Comments on: eMusic: 250 Million Songs Downloaded. iTunes: 5 Billion+

By: DanoMP3Blog

DanoMP3Blog — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:39:33 +0000

I thought that the success of a business is determined by it’s growing profit margin, not on how big it is compared to other business. It looks like eMusic is growing nicely for what it does and 70 million in revenues is a very respectable medium-sized business income, so I don’t get why that does not bode well.

By: Cifras: Noviembre 08 | El tecnóloco

Cifras: Noviembre 08 | El tecnóloco — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:22:35 +0000

[...] alcanza los 25 millones de peers Biblioteca digital Europeana no sobrevive las primeras 24 horas eMusic: 250 Million Songs Downloaded. iTunes: 5 Billion+ TechCrunch Feed Reader Breakdown – Outlook Rules Them All (1.500k [...]

By: eMusic Tries Out A New Recommendation Engine; Redesigns Homepage

eMusic Tries Out A New Recommendation Engine; Redesigns Homepage — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:07:49 +0000

[...] and it needs to do a better job. eMusic has 400,000 paying subscribers who have downloaded 250 million songs since 2003. Members can download anywhere from 30 to 75 tracks a month before they have to start [...]

By: Holly

Holly — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:30:57 +0000

another new player in terms of adopting the subscription model is datz, although it’s a one off cost rather than a monthly subscription and unlike the other’s is MP3 and yours to keep. although if you’ve got emusic i suspect the two packages have a lot of the same content?

By: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA « Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA « Daily Marauder — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:30:42 +0000

[...] it opened the iTunes Store in April, 2003. That makes eMusic one twentieth the size of iTunes. (http://www.tech...tunes-5-billion [...]

By: imran pathan

imran pathan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:40:15 +0000

Bringing Bollywood To The World

By: imran pathan

imran pathan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:38:45 +0000

Saavn Brining Bollywood To The World

By: Yasser

Yasser — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:50:34 +0000

I agree with most of the posts above. EMusic is a great resource if you’re a true music aficionado, and in my humble opinion, there’s a lot more quality in the indie scene for different genres and they’re carving a great niche. 250 million subscribers is huge, alot more than i expected really. Kudos to them!

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By: Brad Hill

Brad Hill — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:41:24 +0000

I’m an eMusic subscriber from the old days when it was all-you-can-eat. I have also subscribed to Rhapsody for many years. I have never made an iTunes purchase and don’t imagine ever doing so. Agree with everyone who points out that the different catalogs invalidates the apples-to-apples comparison of this post. I’m amazed the argument was even advanced here, given the obvious content differences of the two services.

By: Markus

Markus — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:17:52 +0000

You *do* own the music you download from emusic. Your subscription gets you a certain number of tacks per month – if you cancel your subscription you still own the music. Also, you download only the tracks you want – there’s no need to download whole albums unless you want to. Depending on your subscription, expect to pay anywhere from $0.29 to $0.40 per track.

I’ve been a customer of emusic for a good 3+ years and love it. Although I am a huge indie music fan… If you’re not then emusic might not be for you (although I’m sure 90% of people would find enough on there to at least subscribe for a few months).

Supporting independent music is one of the best ways to fight the RIAA IMHO.

By: Crispy

Crispy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:07:42 +0000

The zune music subscription service only has 1200 users across the US and Canada, and zune users are few and far between, so that’s probably why…

By: Zach Garner

Zach Garner — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:23:45 +0000

much more room to grow.

By: Zach Garner

Zach Garner — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:22:11 +0000

I don’t usually bother to chime in on write-ups like this, but how does being #2 equal failure? I’ve used both services and eMusic has a few key advantages for people who are comfortable outside the big 4: no DRM, since their inception on anything (that’s big, still) , reasonable pricing; why are we still playing Sam Goodie prices on digital media?, DRM-free means portable I download my music and sync with any device I own with no hassle, purchased tracks can be re-downloaded; if you lose your iTunes collection I expect you’ll be buying it again.

But I think the most important issue you choose to side-step is the most telling: the two companies serve different markets and their both leaders in their respective market. To me that just doesn’t smack of failure.

The real story here is, with a little luck and a little savy eMusic has

By: Robleh

Robleh — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:10:20 +0000

How many songs have been downloaded on p2p networks since Napster 1.0? I bet it puts iTunes in the shade.

By: Emusic & itunes, Ναι υπαρχει ψωμι στην μουσικη! | zero.gr

Emusic & itunes, Ναι υπαρχει ψωμι στην μουσικη! | zero.gr — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:06:03 +0000

[...] [via] [...]

By: Diego

Diego — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:36:42 +0000

Another emusic subscriber here. And I agree completely, it’s not the business model, it’s the content (unless the business model is what is preventing emusic from signing other labels).

By: jeromio

jeromio — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:27:24 +0000

@ Greg
#2 – If you’re not into Sprengjuhöllin or Flying Rock Eater, then you probably won’t find much to enjoy about eMusic
#3 – I have personal experience on this one. I wanted eMusic to work, but due to #2, I could never find my alotment of downloads each month. And since you can only carry over a certain amount of unused downloads into the next month (eg 30), then yeah, you end up paying for nothing, which sucks it. I spent hours hunting for music and invariably came up empty.

I’ve moved on to AmazonMP3 with which I am *much* happier.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:21:08 +0000

I find it odd that this announcement was mentioned, but the Zune announcement where you can download all you want and keep 10 songs (DRM free) for $15/month was ignored. Techcrunch usually trumpets new music business models, but is quiet on this one.

Am I missing something here?

By: Thursday Tech Round-up (Stories worth a damn) : tinyComb

Thursday Tech Round-up (Stories worth a damn) : tinyComb — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:20:34 +0000

[...] Music Service, eMusic announces 250M downloads (iTunes @ [...]

By: anon

anon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:12:09 +0000

(30 * .25) + 12 < (30 * .99) by a pretty wide margin.

By: Dave in VA

Dave in VA — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:11:45 +0000

This article also does not entail that there are songs on eMusic that are NOT available on iTunes. I listen to mostly “independent” music, often times music that is not popular in the US, but is quite popular in Europe. I’ve been an eMusic subscriber for the last 2 years. While I wish I could carry over my downloads from month to month, I can still find music to download. Just today I found three albums that I’ll be getting tonight. The model is not perfect, but great for those of us who want to get legal DRM free music that iTunes just doesn’t offer.

By: James

James — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:11:51 +0000

Yes, you can’t compare sales of back catalog only to itunes. Apples to oranges.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:42:06 +0000

Lot’s of misinformation about eMusic in this post and comments thread.

#1 – Yes, there is a monthly subscription fee – but their product is DRM-free downloads. Your monthly fee buys you a fixed number of downloads each month.

#2 – If you’re not into Hilary Duff and Rihanna, or whoever the mainstream flavor of the month is, eMusic has plenty to find and enjoy. I’ve been a subscriber for over two years, and currently have about 80 albums in download queue. I seem to find more stuff I want to download each month than I can.

#3 – @Erick: “And the best part of the business is that eMusic only pays the labels for the songs its customers download.” Do you have any numbers to support that this is the best part of the business? Do you have any indication that there are significant numbers of unused downloads each month? I know that I typically use all of my downloads in the first day or two of the month.

#4 – A super great bonus feature of eMusic are the continuous DJ mixes. You can often find 70 minute long DJ mixes by the likes of Dave Seaman, Nick Warren, Gui Boratto, Hernan Catteneo, etc. that only count as one of your downloads. So you basically get an entire CD for about a quarter.

By: The guy from Songzilla

The guy from Songzilla — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:33:37 +0000

I was a subscriber to eMusic since nearly its inception, but I had no idea it had distributed 250,000,000 tracks – that’s phenomenal.

The eMusic business model is fine, the challenges and threats to their subscriber base are the old ones: catalog size and getting rights to distribute songs as MP3 (the content fight with the record companies). eMusic has not had the success with the labels that Apple has in getting the latest and hottest releases. Heard a great new song on the radio? eMusic probably does not have it. They have great stuff, but you may have to have to look around and sample to find things you dig.

eMusic carries some incredible music from the longer tail, a combination of music which is not as pop-popular, from other countries, from newer artists looking for a tipping point, or older stuff. I got my Moby collection (everything he’s done I believe) and ELP via eMusic, for example, and the cost per track was something like $20/75, or about 27 cents each.

The other threat to eMusic, of course, is the macro economic conditions, but whether this is more of a risk for eMusic or iTunes I cannot say. On iTunes people may buy fewer tracks during tough times, on eMusic people may not renew their subscriptions.

I vastly prefer the eMusic interface, delivery, and music format (MP3) compared to iTunes, but they carry different catalogs of music. They usually provide a free trial where you get a bucket of free sings, and the trial is absolutely worth doing: if you find eMusic carries music you want, you’ll probably enjoy a subscription.

Eric

By: Bryce

Bryce — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:23:39 +0000

Rhapsody app sucks. I only use it to download the music then use the player of my choice to playback. MediaMonkey is my choice, but Media Player works fine too.