Talk:EMusic

May 24, 2005

Updated information on number of songs eMusic offers, bundling with Nullsoft's Winamp and other claims found on eMusic's website.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephenw77 (talk • contribs) 05:16, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Sentence could use a rewrite

"The record labels working with eMusic don't worry about file sharing of their music because eMusic users tend to be older, and less likely to engage in file sharing"

I would do it myself, but it has a reference. I am too lazy to read through the source so I can do a proper rewrite.

67.34.148.250 (talk) 01:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The record labels working with eMusic don't worry about file sharing of their music because eMusic users tend to be older, and less likely to engage in file sharing

References were vandalized

On 22:48, 14 December 2007, Easpr vandalized this article to replace a large number of references' links to link to http://emusik.com [sic]. This made the references useless. I manually restored from diff of 11:48, 10 December 2007, the last version with accurate links, with the current version; the reference sections were exactly the same to my examination except for the vandalized targets of links. It was a reasonable amount of work to fix this without reverting all the way back to Dec. 14. Lord only knows I may have made mistakes so others should double-check these targets as well. Is there a way to propose some kind of sanctions against Easpr? Not that it would do a lot of good but I think it's called for. --Steve D (talk) 03:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

'Files' section is very awkward

It is riddled with unsubstantiated assertions and non sequiturs, like this one: "College students either couldn't or wouldn't pay for music online, so eMusic is more targeted at avid music fans." The citation for that is an article from 6 years ago. I think there is very little evidence that "college students couldn't or wouldn't pay" for online music, and if you are going to make that claim--despite the brilliant success of iTunes and, to some extent, some subscription services--cite something modern and relevant. Furthermore, a 6 year old article does nothing to substantiate the assertion that this is eMusics motivation (which is the clear implication of that sentence).

In short, the section sounds like amateur hour, and should be rewritten.

I concur. Can someone fix this? I don't know anything about eMusic, and this isn't in an encyclopedic tone. J1.grammar natz (talk) 18:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Removed (then put back in) long list of publishers and artists

I removed the following list of publishers and artists, since I don't really think it adds anything significant to the page. If you want to know exactly whose music eMusic carries, check out their website!

Music from other popular indie labels such as Merge Records (Spoon, Arcade Fire), Epitaph Records (Bad Religion, NOFX), K Records (Modest Mouse, Built To Spill), Touch and Go (Mekons, Girls Against Boys), TVT Records (Ying Yang Twins, Guided By Voices) and Vice Recordings (The Streets, Bloc Party) are available.

Starwiz 22:49, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with you on this. It's important for completeness and for historical value. If, for some reason, eMusic were to go away, this would be essential information. Our goal is to provide as much information as possible to cover all the bases, not just to tell people to go to the website. And that is not a long list. That's a single sentence. I'm putting it back in.

In related news, I added some information on eMusic's newest label, V2. - Stick Fig 22:22, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

problem sentence

Apple does not currently license this format, preventing competing companies offering their portable players or software media players from playing AAC-encoded files, which is perceived as a reason they have failed to meet financial expectations or compete successfully with Apple.

I removed the "which is perceived as a reason ..." because it seems like POV. I added the "compete successfully with Apple" before I realized that it was too much info. If you think they should be included, feel free to discuss it. Perhaps they could be put in the other article, or in "See Also" or even a separate "Criticisms of DRM" section. I just think it would be too redundant though. --Lux 05:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

hello.

it should be mentioned in this article that although Emusic previously offered unlimited downloads for a monthly fee, users are now limited to sixty mp3s per month, or something.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jake187 (talk • contribs) 02:23, September 25, 2006 (UTC)

integration

i don't see a smooth way to convey in the article that part of eMusic's income is derived from the placement of advertising links on a user's desktop, Internet Explorer and the Start|Program area, in spite of emusic being a paid subscription service. Major software companies such as Symantec routinely remove emusic adware during scans ( http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.emusic.html http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/grayware/ve_GraywareDetails.asp?GNAME=ADW_EMUSIC.A ). During installation neither the EULA nor the Privacy Policy is displayed ( http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=133850 ). eMusic may share your personal information with "affiliates, subsidiaries or joint ventures", and with "promotional partners and advertisers" ( http://www.emusic.com/help/privacypolicy.html ). And before you can even see what songs are offered--or not--you HAVE to give your credit card (just try to get beyond the http://www.emusic.com home page without being taken to the sign-up page). If you do try their service--if just to see what's there--and forget to cancel, you will be charged every month on your credit card, a tactic pioneered early on by AOL and others.

The part regarding eMusic requiring you to give your credit card just to see what the service offers simply isn't true, though they're certainly not 100% forthcoming about it. I suggest you add a "Criticism" section to the article, but I would definitely mention that when you do so, you stay fair and even-handed about your approach, because the way you've written this does not come off as neutral. Make sure you watch your grammar as well.

I'd also like to note that "This security risk must be manually installed" seems to emphasize that eMusic doesn't do anything necessarily virulent when getting you to use their service. In fact, you don't need to download any extra software to use it, and can download MP3s directly from the site. The service is also, unlike AOL, easy to cancel and can be done online.

To be honest, and I don't mean this to be necessarily rude but just to note your tone, it sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder against the service, and since Wikipedia deals with neutrality, you will need to avoid showing any sort of bias against the service. - Stick Fig 22:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you have acomplaint about emusic taking money from your account, then there would be a natural inclination to have more than a 'chip' against emusic. Simply google 'complaints emusic' and you might shy away with any association from a company that has no phone number or complaints procedure, its box number (PO box 100, London, as given by trading standards office) does not exist and is returned, and emails are not replied to. This is not 'chip' it is fact.Buyer beware and google first before you pass on your credit card numbers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.37.9.128 (talk) 12:44, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ACCESS

I could not access the eMusic web site when I wanted to go there to join the service and buy music, as an alternative to iTunes and all the others. The reason I could not access is b/c of my modified hosts file, which is designed to prevent adware/spyware/hyjacks etc. I am not the only person who uses precautions such as this (and other methods [ie, modification of the privacy settings in the browser]), and I know that others similarly situated may also want to know why they can not connect, and what to do so they can buy music from eMusic. Ask yourself this: how many people use software that prevents or removes adware/spyware/etc? Obviously many of those people want to spend money at eMusic, but are unable to connect and don't know why.

cite: see http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt, one of the most popular modified hosts files and cited by wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file . In that list you will find emusic.com, optimost, google-analytics, and many others that flash by too fast to see when the emusic page is attempting to load. Because those sites are blocked, the page will not load--you just get a gray page with www.emusic.com in the address field. SueNami 03:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it perhaps possible that your hosts file is too aggressive at blocking? Either way, I feel this is not worthy of addition to the article; most mainstream web users would not block hosts this aggressively. - Stick Fig 04:28, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Genres

Just added "traditional music" to the list of genres that Emusic specialises in; two of the last three featured Emusic Dozens in the email newsletter I get have been about American folk music. Motmot 11:50, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Files are EMP, not MP3

I have just joined eMusic and discovered it does not download mp3 format files as stated in the introduction. The downloads are in emp format (whatever that is), and you must download and install their "Download Manager" to convert them to mp3 format. I think the introduction needs correcting. Can somebody please explain what this "Download Manager" actually is? TiffaF 07:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The EMP format is just a shell to download the MP3 files. You don't even need the download manager to download the MP3s. You can turn off the download manager and download the MP3s straight from the site. So we're keeping it the same. - Stick Fig 20:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Older?

What does age matter in regard to downloading music legally? Are young people thieves? Was eMusic somehow specifically designed for the older crowd? eMusic probably does have a lot of jazz, but that doesn't indicate age either. They have a large number of electronic artists and other "off-beat" genres. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.222.95.165 (talk) 14:45, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watermarking

I deleted the mention of watermarking. The Napster article given as a source is outdated (from 2000, when Napster was still a filesharing service). The other source and all other information I can find indicate that at most audiobooks are watermarked, and whether or not personally identifiable information is included in those watermarks is undetermined. On Metafilter, people compared MD5 checksums of music downloaded from two different accounts and found no difference (http://ask.metafilter.com/79103/Does-emusic-use-watermarking), indicating no watermarks. The paragraph also conflicts with the sentence immediately preceding it. Schlegel (talk) 03:14, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign Music

e-music has an amazing number of songs from Indian movies all the way back to the 1940's and also copious (including rare) Indian Classical pieces. Since I am interested in Indian music this has proved to be a treasure trove. I wonder how much other ethnic/world music is available here.````rahmboy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rahmboy (talk • contribs) 11:43, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question about use

Do you get your slate wiped clean, so to speak (number of tracks left refreshed, that is) at the end of every month (for example, you sign up on December 29 and you get 30 tracks to download, then they refresh the number of tracks on January 1) or at the end of a 30-day period (you sign up on December 29 and it gets refreshed on January 28)? I couldn't find an answer on the eMusic site. Thanks!--The Great Honker (talk) 23:54, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The download period is 30 days and refreshes at the end of that period (and appears to apply down to the hour of original subscription), regardless of change of month or year. ChronoSquall14 (talk) 16:06, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Download app

Do emusic still require customers use a download app? If so, it could do with a section and I'll see if I can find a source for it. (Personal note: That's the one thing that's stopping me from signing up. I've never had a problem downloading files with my browser, so I'm immediately suspicious when someone wants me to download executable code to fix a non-problem.) --91.85.188.169 (talk) 07:49, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just registered (which was unnecessarily difficult by the way), and all albums and individual tracks I try to download are tiny files with an .emx entension. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's just a simple XML file (looks like xml anyway) containing info like track titles, label, genre and, yes, a direct link to the actual mp3 (or links in the case of an album emx file). I'm guessing this download manager thingy they have just parses the emx file, extracts the download URL and downloads the file. Me, I just did a Cat_(Unix) on it and fed the URL to wget, but I'm sure you could just as well enter the URL in a browser. So yes, they're still making things harder than they have to be, but you can get around it easily. Open the emx file in notepad if you're on windows, paste the url for each track in the address bar of your browser, and there you go; no need for their download manager. Of course, I just registered, so who knows what I'll find later, but for now it looks like you can make their download manager redundant by a modicum of technical finesse. Friendly Cave (talk) 23:29, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can enable or disable the Download Manager by logging in, clicking "Your Account", then "Download Manager Settings". Like Amazon, the download manager is required to download the whole album. I've used emusic for two years now, and I have almost never used their download manager (I run Linux, and when I first signed up their Linux client was garbage). Instead I use a 3rd party download manager called emusicj; it works with both emp and emx files. Also I should note that although emx files are simple, parsable XML files, the emp ones use some sort of encoding (they're not human readable).SDNick484 (talk) 08:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Receipt?

Is it true that your account gets deleted after a certain period of inactivity? If so, is there no way to go back and print out a receipt of the tracks you've purchased? SharkD (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Updating information

I would like to update much of the information in this article. Conflict of interest: I work with eMusic. To begin, I would like to update the first section by deleting the second paragraph "eMusic differs from..." This is out of date as both Rhapsody and Napster are now selling MP3s. I suggest replacing it with: eMusic was one of the first sites to sell music in the MP3 format, beginning in 1998. It differs from other well-known digital music services (iTunes, AmazonMP3) in that it is a download-to-own subscription service.
I would also like to edit the 3rd paragraph:
While lauded by the general public, its early support of the MP3 format, lack of digital rights management (DRM) encoding and low price model made the service unappealing to the Big Four record labels until recently. Prior to July 2009, eMusic sold music from independent labels in all genres ~~leading it to specialize in underground artists and non-mainstream music genres,~~ including indie rock, pop, jazz, electronica, new age, underground rap, traditional music, classical music, heavy metal, hardcore punk, and experimental music~~, all on independent labels~~. --Melomania (talk) 21:18, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Files and the Status sections also need some work. I would also like to add a section called Website Features. --Melomania (talk) 21:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]