Emusic

In part 2 of my series “Sympathy for the labels” (see also part 1) I discussed the concern of labels that selling through eMusic lowers overall profitability by diverting sales away from the iTunes Store and other higher-priced outlets. Note that I’m referring here to labels that are realizing at least some profit from eMusic sales. As I wrote in part 2, labels that are losing money on every track sold through eMusic, e.g., due to fixed per-track mechanical royalties, should not be selling through eMusic, period. However even if a label’s eMusic-related sales are profitable, the label might still have a legitimate concern about whether those sales are supplementing sales through other services, or displacing them. ...

In my previous post I discussed the difficulties that independent labels were having in adapting to the new landscape of the music business, and whether eMusic management was being sufficiently sensitive to that fact in their dealings with labels. Beyond the emotional aspects of the indie labels’ issues with eMusic and the music business in general, there are also some serious questions as to whether the current eMusic model is an overall plus or minus for labels. There seem to be three related but distinct concerns here: ...

I previously commented on the Billboard article about labels’ unhappiness with eMusic, although I got some of the facts of the article wrong—an obvious reminder that I need to sleep on eMusic news before writing about it. The article was the subject of much comment on the eMusic message boards, to which I contributed in a small way. Having had some time to think since then, I’m ready now to expand my comments. ...

David Pakman (CEO of eMusic—but you already knew that, right?) has traditionally confined his public comments to press interviews. However in the wake of reports about some labels being dissatisfied with eMusic, Pakman has chosen to bypass the press and take his case directly to eMusic customers using 17 dots, eMusic’s official unofficial blog. His points are pretty much what you’d expect: customers don’t want DRM, they do want music to be less expensive, and the music industry needs to recognize these facts and adapt to them. I’ve previously commented on these points, and will do so again, but I thought for this post it’s more interesting to look at the why of Pakman’s post as opposed to the what. ...

I don’t normally do breaking news, because frankly I’m just too busy to keep track of what’s happening every day in the music business. However I’ll make an exception just this once given its potential importance: Billboard (in a story picked up by the Washington Post) is reporting that three out of eMusic’s top six 60 labels are considering pulling out of the service either wholly or partially (i.e., not offering newer releases). According to eMusic’s label page, the top six labels by downloads are Merge, Naxos, Matador, KOCH, Anti, and Fat Possum. Given its focus on low-cost offerings I think we can conclude that Naxos will not be among the defectors. Also, it’s possible that Fat Possum will be one of the defectors, since otherwise the story would have read “three out of the top N” where N was some number other than six. Hypebot previously named KOCH as being unhappy, so it may be a second defector. I don’t have time now to speculate which of Merge, Matador, or Anti might be the third. (OK, it’s clear now why I don’t do breaking news: because I can’t even read the breaking news articles, and make stupid mistakes like mistaking 6 for 60.) ...