Of my experience with eMusic

I signed up yesterday; this entitled me to the free 50 tracks download. The signing was more painless than Apple’s and more precise about decisions and consequences. I signed up for the Basic Account; this means that I pay 9.99/month and can download up to 40 songs. I got a signing bonus of 50 downloads. There is also the possibility, at any time, of buying an additional block of downloads; 10 downloads for $4.99, 25 downloads for $9.99, 50 downloads for $14.99.
There is no limit. When you sign on you have 10 days to profit from your free downloads before the monthly subscription starts. You can—and there are no hoops—sign on, grab the fifty tracks, and sign off.

So why shouldn’t you?

Apart from that the web interface is very clunky [worse than iTunes—I’m beginning to see why iTunes, while bad, is considered best of the bunch] but just as slow. The indexing is very bad*. An example: an album that I was seeking, Harold Budd with The Cocteau Twins, The Moon and The Melodies does not appear when you search for “Budd”, “Harold Budd”, “Cocteau Twins”, and a variety of other things including ‘Tracks containing the word Moon’! Another example, I have just stumbled on the lovely Soundtrack that Tindersticks recorded for Claire Denis’ film Trouble Every Day. Of course, it is filed under Alternative and not under Soundtracks.

[* Apple’s is better, but not much. I was seeking Peacemaker’s Blues by Big Head Todd and The Monsters: iTunes proposed “Gerry and the Peacemakers”—What?!? I have stumbled on tracks that don’t appear when searched for and not in the correct categories: I found a Gerard Manset album in a category called Vocal that, apparently, doesn’t exist in the category index.]

eMusic downloading uses a separate app, and then the material needs to be imported into iTunes; while it’s annoying, I can live with it. Album art doesn’t get downloaded, and as it doesn’t appear to be of sterling quality on the site, I have, generally, found it is easier to just seek out and copy this in from Amazon.

The web site was obviously made when the graphic designer was asleep and the ergonomics consultant away on vacation. At least it’s not glitzy, just a bit rusty.

So, as I was saying, why subscribe?

Because if you like this sort of music, you can’t really get it much elsewhere. So far, I have downloaded Coma Girl, Redemption Song and Long Shadow from Joe Strummer’s posthumous album Streetcore. Also the wonderful Disturbed by Ilya that I heard on Radio Paradise, as well as Dead Can Dance and The Cocteau Twins. I have been using the sort of shopping bag feature—MyStash—to set aside disks as I find them; the Search, as I have said, being so strange that you might not be able to find them again.

The tracks seem to be ripped better than Apple’s on iTunes; so far, the bitrates vary from 141 [lowest] to 201 [highest]—Apple has 128 everywhere. And, there is no ‘This track is Album only’ like on iTunes.

Finally, there is no copy protection, no DRM software nor encoding. Thesea re vanilla mp3s. And even at entry level prices, tracks are 4 times cheaper than Apple [Reminder, as this is a dollar payment, check how much the bank will grab on transactions…]

I bought Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks from iTunes . Again, it cost me 9.90 euros. I have noted, at last, a couple of other things that interest me there. Nothing absolutely, totally, utterly can’t-live-without-able, which is why they are currently on a waiting list. But buying Blood on the Tracks made me think about what I was really buying.

I think that this is the third time that I have bought this disk. I first got it as a vinyl, then as a CD, now as a collection of files. In each case what am I buying? Am I buying—in the case of an object, the disks—the right to possess that object, to keep it, to lend it, to resell it. I think so. I am not buying the right to hire it, nor to broadcast it. In all cases. That is pretty clear. I have also a right to make backup copies for personal use.

Here is an interesting case: when I was serious about buying vinyls I would tape the disk as soon as I bought it, and only use the disk again when I thought the tape needed renewing. What would have been the situation had my disks been stolen [or the more usual situation of a friend forgetting to return them?] Would my tapes immediately become illegal? That is, somebody else’s illegal actions would cause me a double prejudice [loss of the original documents, illegal possession of the tapes]? Or would the fact that I had bought the disks cover my continued listening to the tapes?

But it is not clear what part of the purchases is just the carrier—the vinyl and packaging, the CD and such—and what is the artist’s rights. Now it would appear to me that when I bought a CD of a disk that I already owned as a vinyl I had already paid the artist’s rights. I should be just paying for the new support. They could even had put together a trade-in from vinyl.

CDs are easier and cheaper to produce that vinyl disks. When they were first produced the record companies argued that the transition to new technology, new plants, new high standards for engineering created one-time costs that had to be passed on to the consumer. But these were only a temporary stop-gap measure. As soon as these costs had worked their way through the supply chain then we would see the CD prices drop.

I hope no one believed them.

The record companies have been riding on the more-than generous profits that the transition to CDs generated. That wave is no ending as most people have transitioned to CD. The wave is also ending for two other reasons. People are aware of the record company greed when they buy a blank CD for 1 euro and wondered where the other 19 go when they buy a disk… And the music that is currently being offered is just plain dreck. The record companies are so used to rolling in money that they need more and more, so empty ‘artists’ are being launched with mega-marketing-budgets that they must absolutely recover… And this is why you no longer listen to the radio Mr Jones…

Most of my CDs are in Gilles’ cellar. Why is not the issue here. Suffice to say that I have downloaded from P2P networks quite a few of the tracks that, for reasons I don’t wish to discuss, I don’t have here with me. I have no problems with this as I own the music, even if it is not here with me, physically so to say, at the moment.

I also download, quite often, tracks from different sites that offer bands music as mp3s in order to discover and find out. Matson Belle and Sigur Rós for example, both provide this. The Emigre Type Foundry also have a record label with free samples. Lots of free online-only record labels are available at archive.org . So I now have 4.5 Gb of music on my iBook.

S’funny that I should keep it on my iBook…

Did you know that France has a tax not only on blank media—tapes and CDs—but also on hard drive? This is designed to cover the loss to artists to illegal copying. I have burnt quite a few CDs, generally to give material to clients, or to back up my files. Hundreds of disks if you think of it… For each of those disks I paid a tax because someone decided that I could have been making illegal copies*. As far as I know, only France also taxes hard drives in this way. Now I have 3 computers here, two external drives, and the original HD that was in my G3 PowerBook as I changed that. That means I have paid taxes on 6 hard drives. I believe that the tax also applies to the flash card in my digital camera because, you know, I could just possibly keep illegal music on it.

[ * This is akin to adding a tax to petrol, for example, to cover parking offences. Because it is so much easier to tax you because, you know, you could be parking badly, rather than really look at the problem of towns clogged with cars and poluution and underfunded repressive public transport systems…]

The tax money from digital media is currently sitting in some collecting agency because people don’t know how to re-distribute it… to the artists, of course. Once the record companies agree on their cut.

I won’t even mention the tax on phone lines as that isn’t to cover possible and supposed illegal copying, but to provide Universal Access to people too poor to afford that universal lifeline that the telephone has become. So all the other telco operaters in France have to pay an annual percent of their turnover to France Telecom in order to cover the losses that France Telecom makes in providing Universal Access. Except that the Universal Access has never gone into operation. Making all of this into a disguised tax on the other operators in order to further the unfair advantages that FT enjoys… FT, of course, can’t spend this money. But it exists in its millions and millions, earning interest, improving balance sheets. Ho hum…

So, all in all, the sooner that the artists put together iTunes-like services and I can download material directly from them, and let them get my 0.99 per track directly, and let the record companies disappear altogether, the better things will be for all.

[BTW. The Record Companies argue that they need high margins in order to find, support and develop talent. Judging from their track record [no pun intended] in recent years, this is like highwayman explaining that they are an important part of the redistribution of wealth in rural areas.]