ON THE EMUSIC VALUE PROPOSITION

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

(This post has been modified from the original in response to a reader comment)

I've posted on the state of online music services from time to time, and am an avid user of services like Apple's iTunes music store, Yahoo!'s music service and Rhapsody from Real Networks.

eMusic is an online music service I'm occasionally tempted to try.  Their value proposition is true-fold, according to their web-site:

1.  The promise of non-mainstream music: 

" eMusic offers a diverse catalog of over 1,000,000 songs from over 3,800 record labels around the world...offering a diverse catalog of over 1,000,000 songs from established and emerging artists in every genre from the world's top independent labels"

2.  All MP3s, all the time: 

"We are the only major music service to make all our music available as MP3s. That means more freedom of use for you! Our songs play flawlessly on any digital media player including the iPod ®. You can burn unlimited CDs, download to an unlimited number of computers, play on any digital music jukebox, and the list goes on."

They even run interesting promotions from time to time, like offering 25 to 50 free music tracks in a 30-day trial.

So what's the catch?  Well, it's pricing from my perspective.

After digging through their site, you find that they offer three tiers of service:

• "eMusic Basic: $9.99 per month/40 downloads - that's $.25 a song
• eMusic Plus: $14.99 per month/65 downloads - that's $.23 a song
• eMusic Premium: $19.99 per month/90 downloads - that's $.22 a song (best value!)"

At first blush, the prices of $.22 to $.25 seem like a bargain compared to the $.99 cents on Apple's iTunes and elsewhere.

When you run the numbers for the three tiers, including the maximum number of downloads, you get the following number of tracks per year from eMusic:

480/780/1080 at Basic, Plus and Premium

Am still on the fence whether to try it or not.  The issue swings on the quality of their independent tracks and whether there are a sufficient number of them that appeal to any one subscriber to take maximum advantage of the subscription and the pricing.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[Raj Bala]

I'm not sure what you mean by montly subscription fees. I pay 19.99 a month for 90 tracks resulting in .22 a song. There are no other fees on top of that.

Where do you get "$2.00/$2.08/$1.96 at Basic, Plus and Premium" from?

Maybe I'm missing something.

[Michael Parekh]

Upon first reading of their pricing terms it seemed that they were charging a subscription fee on top ofa download fee. Your comment implies just a subscription fee and no download fee. In that case, I stand corrected.

Have made the change in the post.

Thanks for the comment.

mp

[Niko]

When I first found out about EMusic, it was a download-as-much-as-you-can offering. And I did. For $10 a month, I got like 40 albums in three months.

When the download limits were introduced, in some erratic twist of logic I started to think that maybe there would not be enough good music to justify the price. Or maybe I was afraid I would forget to download the maximum allowed amount in one month and "lose money".

Actually, it would be great if the downloads would accumulate... With the lowest plan, if I only downloaded 30 tracks this month, the next month my limit would be 50 tracks.