eMusic Seems to Be a Good Place to Start
So, this blog is going to touch on a ton of different topics. Generally what my mind is on when I open the browser. To kick it off, we’re gonna talk eMusic and the Case of the Terrible Decision.
Long story (and longer comment section) short, eMusic signs a deal with Sony to offer some 2+ year old music to their customers and in return they cut the number of downloads their users have in half. Now, if you aren’t familiar with eMusic, then you need to understand that the people that are members of this subscription service are looking for hard to find music that isn’t offered at your more well known outlets like iTunes or Amazon. Now, apparently, you know more than eMusic did when they made this decision.
The real kicker is that they announced it in a blog post titled “More of the Good Stuff”. Really? More of the good stuff?
It’s so surprising to me when I see a company that is having a great deal of success, has a strong following, and seems to have a good connection with their customers (they have an active blog and message board), and then they just totally blow it. Now, eMusic probably has tens of thousands of users, maybe many times that, but is now the right time to risk losing thousands of those customers? There are over 650 comments on the announcement post, the vast, vast majority of which are negative. Many state that this move assures that they are going to cancel their account.
It doesn’t take a lot to come up with some alternatives for how this could have been handled. I’ll go over a couple below, but these are the types of decisions that make me wonder how the company became successful in the first plae.
Add Content Now, Delay Price Increases for Grandfathered Users
Really, how hard is it to figure this one out? Add the Sony content on schedule, but announce that the price will increase at the end of the year (or some other arbitrary date). It doesn’t have to be a long, long time, but the month notice that eMusic offered is without question too little time. eMusic claims that they were already losing money on every download from the larger subscribers that had been around for a while and had been grandfathered, which could easily be true. Would it be worth it to continue to lose money on those folks for another months before increasing the price, giving them the opportunity to get used to the new service, see if there is some value added to their experience, and when the price increase comes, they will have had time to get used to the idea. Yes, the price still increases, but the customer doesn’t feel ambushed.
Add an Additional Membership Level / Package
This idea also makes a great deal of sense. Give those users that want access to the new Sony songs (or even just a “premium” tier of labels) the option to get those songs, but at an additional charge. WordPress.com does this very thing with the (in)ability to edit CSS, integrating sales widgets, and other similar features. There are a couple of reasons that they wouldn’t go with this solution. They could have decided it was too difficult to implement, but I have to believe that if you’ve already done all they’ve done to facilitate the downloading of music, adding an additional membership level couldn’t be that hard. It’s a flag in the user database.
I think the real reason is that eMusic had a real fear that the interest in Sony’s music wouldn’t generate nearly enough intereset in their existing user base, there wouldn’t be enough subscribers to Sony’s music which would be embarassing for both eMusic and Sony, and wouldn’t provide the revenue that either needed to make the deal work.
That’s why they went with the plan to convert all people to have access to the Sony music and increased the price of each download (in some cases from $0.18 to $0.42 each). By ensuring that everyone has access, they almost guarantee that even those that aren’t that interested in the vast majority of the Sony offerings will at least give a few of them a try.
Is this good for eMusic, Sony or the customer? I’d say “no” to all three. eMusic is going to lose customers because there are literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of users that don’t want the Sony offerings and certainly don’t want to pay for the addition of something they don’t want. Sony will lose out because there just isn’t going to be substantial demand on eMusic, they won’t be making as much per track, and I don’t think they are going to see the volume they will need. It may be that they don’t really care what they make per track, since this is basically all marginal profit seeing as how these are out-dated tracks and they aren’t seeing any new revenue from them anyway, but they are still getting a black eye by being the instigator in the meltdown of this community. And the customers lose out because they are paying the same or more for half the tracks.
Lose, lose, lose. It’s a sad day for everyone involved.
5 Responses to “eMusic Seems to Be a Good Place to Start”
Wow, eMusic, you’re really not getting it! said...
[...] eMusic is now censoring the comments in the epic thread following their blog post I wrote about here. Logn story short, there was a movement afoot in the comments to stage an online protest on Twitter [...]
colin said...
Correct. emusic blew it big.
Andie said...
I am furious at emusic over this! I feel that they have abandoned their (very loyal) fanbase to get into bed with a corporate monolith. Definitely not in keeping with what I always thought eMusic really stood for.
I am not certain I’ll cancel my account, since eMusic really is the only place to find much of the stuff they have hidden in the stacks over there…but if a new site pops up to fill the gap, you can believe I’ll sign up for that instead.
Scott said...
I will give the new e-music a try at least since I’m already signed up, but it probably won’t fly IMO. Since I signed up in ’02 e-music has been a godsend for my music monkey and I hate to see it go away. But I do not fear change at all, I will cancel and not think twice about it if the new structure is not to my liking.
DJ Jackdaw said...
I gotta say that an increase from 22.2¢ per download to damn close to 40¢ per download is a very steep price increase. I understand eMusic has to be a viable business etc. but I’ll bet that at most I’ll want about 3 tracks a year from the newly available labels.
Truth is, for years those labels have ignored my musical interests. Why should I now be expected to pay a whole lot more so that their releases can be available on eMusic? It’s not like you can’t find their releases in many other places, real world and online. Why should I support their desires to fatten their bottom line on recordings that they’ve mostly made their investment back on many times over.
I valued eMusic for the opportunity to check out, at very low cost, a lot of new recordings that generally are hard to find in the physical world. I really don’t give a fuck about being able to download The Clash or Sex Pistols via eMusic. They’re hardly what I’d call cutting edge music any longer. No one who’s opinion I respect would think that they were significant today in any way other than historical. Much as I like the music, they’ve become basically little more than consumerist fodder for those who haven’t kept up with the times.
I think that this new strategy is kissing the asses of the fat shits that are only concerned about money, not music; the same fat shits who damn near wrecked their business through their unfettered greed. It’s a serious stumble for eMusic in my opinion.
Obviously, the value I derived from the low-cost ability to audition a lot of music has now been chucked out the window. I can only hope that sufficient attention continues to be paid to the wide range of music that does interest me; the music made by musicians for those involved with music, not just product. If the availability or profile of worthwhile music is diminished with this change it will truly be a sad day for eMusic.