eMusic has just launched their new websites and it comes with a few upgrades. Not only has eMusic added 250,000 tracks from Universal, but they have changed their pricing structure.
The new service, which previously charged for plans beginning at $11.99 for 24 tracks per month, will now simply charge users money for each track. Track prices will range from $.49 to $.89 each, depending on the newness and popularity of the songs.
For users who aren’t buying the newest music, the price will stay the same. About 80 percent of the 10 million tracks available on eMusic will be 49 cents each—the same price point as before. And whatever price point users are buying at, eMusic CEO Adam Klein emphasized he will still beat the prices of what he called the “a la carte” music stores by 25 to 50 percent.
eMusic is getting ready to add 250,000 songs from Universal Music Group’s catalogue, however they are losing out on the independents. eMusic are about to launch a major overhaul to its subscription pricing scheme and this hasn’t made a lot of leading independent record labels happy.
eMusic subscribers were notified by e-mail Tuesday that they have two days remaining to purchase music from several independent record labels that are about to stop doing business with eMusic. Those labels include Domino, Merge, and the Beggars Group of labels, which includes 4AD and Matador Records.
Losing those labels means that there will be no Arcade Fire, Spoon, Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, and Yo La Tengo.
“This is as heartbreaking to us as it is to you,” the company’s email stated. “Please know we have done everything we could to keep them from leaving.” The email includes a large button encouraging recipients to “Add Your Voice” by signing a sort of online petition advising the labels that their music is wanted back on the service.
eMusic thought they needed to change their strategy, as they haven’t grown their 400,000 user base since 2007.
If you haven’t already noticed we have 2 partners who have been added to the sidebar of our blog. Those partners offer RouteNote artists with some great savings and also a great promotional opportunity.
eMusic – eMusic has been a lot term partner of RouteNote since launch and we thought we would help them out and promote their service to our readers and artists. If you use the banner in our sidebar to signup to eMusic you will receive 35 free downloads with your free trail.
Cafepress – Cafepress is a very new partner with RouteNote. Cafepress offers artists with the ability to quickly signup and create their own store packed full of t-shirts and other merchandise. If you use the Cafepress banner you get access to Cafepress premium for free, plus you have the ability to customise your store so its tailored to fit your band. There are no setup fees and you simply make money when you sell your merchandise.
RouteNote will have a lot more partners joining very soon. Additionally, we will soon be launching an upgraded version of our tools page which will offer exclusive offers to RouteNote artists. Partnerships in a variety of areas will be added, such as marketing tools, advertising tools, merchandise, applications, widgets and more.
TechCrunch reports an offer from Dimensional to buy all outstanding stock of our digital music distribution competitor The Orchard, whose operation currently has offices in 25 countries, and is losing $17.5 million dollars a year. The purchase offer is for $2.05 per share of common stock, valuing the company at $12.8 million, about 28% of their annual revenue of $45 million. Rumours also abound of a merger between The Orchard and eMusic, which would see the vertical value chain completed, from artist to store – seemingly a simple and sensible synergy, but since eMusic is also rumoured to be for sale predicting where the chips will fall may be difficult. Private owners of The Orchard will have a lot of cost cutting to do whatever the case, so look to see a lot of those international offices closed down, and a consolidation of revenue streams and staffing before long.
The RIAA have loosed another volley against the filesharing contingent that they believe are bleeding the profitability out of the music industry. The arguments are pretty solid: those who choose to download music illegally instead of paying for it through legal physical and digital channels are not enjoying the fruits of the people working in the industry without contributing to their livelihood. Bad people, right? Not proper music fans, right? Theft is insupportable, but there are questions of degree to be considered… From the RIAA’s press release:
According to SoundScan, the top 10 albums in 2009 sold a total of 21 million copies, and the top 10 tracks totaled 36 million paid downloads. But the top 10 albums in 1999 totaled 55 million in sales. Even with digital track sales factored in, those top sellers fell by more than 50%. In the last 10 years, the major record labels’ direct employment in the United States fell from about 25,000 people in 1999 to less than 10,000 today – a drastic reduction of over 60% in people who enable the creation and development of new music.
In the music industry, it takes the investment of many peoples’ money, effort, and time to create the songs and albums we all get to choose from and enjoy. Since most acts never even reach the breakeven point in sales, music labels need to operate like venture capitalists and count on the successes to subsidize the continued development of many artists and releases that may never break out of the red. And it’s easy to ignore the harm being done when you’re only stealing one copy.
Stealing music is wrong. This is undeniable, but there is something about what the RIAA say – it’s easy for a punter to ignore the criminality of nicking one album at a time ‘just to hear it’, and so the solution to the problem has to be slightly more nuanced than cutting off the consumer’s internet connection, or suing individuals for vast damages in high profile cases. Legal, profitable channels of consumption have got to compete directly with the illegal, risky, but free-to-consume-unless-you-get-caught methods like filesharing and illegal streaming.
Picking on individuals makes the recording industry look like the aggressor rather than the victim, which they are not; they’re just trying to safeguard their sources of income, and their jobs. It’s hard to think of Edgar Bronfman’s kids going hungry, or Puff Daddy having to sell his jet to make the mortgage payments, but there are real people doing good work whose livelihoods are on the line. That said, progress is inevitable (see the video at the tail of the post), and the music industry has got to roll with the punches and capitalise on the massive innovation that’s happening in the digital sector if it is to thrive as it has in the past.
Another thing to consider is how much this piracy actually costs the industry. If the pirates couldn’t get hold of the music easily and for free, would they bother getting hold of it at all? Does the money not spent on records all get spent on eyepatches, stuffed parrots and WOW subscriptions, or does some of it come back to the music industry in other ways? Concert revenues are certainly up over the last few years, and some artists are making money against the trend of decline by using clever andnon-traditionalmarketing methods, selling coolphysicalproducts, and using new outlets like Spotify and eMusic (to whom RouteNote will happily distribute your music, by the way) to boost waning physical revenues. Is it better then, for the industry to put a death-grip on sometime pirates who may also be gig-goers and box-set-buyers, and look backwards at the fantastic success they had with physical formats, or to look forward to an era when everything is digital and try to maximise it’s readiness and thus it’s profitability? Perhaps we’ll see things go full circle, and recorded music sales will tail off completely as we all go back to being regular concert goers, just like in the 1800′s…
The Orchard’s majority stock owners, Dimensional Associates, are considering a bid from music streaming service eMusic’s owners, JDS Capital. JDS have been angling for a majority in The Orchard for a while, and this is the third time they’ve come to the table with a new bid, this time of $2, up from their original price of $1.68.
The period between the announcement of the initial bid and this last news has seen the Orchard’s stock prices climb out of the trough they were in last October (a $1.05 low point). The advantages to the tie in of a music distributor and a music streaming service are obvious, as eMusic would gain unlimited access to The Orchard’s catalogue, and take advantage of the entire chain of profit between musician and consumer, using their own services to promote artists they think will sell.
Emusic has just announced that they’ve licensed not only Warner Music’s catalogue, but that of every one of their associated sub-labels. From their blog:
So — quite a few new arrivals today, eh US members?
Over 10,000 albums, to be precise, a dizzying avalanche of stuff from the Warner Music Group. No matter your taste in music, there’s sure to be something here that appeals to you.
The increased catalogue will hopefully mean more subscribers, which in turn will mean more pairs of ears that can access all the music that RouteNote distributes to them… A small trickle down perhaps, but positive news none the less.
In order to encourage people to get their music online with us, and introduce new potential customers to our service, we thought we’d run a little competition. If you’re a solo musician or you’re in a band that has new music that needs to get out there and selling, all you need to do is add a comment to this blog post with the name of the band or artist and a link to the track that you think is their (or your) best. We’ll keep entries open until the 14th of December, and then we’ll judge all the tracks that have been entered. The top 3 according to our judges will be given completely free distribution to all of our partners stores during 2010 on any new releases they upload to RouteNote. No fees, no subscriptions, no back end cut, no strings – just access to our service completely free until 2011. The top 5 will get a feature and review on our blog, and we’re promoting this competition in collaboration with www.music-news.com, so you can expect to get their attention too. This competition is open only to artists and bands and music not already signed up to RouteNote.
Our music retail partner Emusic has been running a countdown of their favorite albums on their blog. They’re most of the way through now, releasing ten per day, with 3 days left to go. It’s obviously a very personal list, obviously, but it might introduce you to a few things you’ve missed over the last 10 years!
