Music

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). This is 21 tracks (about half of my monthly allotment), but I like early music and the samples sound good, so this is a likely download for me. ...

On the eMusic message boards I just saw a post from rednano74 about Amazon offering “50 albums for $5”. Silly me, I thought this meant for $5 I could buy 50 albums, or $0.10 an album. This of course was just a fever dream; Amazon is simply continuing its standard practice of discounting selected MP3 albums from $9.99 to $5 or less. It’s interesting though: I looked through these 50 albums and didn’t see anything that was attractive to me at a $5 price point. This seems to be my general experience with Amazon’s discounted albums. (I subscribe to the @AmazonMP3 Twitter feed, so I see pretty much everything that appears.) When offered an essentially random collection of discounted albums, a $5, $3, or even $2 price is typically not sufficient to motivate me to purchase something I’m not already seeking out; only at the $0.99 per album level do I tend to make an impulse purchase from Amazon. ...

(In the spirit of Twitter, I’ll keep this post brief.) eMusic folks are now twittering as @17dots (but folks, register @emusic too before it’s taken) @17dots following more (94) than follow it (61), should promote on the message boards Suggest @17dots do 1-3 posts per day, highlight new arrivals, always include links @17dots “competition”: @amazonmp3 daily deals, 6,849 followers (OK but drop in bucket, Twitter over-hyped?)

I happened to get an eMusic email a few days ago (announcing new releases in the alternative/punk category) and noticed a link to a “special offer for AT&T Mobile subscribers,” with the promise that “You could win 6 months of free AT&T mobile service.” I recently became an AT&T subscriber (when I bought an iPhone), so this sounded intriguing and I clicked on the link. It turned out to be a sweepstakes tied to a trial offer for eMusic Mobile, and isn’t even applicable to me because eMusic Mobile doesn’t work with iPhones. ...

Today I got interrupted from my Swindleeeee!!!!! blogging slumber by the news that David Pakman is leaving eMusic. I have been critical of Pakman one or two times (most notably for not getting into “social software” earlier), and I have no idea how Pakman was perceived inside eMusic by its employees. However there’s no question that Pakman was a strong and consistent voice for moving the music industry past the DRM debacle, and that he had a clear (and I think mostly correct) vision of eMusic’s target market and how best to serve it; I suspect that without him eMusic would either have failed entirely or would have been acquired and then ruined by some clueless major corporation. ...