emusic ( EMUSIC | eMusic.com ) review

Music download service eMusic has discontinued its "50 free downloads" promotion as of June the 1st, 2006.

The good thing is that starting June the 1st, 2006 eMusic offers 25 FREE MP3 downloads just for signing up.

eMusic has over 1,000,000 songs. Tracks are as low as 22 cents each!

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Originally Posted by Stream Recorder

Tracks are as low as 22 cents each!

Since November 2010, much has changed on eMusic. So let's use this thread to chat about the new features and st*ff and how to record their tracks in full-length:

First of all, clear your web browser's cache (cookies, temporary internet files).

no matter what the homepage of emusic.com says, emusic *always* offers all kinds of different FREE trial subscriptions to users with a new credit card. the maximum you can get is ~50 FREE tracks (or its equivalent of 25$ or 25EUR). for this simply do a primitive google search < 50 free emusic > and etc. If you choose the wrong link (google hit), you'll get only 10$ or 5$ worth of tracks. (each track costs 0.49). Good luck!

Once you're signed up on a trial and want to continue the monthly subscription after the trial, you'll know why emusic is the most popular (after itunes) music service on the internet. just have a look at the wealth of user-friendly subscription options!!!




the marked "connoisseur" option is the most recommendable offer: with 79.99$ you can download (97.99/0.49=) 199tracks (or 16 albums). Doing the maths, you pay (79.99/199=) 0.40$ per track, or (79.99/16=) 4.99$ per album! On itunes, you pay 9.99$ for the same album!!

New albums are encoded in LAME V0 (codec version 3.98), old albums are still posted in LAME V2 (codec version 3.9x). The files are hosted on the emusic.com domain, servers are dl.emusic.com , dl1.emusic.com , dl2.emusic.com, etc. Files are downloaded thru the http protocol, so we have a primitive and unprotected http://*.mp3 coupling.

A typical download url has this format:

http://dl1.emusic.com/dl/***/12345678/76543218/16_This_Is_It.mp3
with *** being a 172(!) chars long code string (e.g. cMTvg94I-HITU_xX....etcetc)

You can find this URL within the *.EMX-file which accompanies each track download. Open the file (Internet media type: text/xml) with any text editor and you will see something like this:



You can share the URL with your friends. They can download it with any web browser. The screenshot says something about expiration date.. so it is safe to assume that the URL will die after some time. (EDIT: the URL dies within 24hours.)

Knowing 1 such URL of an album it is possible to re-construct the download URL's of the remaining tracks of the album with the help of the html source code of the albumpage and some dubious freeware tools mentioned on this forum. Strangely, those links work only on the own PC (with subscriber's account login and cookies set). Friends cant download my/the constructed links

Does anyone know why this is so? Maybe i should ask emusic support (customer service)..

Now everybody knows why i think that emusic is the best. You only need to sign up for the cheapest option (e.g. eMusic Lite or Preferred eMusic Lite) and the rest is all in your hands..

an interesting interview:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68E4E820100915
it says that Google, Sony, and Apple are likely to launch some streaming music service to rival Spotify. At least that's what i've understood. Sounds good to me! (since emusic tracks are not streams but this website is dedicated to streams!)

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a little warning to eMusic trial subscribers:

let's assume you got "50 Freebies" (or a balance of ~25$) and 7 days trial subscription time to spend (to use up) this amount on your desired songs/tracks. please do not wonder if, when you click on the track download button, the download does not start but you are redirected to the above page(s) with the plan options and/or preferred plan options. clearly, this should not happen since we all know good ol' emusic from the very past:

the emusic webpage shows your credits/points/balance on the top corner of the page and when you click to download a track, the balance is deducted by 0.49$, which is the track's monetary value. very simple. Yes, very simple. but things seem to be different these days. emusic's system has been renewed and remodeled. Things are trickier now.

So when you try to download a 0.49$-track with your 25.00$-balance and nothing happens but you are redirected to the plan options page, then ... guess what?

Then the webpage has an (intentional/unintentional) error and i advise you to call emusic customer service (or emusic technical support) to report the situation to them.

The point is, you see a positive balance (e.g. "10.00$") but you cannot use this balance during your trial period unless you choose a plan option, which would make you a regular subscriber.

It says "50 FREE" or "25$ FREE" and when newbies sign up for the 7 days FREE TRIAL, they dont want to and they dont expect to spend any money during that week. But many of such newbies end up paying something to emusic. Once emusic has your credit card number, they charge you at one point (e.g. at some "earlier point than expected"), unexpectedly. Then you call customer service and they try to justify the charge and dont issue a refund but suggest alternative 'solutions': they offer a FREE month, or issue COURTESY CREDITS. In other words, they give you all and everything but your money back.

Again, here the point is, if you love your music, you are likely to accept their suggested solutions and be delighted about an extra FREE month or a generous amount of COURTESY CREDITS.

Yes, emusic does employ such unfair practices and their 'emusic-never-refunds'-policy seriously s*cks. But hey, they run a business .. they want to keep our money and we want to download more tracks. So everything works out fine in the end anyway!

And let's admit, Emusic is VERY GENEROUS in issuing courtesy credits or free months and you wont regret spending some (little) money on the thing you love more than your mom... which is your music.

Short, emusic's unfair practices s*ck but they are very generous.. and in the end you do become an emusic fan and love their service! They win!!

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text to be added...

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NEW emusic subscribers get 50 FREE tracks.

updated link: http://www.emusic.com/promo/brand.html?fref=150144

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

Thursday, June 09, 2011

eMusic continues to struggle against flat subscriber levels, according to details confirmed by Digital Music News this morning. An executive at the company noted that subscriber levels remain at about 400,000, a net gain of zero since 2007. This was a problem that first became apparent at the end of last year, though the company is still struggling to turn the corner. "There's been no growth," the executive shared. "Nor did we predict growth for the company's member numbers."

eMusic did point to improvements within its existing subscriber base, most notably higher uptake on its premium, 'Connoisseur' tier. But the curation-heavy, connoisseur-geared site seems to have moved into a bad place, despite gains by longtime rivals like Rhapsody and niche-focused upstarts like Beatport.

There are other possible reasons for the flat profile. Free, on-demand services like Grooveshark have essentially no curation, though they are free. And, ultra-aggressive deals by Amazon MP3 may also be crimping market share.

And, this does apply to indie fans. A recent survey by UK-based indie consortium AIM found that iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify account for a whopping 94.4 percent of total independent sales online. That discovery seemed to smash the notion that indie fans seek more curated, niche digital outlets. But even eMusic has dialed away from that idea: over the past few years, the company has been busy securing major label licensing deals, a questionable shift away from its base.