As eMusic Embraces Major Labels, Its Indie Core Is Leaving

from the as-if-that-wasn't-predictable dept

eMusic built itself up on a reputation for being a great way to get access to all sorts of indie music. The service, which has been around for ages, and pioneered offering authorized DRM-free MP3s, worked by letting you pay a certain subscription fee per month, which allowed you to download a specific number of songs. Over the years, the price went up, which upset some users, but things really took a turn last year when the company suddenly decided that it absolutely needed the major record labels in its collection. It started with the disastrous idea of adding Sony Music tracks at the same time as a big price increase... and then quietly trying to remove features (and then more features) without telling people. It also appeared that eMusic was deleting comments from critics. While the company denied this, there was a lot of evidence to support the claim.

Since then, the company has also added music from Warner Music and (just recently) Universal Music... but it hasn't really helped. Its userbase has remained about the same, so if the new music is enticing new subscribers, they're being offset by defections. But, more importantly, it looks like some of the bigger name indie labels are pulling their music off the site, as they can't come to a reasonable agreement with eMusic.

So, if I'm reading all this correctly, it sure looks like the company did quite a deal: it signed up major labels to get music that most of its subscriber base didn't want in the first place. In doing so it took away lots of popular features and jacked up prices. Now, the service is losing the content of some of the biggest indie bands.

This seems like a case study in not knowing your own audience.

Filed Under: fans, indie, major labels, music
Companies: emusic

eMusic: Prices Went Up, But Artists Aren't Seeing Any Of That Cash

from the it-all-goes-to-Sony? dept

You may recall quite a lot of attention paid last summer to eMusic's decision to raise prices at the exact same time that it added its first major label music (from Sony Music) to its service. This, understandably, pissed off a lot of people. Many people used eMusic because it focused on indie artists rather than the majors, and to find out that their prices were being jacked up to accommodate a major just didn't seem right. Of course, eMusic tried to claim that this was a "good thing" and also (har har) that the price increase had nothing to do with Sony. Even if true, announcing the two together was obviously a mistake. Of course, eMusic kept making things worse and worse by censoring critics (and then lying about doing so) while also quietly taking away features without letting people know. The whole thing was a mess.

Of course, if eMusic is charging more, you might think that at least the musicians who use the service are getting paid more. Think again. Musicians on eMusic are upset to discover that despite the price increase, they're still making the same amount. So now, not only has eMusic pissed off its users, but also musicians as well. At least Sony Music is happy.

This is really too bad. eMusic was a leader in offering DRM-free music, as well as a major supporter of independent music early on. It also had a reputation for being consumer-friendly and accessible to both customers and musicians. I guess all that is going out the window, though.

Filed Under: emusic, musicians
Companies: emusic

Sony Music Does Deal With Amie Street... But Using iTunes Pricing?

from the how-does-that-make-sense? dept

Well, this is odd. Amie Street is the well known indie music site that lets people purchase music with a dynamic pricing system -- the music is cheap at first, but as more people buy, the price goes up. It has some neat features to it. So it seemed like a big deal to hear that Sony Music had done a deal with the company to offer its music on the site... except that it's not using the dynamic pricing. Instead, it's pricing the music at $0.69, $0.99 or $1.29, based on popularity. In other words: the exact same pricing as iTunes. So what, exactly, is the benefit of offering the exact same pricing on Amie Street? About the only good thing you can say for this deal is at least it didn't muck up the pricing of everything else, like what happened when Sony Music did its deal with eMusic. Though... it is worth noting that Amie Street did recently put some additional restrictions on redownloading songs. Perhaps the company tried to separate out the announcements so that no one connected the two things...? If that's the case, why bother signing with Sony Music in the first place. Amie Street offers no benefit to people who want Sony Music. All it seems to do is go against the very point of Amie Street.

Filed Under: dynamic pricing, music, pricing
Companies: amie street, emusic, sony music

Amie Street Also Takes Away Features... But At Least Is Honest And Upfront About How They Hate Having To

from the take-a-lesson,-emusic dept

We've covered how eMusic (which had a fantastic reputation for a while) totally failed in communicating changes to its service, which involved increasing prices and taking away many valued features. The company tried to bury that news along with the fact that Sony Music would now be included, not recognizing that many of its users didn't care, and were pissed off at the way eMusic presented this as a good thing. At least some others may be learning. Ragaboo alerts us that online music site Amie Street is also removing some features (such as the ability to redownload tracks -- just like eMusic has done), but did so by admitting that it sucked and apologizing, but basically saying its hands were tied. They also gave advance warning of the changes. While Ragaboo isn't thrilled about he, notes that he appreciated the honesty from the company. Here's the email that he received:

"In several weeks we're going to be making a change to how Amie Street handles downloads, and we want to be certain you are fully informed in advance about this change. In brief, starting on August 5th we'll only be able to offer a single download of your purchased music unless you've encountered a technical problem.

Although most people only download their music one time, we've noticed that you have done so more than once on occasion. We realize that the ability to re-download files has been important to you, so it's understandable that you might be disappointed to see this no longer available. Unfortunately a number of factors beyond our control, including legal and royalty concerns, have made this impossible going forward.

We're very happy to say, however, that you can continue to stream all of the music you've purchased on Amie Street. That means wherever you have access to the internet, you also have immediate and unrestricted access to stream the entirety of your Amie Street music collection from your Library.

To make sure that downloading music continues to be as easy as possible, we'll be keeping a close eye on the user experience and making updates to the site as needed. The primary voice that directs any such changes will be yours, so if you have suggestions based on your experiences using the site, we'd love to hear from you. Tell us exactly what you like and don't like, and we can make Amie Street even better!

Peace,

The Amie Street Team""

Of course, the fact that both Amie Street and eMusic have removed the ability to redownload tracks over royalty issues makes you wonder what exactly is the issue here. Are record labels really demanding a royalty payment every time people redownload a song?

Filed Under: benefits, features, users
Companies: amie street, emusic

Even More eMusic Features Disabled?

from the anti-fan-is-not-a-good-thing dept

This is really unfortunate. eMusic used to be a great example of how treating customers right and with respect and trust could win over more customers -- but in the last month or so, it seems like the company is throwing all that out the window and pissing off customers left and right. Beyond the big price increase at the same time as signing its first major record label (bad PR to announce both together), the company has censored critics and removed the feature that let you redownload songs you'd purchased before, at your convenience. However, now we're hearing that there were a bunch of other features that were removed as well. An anonymous reader notes:

"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."

This seems like an increasing disaster. Hopefully some of these changes are mistakes, rather than permanent. But the way this whole situation has been handled is going to make a terrific case study in how not to do PR. eMusic has turned from a company that customers really loved into one that many seem to hate... and it's happened in an incredibly short time frame. That's really unfortunate.

Filed Under: customers, features
Companies: emusic

If You're Taking Away Features From Users, Don't Tell Them It's For Their Own Benefit

from the that's-called-lying dept

Sometimes, I really wonder if companies think their users are stupid. There are times when they treat them that way. My favorite examples are when companies are taking away features or raising prices, and claiming (somehow) that it's for the benefit of those customers/users. For example, when eMusic raised prices and disabled features it put up a blog post trying to spin it as a positive, claiming "more of the good stuff!" Yes, at a higher price, with fewer features, but why let that get in the way of claiming good news?

The latest example is online music streaming site imeem. The company has struggled of late under absolutely draconian terms forced on it by the record labels. Rumors held that the company came close to going out of business until Warner Music agreed to renegotiate its suffocating deal. Still, there are many who question how the company can survive without a drastic change in business models. But, taking away features from customers with little warning and pretending it's a good thing isn't exactly the best way to go about things. Clay Shirky points us to the news that imeem is removing features for users to upload videos or pictures without even offering a "download to save" option. But, even worse, the blog post announcing the change tries to play this up as good news again, saying that it's all about "simplifying imeem" as part of an effort to enhance the site.

Sure, simplifying a site can be a good thing -- but unilaterally removing features that people use, with little warning, isn't really simplifying. You can simplify without removing features. If you have to remove features, for whatever reason, why not at least admit the truth: it's not for consumer's benefit, but for some other reason, and you realize it sucks for many users.

In other words, sound human, rather acting like your users are morons. If you want to see a company that's actually done a good job of this, look at Hulu. While we think it's ridiculous that the company caved in to content providers and tried (and failed) to block a specific browser (Boxee) from viewing its content, at least Hulu's CEO was upfront and honest about the fact that it sucked:

The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time. We embrace this activity in ways that respect content owners' -- and even the entire industry's -- challenges to create great content that users love. Yes, it's a complex matter. A tough mission, and a never-ending one, but one we are passionately committed to.

For those Boxee users reading this post, we understand and appreciate that you're likely to tell us that we're nuts. Please know that we do share the same interests and won't stop innovating in support of the bigger mission.

eMusic, imeem and others would be wise to take note. Taking features away and pretending your customers are stupid enough to believe it's for their benefit isn't likely to fly.

Filed Under: benefits, features, users
Companies: emusic, hulu, imeem

eMusic Also Took Away Right To Download Songs Already Purchased

from the thanks-for-nothing dept

In all the fuss over eMusic's poorly managed plan to sign Sony Music and raise prices at the same time, the company apparently also was able to sneak through another anti-customer move. For years, as an eMusic customer, you were able to go back and access songs you'd previously downloaded. This is, for obvious reasons, a very useful feature -- especially considering the fact that people change computers or lose hard drives and such. However, apparently, along with the price increase, eMusic has quietly dropped this feature as well. It's not clear why they would do this. Perhaps Sony didn't want this, but that doesn't explain why the feature was removed for everyone. It's like eMusic is punishing their loyal customers. The company claims that it will allow people to redownload if there's a technical problem, but the convenience feature is just gone.

Filed Under: downloads, users
Companies: emusic

eMusic Tries To Defend Price Increase... Still Seems To Be Missing The Point

from the nice-try dept

We recently posted about the incredibly poor communications job eMusic did in announcing a price increase at the same exact time as it signed up with Sony Music, its first major record deal. For many eMusic customers, the two events were (not surprisingly) seen as being connected. Even worse, some users were then apparently censored when complaining about it. There was a little mini-drama after we posted about that -- as eMusic contacted us to insist that it was absolutely not true, and that they had not deleted any comments. So we updated the post... and then more and more people demonstrated increasingly damning proof that eMusic flat out lied to us, and that they had, in fact, removed comments.

Either way, eMusic's CEO spoke with Wired earlier this week to try to explain the situation and defuse some of the controversy, and the best he could come up with was basically claiming that the price increase had nothing to do with Sony Music at all, but that it was the indie labels who had been demanding it. So why tie the announcement to the Sony announcement?

We were looking for a "catalyzing event" to do it. And really, the catalyzing event is adding catalog, adding more content. We used this as an opportunity to do it, but we didn't do it because of Sony. We did it because in order to sustain the economics for our label suppliers and their artists, we needed to do it.

While this is what I had assumed happened in my original post, it still doesn't excuse the actions of the company. It makes you wonder how eMusic could be so tone deaf to the sort of customers it has (folks who love indie music, for the most part), that they would think that people wouldn't automatically associate the inclusion of a major record label's content with the price increase. Waiting for a "catalyzing event" doesn't make much sense -- especially when that "catalyzing" might not be at all what users want.

Filed Under: music, price increase
Companies: emusic, sony

eMusic Trying To Censor Critics Of New Pricing Plan? [Updated... And Again]

from the not-smart dept

We just wrote about the PR nightmare facing eMusic for announcing both a price increase and its first major record label signing at the same time -- leading many to assume that the price increase was due to the Sony Music deal. Some in our comments pointed out that eMusic subscribers were protesting in a variety of places -- including on Twitter, where they were using the hashtag (used to designate a unique cause or event): #emusicfail. And, as usually happens in such situations, many of the hundreds of commenters on eMusic's own blog post on the deal mentioned the Twitter hashtag, and encouraged others to start using it as well, while making their protests public. So, how did eMusic address these angry customers?

It apparently made them disappear. [see update below]

A commenter on our post, pointed us to a comment on the eMusic blog noting that all of the comments that mentioned the Twitter tag had been deleted by eMusic -- not only wiping out signs of the protest, but also screwing up the numbers of comments, which made the conversation confusing, since people are referring to other comments with the wrong number now.

So, rather than address the fact that there are a ton of angry protesters, eMusic simply decided to pretend they don't exist? It's hard to see that ending well.

Update: eMusic got in touch to say that they have not blocked or deleted any comments, and suggest that it may have been an issue with CAPTCHA problems not allowing comments to post rather than any actual intent to block conversation on the subject. The company also notes that it has responded to the complaints, though I'm not sure it really addresses the specific complaints from subscribers.

Update 2: There is growing evidence that the original post was correct, and eMusic's response was false, though we're still trying to clarify. Someone has detailed examples of comments moving up (which would happen if other comments above it were deleted) and also, perhaps the most damning of all is that, as of the time of this update, there's a 13 count discrepancy between the number of comments listed under the post, and the actual number of comments. It certainly sounds like 13 comments were deleted, though eMusic insists that it has not removed any comments.

Filed Under: censorship, debate, emusicfail
Companies: emusic

Did No One At eMusic Think About PR Impact Of Raising Prices At The Same Time Sony Signed?

from the braindead-PR dept

eMusic is a rather successful indie music e-commerce player (reports put it at the 2nd largest music store), that has focused on charging people a subscription that lets them download a limited number of songs each month. It also supported DRM-free MP3 files long before others finally came around. I have many friends who love the convenience that eMusic provides (I tried it, and didn't find enough of the music I liked to stick around) and are willing to pay for the convenience alone. However, it's almost hard to believe that no one on the PR/marketing side of eMusic failed to predict what would happen this week when the company made two announcements: that it had signed its first major label, Sony, and that it was raising prices. The reaction was quick and almost universally negative.

The complaints hit on a number of points, but the two big ones (obviously) are the price increase and the fact that many people signed up with eMusic because of its indie music focus, and related to that: their dislike of major record labels. What's stunning is that eMusic couldn't foresee what a negative reaction this would bring. The company has raised prices in the past, which also created some level of anger -- but people had to know that announcing both the Sony deal and the price raise at the same time, was going to be a PR nightmare. What I can't understand is why they didn't separate out the announcements. They may have felt it was a "pulling the bandaid off quickly" sort of moment, where they could take flak for both announcements at the same time, but they didn't seem to consider the fact that the two issues are completely linked in users' minds. It's not "eMusic had to raise prices" and "eMusic added Sony music." It's become: "eMusic had to raise prices to get Sony Music's catalog into the system."

That makes both eMusic and Sony Music look dreadful -- because here's a major record label, whose music many eMusic subscribers didn't want in the first place, now being seen as having made life worse (and more expensive) for everyone. By connecting the two issues, it seems like both eMusic and Sony Music are getting hit a lot harder than if the announcements had been separated.

Filed Under: major labels, music, subscriptions
Companies: emusic, sony