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