State of British Independents

[David Ayers]

Just saw this statement on the Emanem site, maybe it has been there some time:

Emanem & psi are currently NOT licensed for MP3 downloading.

However, there are outfits on the web who are offering Emanem & psi downloads.

Please do not pay them anything, as they are not paying anything for them, and are therefore acting illegally and immorally.

Even the ones that claim to be "legal" do not have any permission, and are not paying either the labels or the musicians.

It is difficult enough to survive financially on the money that does come in from CD sales,

so please continue to pay for genuine CDs until a legitimate downloading arrangement has been made.

There are also outfits on the internet offering Emanem and psi downloads for free.

I am all for giving things away for free, however, in this imperfect world, it costs money to produce CDs, and as we have limited funds we need to get money back.

In this situation Emanem & psi have been forced to put a virtual freeze on accepting new material.

You may gain in the short term by getting our music for free, but in the longer term, there may not be anything new for you to get.

Many thanks to all our loyal and responsible customers.

Martin Davidson

This and the Leo sale made me wonder how much longer for labels like this. Leo has lost its (eccentric, ogg) download facility, Emanem has never had one. Both labels have some notable titles, but each has a large catalogue of other titles which I suspect move very slowly indeed (and which probably only made the barest economic sense back when a new CD cost the same as the Lord of the Rings box set but uh maybe not for quite the same investment). I also wonder about labels that continue to be CD only - so people don't even have the opportunity to pay for downloads.