I said I’d do some short blog posts, so here’s one.
I signed up to eMusic in January. Love it to bits. £8 a month, give or take, and I get around 3 or 4 albums (30 tracks). Used up my first 80 downloads (50 freebies to get me on board, plus the standard 30) in the space of a week. Spent the next two weeks aching to get back to the site and hoover up some more music.
Time passed. February arrived. Haven’t been back to the site. I’ve only just remembered, and I suspect it might get to the point where a month will pass and I’ll have missed my chance. Does anyone know if this is typical of something?
Also – other than the Francisco Aguabella record, which I’ve already chosen, can you recommend some interesting, unusual and genuinely delightful music that I should download from the site?
I’m doing a bit of a Latin, Cuban, Calypso, 50s Carribean thing at the moment. Pointers welcomed.
http://www.last.fm/music/Francisco+Aguabella/+similar
;)
Emusic is great! I downloaded St. Vincent’s Marry Me, Jonas Hellborg’s albums (with Shawn Lane), Adrian Belew, Joe Bonamassa, Johnny A., Charles Ives, Tim Berne, some Ambrosian Chant, etc.
There is some fantastic stuff there, if you’re willing to dig around for it. On the plan I was on, it came out to about $0.33 per song. High quality MP3s with no DRM. Better than iTunes!
Believe me, you’ll remember in a month to go back. You’ll look forward to your monthly renewal date when you get your next batch of downloads allocated to you. My renewal date was on the 26th and I always looked forward to it.
I just put my plan on a three month hiatus because I’m running out of disk space and time to listen to everything.
If you’re afraid you’re going to miss out on your downloads, downgrade to a lower plan.
Emusic is one of the best services out there, IMO.
Only problem with Emusic is that they don’t carry major artists, for the most part. You’re not going to find big hits there. They specialize in independents. For the big, more mainstream stuff, I go to iTunes, but I spend a lot more and usually end up with DRM-laden files. Argh.
One more recommendation on eMusic:
Mattias IA Eklundh – Freak Guitar: The Road Less Traveled
Oh, one other thing. Unlike other subscriber sites, if you cancel your eMusic account, you keep your MP3s. I’ve heard of other subscriber sites that lock you out of your files when you cancel. Yikes!
I’ve got an emusic URL in my bookmark bar in Firefox, to keep from forgetting my subscription. Also, I’ve made it a habit to go check emusic everytime I read about some music I might like.
As for recommendations, there’s the pretty wellworking “Neighbours” function, like the “other customers also liked” feature on any other store. And you can go browse other users downloads. Remembering that we share a taste for Type Records releases, here’s my list: http://www.emusic.com/profile/mycollection.html?nickname=monsdrum
I love Emusic – it’s a really well built site and I’ve been a 75 track a monther for a year now.
I’m enjoying the new Yeasayer and Black Mountain albums at the moment, and am absolutely blown away by the Burial album (Untrue) if you haven’t heard it. Proper dark.
Also the new Mobb Deep album is brilliant if a little frightening :)
No Calypso on there – used to buy a lot of latin but have fallen out of the habit since I stopped DJing.
One more:
Known Unknown by Vernon Reid
eMusic is excellent! After being a member for nearly 2 years, I can say from experience that it becomes VERY easy to lose track of when your month ends. I lost one full month’s downloads (65!!!) last year at some point and I was dismayed. Eventually I was able to turn it around in my mind that eMusic’s value is worth much more than it costs. I haven’t figured out a good way to keep up on the date, save for grabbing as much as possible in one swipe, so as not to forget.
One of the things that I’ve been most excited about is the wealth of jazz that has been making its way to the site. The Fresh Sounds New Talent jazz label has finally made its catalog available digitally (at least in the US…), which before was only available as (expensive) import CD. Hopefully the albums are available to you in the UK!
Thanks for the great blogs..
-Matthew
COLLAR CITY RECORDS
tried Azymuth? They are somewhat in that vein in a minimal-jazz-funk kind of way.
Beware that they refresh every 30 days, not every month.
Hence the date gradually shifts every month.
It can be easy to forget, and indeed this is part of emusic’s business model, they rely on people forgetting.
See http://swindleeeee.com/ for (seriously) detailed analysis of emusic, its pricing, business model etc
Get the New York mutant disco compilations on Ze Records.
Early 80’s NYC excellence.
I had an emusic sub for a moment…got it to support Saine whom I heard on TokyoDawn Records (whatever happened to them?).
The problem I had is that I didn’t really WANT to dig. I mean, I was pulling albums that came highly recommended listened to the 30 second clips (we HAVE to find a way around that) and downloaded them. Most of the time I was dissapointed. I’ve collected free net releases that were superior to the majority of the albums I was exposed to on emusic.
I may give it another try, but I need a better strategy…there should be a higher “this is hot” ratio when I’m paying for a service (although it isn’t that much, granted…)
Hi Andrew,
Latin/Cuban?
eMusic carries basically the entire FANIA catalog:
http://www.emusic.com/label/Fania-Records-The-Orchard-MP3-Download/145186.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fania_Records
That’s pretty much all you need to know if you’re looking for Latin/Cuban music.
The “editor’s picks” are a good starting place, but don’t forget Ray Barretto.
Let me know if you need any more rec’s and drop an email to me if you follow up on this!
Best,
Ethan Bauley
listen to me! aron wright. i think I’m interesting?
The Bird & The Bee have recently tickled my fancy…(I think I came upon them late)….www.npr.org in the music section has a lot to offer towards some not-so-known unknowns that should be known (eh’?)…The Bird & The Bee are a bit of the retro loungey, 60’s jazz-mancini-esque-ishy like stuff. Fun in a nutshell….but not really high-brow jazz enthusiast music….Fun.
Having talked to some people at eMusic – they’d go out of business if everyone downloaded their whole months quota’s, so it is in their best interest to not do things such as send email reminders when your credit is due to run out, which is a shame for the user.
I’ve been using the site with the most expensive plan for the past 14 months and I thought I’d run out of things to buy by now – but now realize their is so much stuff on their I never will.
eMusic + iTunes + piratebay is a perfect combo of joy.
Oh, but there will at one point be a day when I get my internet account blocked by the government because I download music from Bittorrent and musicblogs if that crazy law gets passed when the music industry will once again lose its best customers.