Tuesday 30 November 2010

A note to eMusic

Ok eMusic, I've been with you for over 3 years now, and I feel our relationship is beginning to lose some of the specialness that I've enjoyed so far. I fell for you because I liked your attitude, I liked what you recommended to me, and I certainly discovered lots of great new music by sampling it before downloading from you. You put musical choices in front of me that I simply wasn't getting from elsewhere in such a concentrated fashion. I admit, I felt a bit special because I was part of the eMusic club. You made me feel, well, just that bit more in the know about upcoming musical genius. Of course you never pretended to be comprehensive, you weren't competing with iTunes or Napster or Spotify, but that didn't matter to me because of what you did offer. And I admit, call me old fashioned, but I like the fact that I get downloads to keep from you, not just streams.



But recently I've been having my doubts again. Why? Well, principally because I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find enough new music each month that I really want to download and keep. I understand that up to now you haven't had music from the major labels, but I'm finding now that many of the artists on small indie labels are not available either. I frequently hear something cool on the radio, check the tracklist for artist and label details, then come to eMusic to explore more. That worked for me many times, but recently I've not found what I'm looking for. The recent loss of 3 more big indies - Merge, Domino and Beggars group -  really hasn't helped either.

Now you've changed the proposition too, in that instead of eMusic credits each track now has a monetary value. I'm fine with that, especially as I get as many tracks as I did before at your expense. But the promise seems to be that I'm soon going to be offered a much wider range of music, with majors such as Universal and Sony signing up. Well here's the deal: I'm not seeing this coming through, and my patience is wearing just a little thin now. And if you're offering this in the States but not here in the UK, well I might just get cross.

So, I'm giving you a couple, maybe three, more months to prove yourself. That means a much more comprehensive offer from more labels. If it doesn't happen, I'm afraid to say I'm off. Yes, I'll walk away and start again somewhere else. So, please, sort it out, and quickly. Because in truth I'm really quite fond of you and I'd rather not go through a break up right now.