Flop Eared Mule A Country Music Death Beast and Worker in the Dylan Industrial Complex | Sydney, Australia | Est. 2004

I have two active accounts, a "grandfathered" ("I don't think that word means what you think it means") 90 a month for $19.99 and an annual account of 50 a month. In a stroke of bad timing my annual expires in July, I was thinking of renewing it but now will not. The new annual plans have nothing to recommend them -- you're not getting much of a discount which is the whole point with annual subscriptions and more importantly the highest you can get is 35 credits. Nothing there for me.

I will, for the time being, keep my main account, even after the downloads are slashed to 50 for the same cost. I refresh end of June and the changes are first billing in July so I have two months to see how it plays out before moving to the new one.

Individual track price never really meant much to me -- perhaps because as I'm paying in AUD for something in USD so the exact real world amount I pay every time changes depending on the exchange rate. Oh for the heady days of near-parity '07! What matters to me is the number of downloads for a price I can sustain when I do a rough USD conversion in my head. That's part of the reason I am reluctant to make the jump to the $40 "Connoisseur" plan for 100; it's OK at today's exchange rate but if the AUD falls back into the .60s, not so much. At the lower prices you have the ability to absorb whatever currency fluctuations happen.

I would be prepared to pay more (even though I was told my plan would be grandfathered for as long as my account was in good standing), a good deal more. As with most corporate frakups, things could have gone so much sweeter with some respect and honesty. The music industry is in flux and when the majors got their heads in the 21st century I figured a price point with broad acceptance would emerge, and most likely that would be above what I was paying. I am realistic. I would pay more and I know my grandfathered plan was a good deal, but who can accept a DOUBLING of cost overnight without many choices and with potentially nothing in return. And with all the corporate marketing BS that goes with it, as if you are too stupid to notice what's up. Hecker gets it right at Swindleeee!, this could have been dealt with so much better. Stagger the price rises, be honest about the reasons, show some respect to your long term hard core fan base - and I don't mean music fans, I mean eMusic fans. It's that kind of service, it encourages not just utilisation, but devotion. Don't throw that away, pay me some lip service at least.

More than the price rises what sticks in my craw are the download credit cuts. Cutting back to 50 significantly affects my behaviour. Value to me is not by per track pricing but the percentage of my monthly allotment. And within that, tracks downloaded when I have fewer credits left have more weight than ones just after refresh. This is where I wish I'd paid attention in 2U Economics in Yr 11 so I would have the language to precisely describe this economic psychology. What I mean is, I am willing to take a chance on a 12 track album when it takes me from 90 to 78, far less so when it takes me from 14 to 2. From the message boards, I believe this is common among the faithful. I can use the first 40% to experiment, explore, expand and support but when I hit 50 I start tending towards safer bets. I said to someone on Twitter the other day until this eMusic was my favourite non-human thing in the world, which is not hyperbole. I visit it more often than any other website, I hunt obsessively from link to link to link, sample to sample and I have not only discovered countless new artists but numerous entire genres, which now make up a large part of my listening habits. That process is a post of its own. No more dusty 40s Ghanaian field recordings and 60s Taiwanese girl pop 45s. Suffice to say here, the reduced ability to explore and test and experiment is a profoundly sad loss.

So, now I am at 50 to start with the incentive to experiment is gone. This is quite genuinely sad. And I do not see any way contra Yancey et al that it is good for indie labels since they are the ones who are now going to miss out. Will higher prices make up for lower volume? This is the question and I am not at all convinced. Perhaps the major indies will see benefit, but the second, third, fourth tier indies down to the Z list self-uploaders will surely not. And good luck getting people to download the eMusic Selects artists in any volume -- if such a thing will still exist.

Which brings us to the major label booga booga question. The major label involved in this initially is Sony Music which owns a bazillion other famous names, including Columbia which is why Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen are touted as top acquisitions. As any reader here knows, those four are in fact my four favourite artists. I was thinking just the other week actually about how three of them have been on Columbia their whole careers and Cash was there for most of his. I am clearly not anti-major artist although my feelings about major labels are much more ambivalent. And if you were going to choose one company which would most get a bunch of music nerds riled up, Sony's the one because memory of the rootkit fiasco still burns strong. Still, I buy their stuff in hard copy so I do not object to their presence. I've got all the Dylan/Cash/Cohen/Springsteen anyway, but there are a lot of gems in their back catalogue. All that Sony Nashville, Arista, Epic and RCA country stuff for a start. It boggles my mind when people say there is "not enough music" on eMusic (I have about 1000 records saved for later), but I also always thought some major label back catalogue items were inevitable and desirable. Blue Note is the example people most often use. There are lots more in the major label long tail that would fit right in.

However : In Australia we will probably not get the Sony stuff. This is not certain, and sometimes they say "US only" to just mean "not the UK, EU or Canada" and we here can actually get it. However my experience of geographical distribution system leads me to be extremely pessimistic. I am assuming in fact we won't get the new stuff. This makes the pain all the worse.

The way the change was presented gave the very strong impression the price rises were linked directly to the acquisition of the Sony back catalogue. Stein and others are trying to walk that back now but the damage is done. The two are inexorably linked in everyone's mind. We are paying double for something we were happy to live without and if we wanted it we could already get it at every record shop not to mention eBay, is the message. Marketing disaster, eMusic.

My musical habits are now almost exclusively digital - a change largely driven by the delights of eMusic. However the closer in price a digital album gets to a physical CD, the less it is appealing. I buy the occasional thing from iTunes but generally not only because the difference between that and a physical CD at JB Hi FI is only a couple of dollars. And you get liner notes, artwork, lossless audio and resale value. 50 credits is maybe only two albums if they are a Blind Lemon or Sister Rosetta or Memphis Minnie compilation and frankly I can probably buy the CDs second hand for the same price or less. On the other hand of course, a Coleman Hawkins session which is four long tracks is still a good deal. But overall, not as good a deal and it will spur me to go back to the second hand market (where artists/labels get nothing.)

I also realise I am not a typical consumer, although I am more typical amongst eMusic hard corers (which is nice, to be surrounded by your own) - and we are the ones who don't waste our downloads ever and so reduce their profit. The subscription models suits my voracious appetite, whereas most people are better served by a la carte. My sister is happy with her 40 downloads a month, and the anticipation and casual exploration gives her great pleasure. Under the new plans, she can go to 25 for the same price which is too few credits, or to 50 which is too expensive. I hope she will not have to quit, but may do.

I don't know what the strategic vision here in the eMusic boardroom. "iTunes Lite"? Looks like it, but that runs the risk of pleasing no one. Music nerds are squeezed out, but more casual consumers still won't find the last top 40 hits there. I'm no marketing guru but when you have a distinct brand, I know you have to be very careful about diluting it. I also know you have to make money, but surely part of business growth is finding new markets while not casually sloughing off your old ones, the ones who gave you the market position to be able to make a play for the golden ring in the first place.