Recent Down Loads And Additions From E - Music

[RDK]

IMO

Emusic is falling apart

Someone on the message board said that you will only be able to DL a song or album a max of 4 times

Not sure if that is true or not

True, but why would anyone want/need to d/l the same track more than 4 times? That's also 4 times more than itunes provides.

edit: once again, I'm redundant!

Edited June 13, 2009 by RDK

[captainwrong]

I used to enjoy the eMusic message boards as there were some good people on there sharing gems and general music talk. Now it's nothing but a feedback loop of outrage, speculation and misinformation. I understand that people are pissed about how this was handled, I am too. But, I wish that people would get it that the indie labels have been asking for more money for a long time and that's why the rates went up. You can propose whatever convoluted tiered download credit scheme you'd like, but the fact of the matter is, Sony or not, it's out of the question because the indie labels want more money.

Even at the new rates, eMusic will be less than iTunes and Amazon, unless things are on sale at either of those places. Yes, I'll be paying more, but hopefully the labels and artists I want to support will be getting more as well. I don't know why I even bother bringing these things up over there because clearly it's more fun to hate the evil major labels/Sony/RIAA/etc., than to consider that maybe the indies were getting tired of getting really low rates from eMusic.

(And I know we can debate if people would have made more selling more at the lower rates or potentially selling less at the newer ones. It's too early to tell, though I know the iTunes price increase seemed to backfire. It's kind of a moot point though if more labels have been threatening to leave over the rates. That's really the label's problem now.)

Sorry for the rant.

[save0904]

Dave Douglas Quintet Live At The Jazz Standard

[Soulstation1]

Download ASAP

Fast 3

Three's Company

A Tribute To Grant Green

An organ trio and they are sizzling on this CD

[WorldB3]

For those keeping their accounts the Lyman Woodard releases and others on the Wax Poetics label just dropped. Cool!

http://www.emusic.com/album/The-Lyman-Wood...d/11486373.html

[mjzee]

The last shot...

Lester Young - Pres

Coleman Hawkins - The Hawk Relaxes

Coleman Hawkins with the Red Garland Trio: Swingville

Coleman Hawkins All Stars Featuring Joe Thomas And Vic Dickenson: Swingville

Coleman Hawkins - Bean and the Boys

Jimmy Raney - The Master

Jimmy Raney - But Beautiful

Rosemary Clooney - Sings the music of Harold Arlen

Rosemary Clooney - Sings the music of Jimmy Van Heusen

Stan Getz - The Dolphin

Art Pepper - Landscape

Warne Marsh & Lee Konitz - Live at Montmartre Vol. 3

Sarah Vaughan - Duke Ellington Songbook vol 2

Bye, guys!

[save0904]

Gerry Hemingway Quartet Devils Paradise

Gil Evans Gil Evans & Ten

Dennis Gonzales NY Quartet At Tonic

Dennis Gonzales NY Quartet NY Midnight Suite

[randyhersom]

Barbara Dennerlein Duo - 10th anniversary concert

Bill Heid - Asian Persuasion (first 7 tracks, awaiting refresh)

[WorldB3]

Well the new Sony drop is interesting at a quick look.

The Good: Glenn Gould - Preludes, Fugues and Fughettas - Expanded Edition (is this worth getting btw?) is 30 tracks but will cost you 12 credits.

The Legendary Okeh & Epic Recordings by Ahmad Jamal is 21 credits and only costs you 12.

The Bad: Miles Davis - Big Fun which is 8 tracks will cost you 24 credits.

The later kind of pisses me off as I was looking forward to having Big Fun in digital format (though my vinyl copy is fine).

If anybody finds good deals on 20 plus multi track discs please post them.

Edited July 1, 2009 by WorldB3

[Soulstation1]

The two Stax box sets would be a good deal at 12 downloads per disc

Most are 25 plus songs per disc

IMO

[mjzee]

The Bad: Miles Davis - Big Fun which is 8 tracks will cost you 24 credits.

The later kind of pisses me off as I was looking forward to having Big Fun in digital format (though my vinyl copy is fine).

I own the Jack Johnson box, but downloaded "Go Ahead John" (from Amazon @ 99 cents) because the box only has the straight sessions, not the "Teo-ized" version, which is truly manic.

[Indestructible!]

Wow, has eMusic really phukked up their pricing plan, especially for jazz releases. Most of my "Saved For Later" albums that had 4-7 tracks have been bumped up to 12 "credits"... Most of those Soul Notes/Black Saint albums are 12 credits, no matter whether they have 2 tracks or 9 tracks.

Even those new Billy Harper albums (put out by Billy himself) are 12 credits. No thanks...

It looks like the Fantasy family of labels have resisted the new pricing... for now.

Man, I've been with eMusic for 6 years now... but I think it's time to move on.

[RDK]

Same here.

[Noj]

Me three.

[Tom Storer]

Album pricing is fairer, I think, than track pricing, and it's clear that classical and modern jazz labels, which tend to offer longer tracks, were getting the short end of the stick. If two albums each last 60 minutes but one has two tracks and the other has 12 tracks, shouldn't they really be priced the same? We all got used to looking for advantage in track pricing by finding albums with long tracks, but often I've regretfully passed over albums that have over 20 tracks. The tendency with album pricing will be to reduce the proportion of low-track-number albums that were priced too low and also the proportion of high-track-number albums that were priced too high.

Meanwhile, eMusic Europe has not mentioned SONY or any change in their pricing. Yet. I'm sure it will come soon.

Edited July 2, 2009 by Tom Storer

[Jams_Runt]

I'm not so sure if the new pricing is fairer or not. If all albums are capped at 12 downloads per then maybe, but as it stands I just went through my saved for later list well over half of the albums I had in my saved for later went from 4 to 10 downloads to 12. Meanwhile almost all of the albums I that had more than 12 tracks are now no longer available or are not capped. This is purely anecdotal evidence, but with my price per download going from 25 cents to 40 cents, this new price scheme feels to me like a jazz tax. I'd probably stick around if emusic was not a subscription service, but the new model means there is no real difference between emusic and amazon.com mp3.

[captainwrong]

When the 12 track thing is factored into the subscription, use 'em or lose 'em thing, that's where I start to have issue. At that point, it's starting to feel too much like being in a record club where you're charged every month regardless of if you order anything or not. I don't know. I'm there until my annual expires late October, but I really don't know if I'll re-up.

[WorldB3]

I am trying to take the approach of instead of what you had compare it to the way it is.

Take the CTI catalog for example. If I want Joe Farrell Moon Germs which has four tracks its going to cost me 12 credits. That sucks compared to that it would have cost me four credits in June. With my account that record comes out to about $3.50. Not great.. but I haven’t been able to find it on vinyl or cd anywhere in the bay area (I missed it when the last re-release came out thinking I would grab it later) for the last two years. My options on Amazon are either buy the MP3 for 9.99 or a used cd for 21.99. In that respect 3.50 is a deal.

I did some digging last night and grabed some single CTI tracks like Deonato’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun. Geoerge Benson’s So What and Gentle Rain, White Rabbit and California Dreamin.

But I have those on vinyl already and I was happy to just cherry pick the single tracks I want. I also grabbed Herbie’s Hang Up You Hang Ups and Steppin' in It.

Sometimes the 12 disc download works in your favor like the Glen Gould Bach English Suites which are 22 tracks for 12 which are amazing and I love.

The thing that is different is that your less wiling to just take a chance on the unknown now but bargains can be had. Willing to give it another month to see how it plays out.

But yes 24 credits for Big Fun and making all the Soul Notes that are 2 or 3 tracks 12 does stink. I think something like 2 tracks cost you 4, 4 costs you 8 would be more accepting to handle.

Edited July 2, 2009 by WorldB3

[A Lark Ascending]

The UK e-music has a new button which tells you how many credits the album costs. At present this is exactly the same as the tracks. I suspect this will change.

One thing I did notice was the recent Jarrett had one track (the longest) unavailable for separate download, encouaging the full album acquisition - something common on the main sites. E-music has often had 'this track is currently unavailable for download' before, but it seemed a bit random. This new approach seems a bit more systematic - maybe the bigger companies are requiring this to avoid cherry picking. As I generally download full albums not a big issue - except if it happens in the classical area where I'm often trying to avoid duplicating works.

For me with the overall changes it will be a case of seeing what is cost effective. If it's cheaper off e-music, I'll go there. If it can be had cheaper elsewhere (as the 'Classics' albums can be had from Amazon_mp3), then I'll go there.

[seeline]

What eMusic's new management is doing: nope. They've effectively decided to iTunes-ize the site, and I have no sympathy for that approach.

I think they've really screwed up in the way the "new eMusic" has been presented to current subscribers - they certainly have been anything but forthcoming and willing to reply to questions and queries.

I'm throwing in the towel by the end of this month.

Edited July 3, 2009 by seeline

[A Lark Ascending]

I take Seeline's point about lack of communication - I'd know nothing about these changes if it was not for this board. The Home page of the UK site is full of recommendations for my listening and what exciting indie-rock album has just appeared - but no mention of what is changing on the site.

If they are going to compete with iTunes they are also going to need to be quicker in getting things up - the new ECMs have been appearing at iTunes over the last couple of weeks - very slow to appear at e-music. The new Adam Rogers on Criss Cross is out this week in Europe - at present e-music have no download competition for this so maybe there's an agreement to wait a while to encourage physical sales first. But in time I'd have thought as in any other area of marketing the trick will be to at least have things available at the same time as your competitors. I suspect e-music doesn't have the manpower of iTunes and so finds it hard to keep up...especially with all those 'Hits of the Big Bands' discs to upload!

Another irritation I have is the situation with faulty tracks. Given how much I've downloaded over the last three years I've not had much trouble. But of late I've had a number of issues. E-music always credit you for the faulty track but you are left with an incomplete album. When I enquired recently about their replacing a track they promised it would be possible but it might take time as the fault might lie in the materials sent from the record company.

Disappointingly, one of the worst offenders is ECM - normally just a single loud click or dropout but still unacceptable, especially on a label once renowned for its pristine pressings. I downloaded a particularly mauled Dino Saluzzi a few weeks back. I don't think this is an e-music problem...I've had a couple of similar experiences with ECMs downloaded elsewhere. I get the impression the transferring of ECM to downloads was hurried, without proper listen throughs. Disappointing, as I said before.

All blips of a new technology finding its way, I'm sure, but irritating nonetheless.

[captainwrong]

Looks like Condord/Fantasy has switched over to album only pricing. I just knew I should have downloaded stuff yesterday.

[Soulstation1]

How does it work if something is 50 plus downloads like the Miles Davis box sets?

When you have only 32 per month

There are about 5 Davis sets I am interested in

[seeline]

To reply to Bev (and some other posters):

I've been an emusic subscriber for a bit over 5 years now. In the past, they always sent notifications of price increases and plan changes to members, and they had well-worded notifications on the site.

but eMusic's staff has changed. They didn't send out notifications, and they splashed a lot of stuff on the main login page about the Sony back catalog. Then, when you headed to your account page, there was a statement of how your plan was about to be altered, along with a supposed "sweetener" bonus download pack (on the house).

They changed the ToS without telling anyone - via their blog, 17 Dots, or the main site announcement - that downloads were going to be limited, that album-only pricing was coming in, and more.

Their sole attempt to try and rectify this (on the eMusic forum) seemed to be an attempt to gloss things over. A lot of people (me included) have replied to that post, but nobody from the staff has come back and addressed the concerns stated there.

I also wrote to the company, stating that I was cancelling and why, and got a form letter about improvements in reply.

Is it any wonder people are ready to kill their subscriptions? Very bad customer service, all PR.

[Adam]

My plan was up on July 13, and they were going to automatically roll it over into a plan that had only 35 credits a month, instead of 75, for about the same money, I put it on hold for 90 days. Need the money, and will see if anything changes. I'll cancel it in 90 days if nothing changes.