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.

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.

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 wonder how this is supposed to play out? What’s the logic on eMusic’s end?

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.

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?