Well take it from me,
What else could you do?
Where do you get off,
And how can I get there, too?
- White Rabbits

On Monday, I got a note on facebook from eMusic (the only thing that I’m a “fan” of on facebook). They had just come to a deal with Sony, meaning they officially get to play with the big boys. Now, I was under the impression that this would be contrary to their business model being a pusher for indie hipsters like myself, but to each his own.

The move didn’t make much sense, but I thought I’d read the editorial to see what was up. It was a nicely written piece about how eMusic was proud to be introducing Sony’s back catalog in the future where they hoped to write articles showing links between classic artists and their contemporary counterparts.

The problem was that the article failed to mention something important. Included with the addition of the Sony back catalog (200,000 songs or so) we would be forced into a”slight” increase in prices. By slight, I mean I was only hit with a 75% increase in cost-per-track. But that’s neither here nor there.

So what happened? PEOPLE FREAKED OUT!!!

I should take a step back. In fact, I should take a couple of steps back. First of all, you’ll notice that I’m writing this a couple days after the fact. I didn’t want to come here and start giving the “eMusic has killed my blog” post that you might expect somebody who is overreacting to produce.

I should also explain that eMusic has been very kind to me these past years, allowing me to keep my grandfathered plan from 2005 – well after the point where I was no longer profitable. New and current members didn’t actually see that large of a price increase. I’m just special that way.

You see, eMusic has evolved from a site that allowed unlimited downloads for $5 a month to what it is today. And when I say unlimited, I mean unlimited in the sense that Montana has no speed limit on the interstate, but you can still get a reckless driving ticket for driving over 100 MPH. There are some classic members known as the 2000 club because of how many tracks they tried to download each month before being told to knock it off or be banned.

Back to the story at hand. In my opinion, eMusic really screwed the pooch here with the way they handled the situation.

• There was no email sent to members stating that there would be a change coming. There was only a message on the front page of eMusic. I found out about it in the comments section of that article I was talking about
• By presenting the change to me as “you had this many tracks for this price, now you get this many tracks for the same price” it made me feel like they were taking music away from me rather than charging me more for it.
• Finally, they tried to rationalize the price increase with the addition of the Sony back catalog. Let me get this straight… eMusic, the bastion of the independent music movement is now raising my rates so that they money can go to a major label?

All of this left me reeling. Would I stay with eMusic or pay more to another site based on principle? How am I going to run this website (even with its reduced content) with so few downloads? I knew that I needed to take a step back and give myself time to digest all of this. Plus, I had just written a post on Monday and if I’m going to be short on music, I may as well stretch it out for good measure.

While the site’s message boards went up in flames, eMusic kept silent, deciding only to release a statement on Tuesday morning and let some of the editors try and calm the uprising that they had caused. They attempted to assure the crowd that Sony wasn’t getting all of the price increase. They were also looking to pay the indie labels more for their music.

So now there are thread upon thread of people arguing what a stupid mistake eMusic is making, how they’ve sold out, and most of all, people who don’t know how to calculate percentages. If your music used to cost $5 and it now costs $12.50, that’s a 150% increase, not a 250% increase.

I’ve decided to tough it out with eMusic. I feel like I owe it to them to see if they can pull this all together. The problem here is that when you decide cater to the lowest common denominator, like the major labels do, you can expect to get the lowest common denominator in return. I just hope eMusic is ready to deal with that.

Today’s song has quickly become my favorite off of the new Phoenix album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. It’s my favorite kind of pop song – something with a steady beat, slowly building with changing major/minor chord sequences, flowing toward an apex. It’s a great formula.