I had an emusic account a long time ago, back when all they had was 128kbps mp3s. I was a victim of the corporate acquisition that affected other early adopters, and I subsequently cancelled my account after the 12 months was over. (Emusic refused to cancel my account despite changing their entire structure to something that I was not pleased with midway through my subscription with them)

It’s happened once again. Techdirt has a post with some of the new changes:

“July 1 was the first day in the Sony era over at eMusic. Despite published interviews with eMusic executives, FAQs on the eMusic web site and messages from eMusic employees on the eMusic forums attempting to clarify the new pricing structure, there were quite a few surprises. Some of the changes I’ve noticed (or read about in the forums) include:
Certain tracks can only be downloaded with “paid” credits, not the free credits eMusic hands out for trial memberships.
Individual track downloads disabled for tracks longer than 10 minutes – you must download the entire album
Certain (popular) sub-10-minute tracks disabled for individual download
No downloading individual discs in multi-disc sets
Most new albums use 12-credit album pricing (very few reports of 6 or 9 credit album pricing)
Many (a significant portion in the classical section at least) albums with fewer than 12 tracks cost 12 credits
Many albums previously available on eMusic have been re-priced (in some cases, tracks available for 1 credit on June 30 now require 12 credits)
IMO, the fact that eMusic did such a poor job communicating these important changes suggests that they deliberately withheld (or downplayed) this information, possibly to keep from fueling the outrage generated from last month’s Sony/pricing announcement.”

It looks like yet another nail in the coffin for emusic. It was a great idea, but the ‘content providers’ have struck once again.

Tags: music, sad, Technology