Music

This used to be a page on my Swindleeeee! blog about eMusic; I subsequently moved it over as a page on my main personal blog when I merged the contents of Swindleeeee! into that blog. As part of a cleanup of my main blog I’m now moving it to be a regular blog post, in order to preserve it for posterity. I found public comments from David Pakman (formerly CEO of eMusic) always interesting even when he was repeating his favorite mantras (e.g., about the futility of DRM, eMusic as number two to the iTunes Store, and so on). Since I often found 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. Now that Pakman has left eMusic I’ll continue to maintain this page as I have time, both as a sort of memorial to Pakman’s time at eMusic, and also because I suspect he’ll have more interesting things to say in future. ...

In two previous posts about my current use of eMusic I discussed my musical jobs to be done and how I might now supplement eMusic with other services in order to optimize the use of my more limited number of eMusic downloads. One of the things I noted is my need to “audition” music prior to downloading it, which naturally leads to the question: Should eMusic create a streaming service to complement its current download offering? As I discuss below, I think it should, but only in a way that is consistent with eMusic’s current value proposition and business model. ...

It was over six years ago that I first subscribed to the eMusic digital music service, and over three years since I started my blog Swindleeeee!!!!! to provide an outlet for my eMusic-related musings. My posting frequency (never that high) has in recent months fallen off drastically. I either don’t have anything I want to write about eMusic, or I don’t have time to write anything. Rather than have Swindleeeee!!!!! join the millions of other blogs that have dribbled off into nothingness, I’ve decided to give it a dignified exit. More specifically: ...

I’m contemplating ending my Swindleeeee!!!!! blog and moving all the old posts over to my regular blog, though that might not happen for a while. In the meantime I’ve started posting some things over at my other blog that might be of interest to anyone still reading this one. The latest one is a long post (over 7,000 words!) on the rather oddball idea of applying Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation to music. ...

As all long-time eMusic watchers are aware, eMusic’s business model has always been based on the “health club” model, i.e., the assumption that a certain percentage of customers will pay for but not use the service. In eMusic’s case that corresponds to subscribers who download fewer tracks per month than they’re paying for. The result of these unused tracks or digital “breakage” (as Digital Audio Insider refers to the phenomenon) is that the per-track payout from eMusic to labels was somewhat higher than it would be otherwise. That in turn made distribution through eMusic somewhat more attractive to labels than the nominal per-track pricing might otherwise indicate. ...