eMusic, Sony, and the future of the music business.
One advantage of working at Hoover’s: I get thought-provoking e-mails like the one that follows from my co-workers. Chris Barton, besides being the person who ushered me in the door at Hoover’s nine years ago, is a keen student of industry trends (and a published author in his own right). Here’s what he sent me — all I’ve done is added links.
~ ~ ~
The skinny: eMusic, focused for its entire existence on the long tail of selling music from independent labels, just got the rights (starting on 7/1) to sell music from Sony (recordings at least two years old).
Bob.
Etc.
What’s this going to do to the company’s identity, and to the way they relate to their customers and the vendors whose product they’ve traditionally sold?
~ ~ ~
I don’t have the answers to this, but given what I’ve seen at the 17 dots blog, I’ll bet that eMusic lands on something nifty that makes plenty of coin both for themselves and for Sony.
What do you think?
Category: Entertainment, InternetIf you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed so you can receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
8 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
Tim,
I’m sure that e-music will be able to do quite a bit with Sony’s catalog. It is exciting for them, and exciting for their customers, who, if they’re anything like me, don’t mind the occasional pop album mixed in with the Indie records.
E-music has come a long way since I first joined in 2007. Better interface, better selection…pretty much better everything.
What’s frustrating, however, is that it seems like every time they make a major update or announcement, they make a change to the subscription program as well. Since I’ve joined, they’ve cut the number of downloads you can get per subscription level twice. (granted, they do grandfather current members into the new program).
So yeah, they’re adding some great new music to the catalog – but at the same time, they’ve devalued their subscription model. Is this a smart strategy? I don’t know, but I’m guessing it isn’t.
Thoughts?
I’ve been a faithful eMusic subscriber since December 2003, and yesterday as I logged into my account I was greeted by a notice that my monthly downloads would drop from 90 to 50 for the exact same price.
The beauty of eMusic was the fact that you could take a gamble on indie stuff you’d never heard of on the cheap. I wasn’t a subscriber for five years because I just didn’t know who Bruce Springsteen was and am now overjoyed to have access to this undiscovered talent.
I’ll be canceling come July, which is a shame, but I simply can’t continue to support a business that asks its customers to take less for the same price and like it.
Thanks for this, MK. (And to Colin, by the way.)
I wonder how this is supposed to play out? What’s the logic on eMusic’s end?
Larger audience, more mass market appeal…it makes sense from a business perspective. Plus those new sign-ups will never be the wiser. That said, they risk severely ruining their brand positioning.
Used to be eMusic stood for Indie/Underground music and value. Now its..mass market appeal and middle-of-the-pack pricing?
Where’s the differentiation now?
I think Colin is right on the money regarding eMusic’s logic — the number of customers they drive away will likely be dwarfed by the number they attract.
Regardless of whether that’s good business, eMusic is sending a mixed message that’s almost certainly doing more harm than good to the company’s most passionate customers. On the one hand, eMusic’s welcome message and Your Account page are being straightforward — many months in advance of the impact to some customers — regarding the major price increases in store for existing customers.
(A little math on my part — using numbers that eMusic makes very easy to access — tells me that the 24 cents per track I’m paying now will be going up to 42 cents per track if I keep getting the same number of downloads per month. I have until December to consider whether that’s worth it.)
But the two blog posts in which eMusic discusses the Sony deal are — knowing what the company has told me elsewhere about the price hike — startlingly disingenuous.
For all the talk about eMusic’s customers being “rabid, smart and adventurous consumers of music,” the “curatorial excellence” of eMusic’s presentation, and the company’s promise to continue to “be an alternative to mass market digital music stores — a deeper, richer music shopping experience,” not a word is said about the very real hit awaiting customers’ wallets, or whether those higher prices are going to flow directly to Sony no matter how much Animal Collective or Neutral Milk Hotel (or how little Billy Joel) one buys.
That’s disappointing. How disappointing? I’ll decide in December.
Well, I for one, am angry about the change. There is no shortage of Sony’s back catalog available on several websites. If I want that stuff I can go to iTunes or Amazon or wherever to get it. I have been a subscriber at eMusic for an entirely different reason: music discovery. Most of the new mainstream stuff they’re adding I’ve likely already discovered or am not interested in.
I also am pissed about having my downloads almost cut in half. I’ll give it a month or two and decide if the change is worth it.
The sad thing is, Andie, that eMusic may come out ahead (based on the logic Chris lays out in his comment) even though they’re alienating their long-term base.
[...] week I posted some thoughts from my colleague Chris Barton about the upcoming shift at eMusic, which will incorporate Sony’s back catalog into its [...]