Review of eMusic
A short while ago, I had mentioned that my views on music downloads had changed recently and that I would give more details shortly. For all who were curious, here are my reasons.
But first, recapping my reasons for holding out against buying downloadable music are in order. Call me old-fashioned but I really enjoy having a physical copy of the music complete with artwork – albeit smaller than the art on an LP, liner notes, photos, comments from the artist, and lyrics. I also like the ability to rip a CD to a lossless format like FLAC. Finally, many of the large download services – such as iTunes – use digital restrictions management to limit how I can use music that I have downloaded. To a lesser degree, cost per track has also been an issue.
However, I have long hated the idea of buying a CD when I only like one or two tracks on the album; the Scot in my lineage kicked in and complained that I was wasting money. Besides this, there are several CD’s that I want, but that have been out of print for several years, and even used copies are expensive. Also, while my experiences buying used CD’s – even from online retailers – has been overwhelmingly positive, I have had a few instances where CD’s arrived broken into pieces by the mail carriers that apparently are shooting skeet with my packages. Downloadable music eliminates these issues.
Recently, on a friend’s recommendation, I signed up for the free trial of eMusic and after using it for a couple of days, I ended up signing up for a paid membership. This is the first fee-based music service that I felt was high enough quality to actually pay for. And, in fact, I rarely find any online service worth paying for.
Several features enticed me to join as a paid member. First of all, tracks are typically less than 50 cents a piece. The actual price depends on which level of plan you sign up for; higher cost plans give more tracks per month at less cost per track. All of the songs are DRM-free so once I download them, I can play them on my home computer or my work computer. Many albums have a "Deal" logo next to them meaning that if you purchase the entire album, you end up getting some of the tracks for free. A typical example is a 16 song album for 12 credits. If you rate albums or artists, the service will recommend other, similar music which can assist in discover new tunes to listen to or old music that you had forgotten about. Also, to help with locating new music that you may be interested in, eMusic gives one free download (of their choosing) daily. Finally – this was nice, but did not really influence my decision to subscribe – while looking at an album, that cost 14 credits, a message popped up saying that I only had 7 credits, but if I started my paid subscript immediately instead of in 5 days when the trial ran out, they would give me another 7 credits towards the purchase of that album. It is hard to pass up free music when I was planning on signing up anyway.
There are a few issues that I have with eMusic but, overall, the positive features vastly outweigh these negatives. Some tracks cannot be purchased unless you buy the complete album; this sucks if you only want one track, but you have to purchase the album to get it. This is the same issue that I was leaving used CD’s behind in order to resolve. Fortunately – at least for songs I was looking for – this seems to be an infrequent annoyance. Also, tracks may only be downloaded in MP3 format. While I realize that this seems to be the most commonly supported format by portable devices, I prefer my music in either FLAC or OGG. Finally, while in the trial period, certain tracks and albums cannot be purchased as they require "paid credits" not "free credits". I am not sure why there is this distinction, but it can make it difficult to try out the service if a lot of the music that you are looking for is under this pricing model. It is impossible to preview an entire track before download, which can make it difficult to tell if you want to purchase a track or, in some cases, if it is in fact the version of the song that you were looking for.
To reiterate, most of these short-comings are fairly minor and several of them only affect trial users, so subscribers will not have to deal with them. The biggest issues for me are the fact that I cannot preview an entire song before downloading it, and that I can only get the track as an MP3. However, the features provided by the site still make this the best fee-based music service that I have encountered.
In an effort to maintain full disclosure, eMusic is now sponsoring this site with via "pay-per-referral" via the links provided on the site. However, I was not given any incentive to use or review their service.
If you have experiences, good or bad, with eMusic, please feel free to leave a comment (or link to your review) below so that anyone deciding whether or not to sign up for a music service can make a more informed decision.