emusic

As is amply clear from recent postings on the eMusic message boards and comments on 17 Dots, eMusic pretty much made a hash of its announcement of the Sony agreement, angering current subscribers not just about the accompanying price increases but also the way in which eMusic CEO Danny Stein’s 17 Dots blog post addressed—or rather, didn’t address—those increases. While I’m quite unhappy about my personal eMusic habit more than doubling in price, I can also see the economic justifications for why eMusic did what it did....

Well, I significantly underestimated how far eMusic was willing to go in terms of changing its pricing to attract major label content. My personal guess was that Sony demanded a minimum price of at least $0.30 per track, but based on the new US pricing it appears that the new floor is actually $0.40 per track. More specifically, the plan changes are as follows: The eMusic Basic plan is still $11....

Danny Stein, eMusic’s new CEO, dropped some major news just now on eMusic’s semi-official 17 Dots blog. As reported in more detail in the New York Times, Sony Music Entertainment (home of Arista, Epic, Columbia, and RCA, among others) has decided to release its back-catalog material (anything over 2 years old) to eMusic—basically what eMusic management has apparently been urging them and other major labels to do for ages. (For example, David Pakman addressed this in several of his interviews....

Bob Lefsetz recently published another broadside in his continuing crusade to drag the music industry into the 21st century. In this one he asked the following question: How long until there’s enough unfettered new music, tunes the creators control as opposed to the fat cats, that someone from the outside can roll up these rights and create a viable alternative to the established game? This I think is the key question, since I agree with Lefsetz that industry incumbents are extremely unlikely to innovate, and long copyright terms, existing contracts and statutory licensing arrangements, and political battles over compensation (e....

Continuing a tradition from last year, here’s what you can find on eMusic from the list of recommended 2008 recordings published by Alex Ross. (Note that CaptWhiffle also has Alex Ross picks for 2007 and 2008 as a user list on eMusic, something I didn’t notice until I’d almost finished this post.) “Crystal Tears”: songs of Dowland, Robert Johnson, Byrd, and others; Andreas Scholl, countertenor, Julian Behr, lute and Concerto di viole (Harmonia Mundi)....