMusic Selects is strategically important to the future of eMusic, and we should take them at their word. So what’s going on here? ...

In the past I’ve discussed several ways in which I think eMusic could improve itself for the benefit of both its customers and its suppliers (i.e., the music labels and the artists). Recently I read three interesting posts that touch on this subject. The first (to which this post is dedicated) is from Ian Rogers of Yahoo!, recapping his presentation at the Aspen Live conference in December: Today users are creating tremendous value and for the most part we’re ignoring it. They’re writing blogs about your artists, putting bios on Wikipedia, documenting last night’s concert on Flickr and video sharing sites, showing what songs are most popular by their behavior on Last.fm, building “box sets” on community sites, etc. How has the music industry leveraged this? What tools have you created to enable or encourage it? ...

The migration of Swindleeeee!!!!! to wordpress.com is now complete. The domain swindleeeee.com now redirects to the new blog, as do variant spellings such as swindleeee.com (four ‘e’s) or swindleeeeee.com (six ‘e’s). Your RSS newsreader may show you the last few posts again as it picks up the new feed, but otherwise everything should just work without any need for you to change feed URLs, bookmarks, links in your own posts, etc. If you do encounter any problems please send me email at hecker (at) hecker (dot) org. ...

Currently Swindleeeee!!!!! is hosted on a server I administer, and uses the WordPress blogging software. Over the years I’ve grown tired of maintaining my own blogging configuration, and some time ago I wrote that I was considering moving this blog to the wordpress.com blog hosting service. That time has now come. I have imported all my old blog posts and comments to my new wordpress.com blog, and am about to throw the switch on the actual move. ...

For the most part I resist writing about the actual music on eMusic, because I’m really not a very good musical critic. However from time to time I do feel the urge to recommend something, and this is one of those times. Courtesy of eMusic I’ve been listening to a lot of “contemporary classical” music (or “new music” to insiders), a taste I came by through listening to electronic music (techno, ambient, etc.). The most well-known and influential movement in classical music over the past half century is of course minimalism, and I think everyone interested in either classical music or (especially) modern electronic music should have an acquaintance with the classic works of minimalism. I’m referring here not to Nixon in China-style “minimalism” but rather to hard-core “let’s play that phrase a few dozen times and then introduce a new element or two” minimalism—or as suggested by someone in response to a Kyle Gann rant, the-music-formerly-known-as-minimalism. ...

No, Alex Ross (of “The Rest is Noise” fame, both blog and book) isn’t being mean to eMusic; in fact to my knowledge he’s never mentioned it, at least on his blog. What I mean is that several of the releases on Ross’s list of recommended CDs (CDs? how last century!) can be found on eMusic: ...