Music

Thanks to the persistence of dhaith we now have more definitive information on how eMusic will be handling existing UK and Europe subscribers on the annual and 2-year price plans. According to dhaith, “Keeping your annual subscription at the orginal US rates is not an option for European customers according to eMusic Customer Support.” Instead when their current subscriptions expire existing UK and European subscribers on annual and 2-year plans are being offered the option to be converted into monthly subscribers to eMusic UK and eMusic Europe respectively at a plan level of their choice (i.e., Basic, Plus, or Premium) with a discounted monthly price for the plan equal to the current US monthly price plus VAT. ...

Press articles on the launch of eMusic UK are starting to appear; representative articles can be found in The Register and MacWorld UK, with other outlets like Digital Music News repeating the story. However it’s worth noting that eMusic has not yet issued an official press release to announce the new services (nothing in the eMusic “press room”, and nothing elsewhere I can find), and the stories in question don’t include any official comments from eMusic representatives. (Also, the stories don’t mention the launch of eMusic Europe at all; of course, the articles in question are from UK publications who may take a parochial view of matters.) ...

This is a followup to my previous post on eMusic’s new prices. In this post I provide the equivalent per-track prices for all products offered in the US, the UK, and the rest of Europe. Although I didn’t note it in the original post, I obtained the underlying plan prices for the US from the description of eMusic’s plans linked to from section 6.1 of the eMusic.com Subscription Agreement; poppi and xtrev provided the corresponding prices for eMusic UK and eMusic Europe from the equivalent list for those services. Those lists are the closest things eMusic has to an official published price list; it apparently includes only plans offered to new subscribers, and does not include any special discounts that might be offered to existing subscribers. ...

Thanks to poppi and xtrev I now have a complete set of eMusic prices for the UK and the rest of Europe as they would apply to new subscribers. (Recall that current subscribers were offered the opportunity to continue at current US prices plus 17.5% Value Added Tax. I’m not yet clear on how that offer actually translates into practice, so I’ll defer discussing it until a later post.) The first table shows prices for all eMusic products in the UK (priced in pounds), together with comparisons with current eMusic US prices; the exchange rate used is 1.90530 dollars per pound, the average interbank rate for August 10, 2006: ...

The big news on the eMusic message boards the past day or so is that eMusic is introducing a European version of its service (currently in “beta”). There’s no press release from eMusic, and no prior communication to eMusic users. (However this move was mentioned in an eMusic submission on the topic of DRM made in January of this year to the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group in the UK.) The plus for European subscribers to eMusic is that they should now have access to more music: Previously they were prevented from downloading albums in cases where distribution in the US was handled by a label with an agreement with eMusic, but distribution in Europe was done by another label without such an agreement. Now the eMusic UK subsidiary can do its own deals specifically for Europe. ...