Musical Immigrant In Love

They say your first love is always the one that's unforgettable. My first love in the digital age of music is and will forever be emusic.com.

It was 2003 and I had purchased my first MP3 player. It included a coupon for some free downloads/songs, I'm not sure how many. I was expecting some crap pop music. I was pleasantly surprised to plug in the URL and find myself at emusic.com, a Website devoted to independent music, at least that's what it was back then. I quickly became a subscriber and it has forever changed the way I buy music.

Why do I love it? I will often hear or read about an artist, usually a new roots or folk act, or obscure indie band, and I plug in the name at the emusic search engine and there's a good chance I'll find them there. For example, last month I went to a club show at the Sled Island Festival in Calgary. The headliner was Alejandro Escovedo, one of my all time favourites. The other two bands on the bill were The Lusitania, an alt country punk outfit from Texas and Orgone, a soul funk outfit from Los Angeles. They were both new to me.
Emusic offered music by all three artists.

I also first heard of  Antibalas and The Bad Plus at the dearly departed Calgary Jazz Festival. After that show I got home and checked on emusic and there they were.

Another treasure I found on emusic is a eight-song ep of demos by the the late Canadian singer-songwriter Bob Carpenter. He died about 15 years ago. His one full recording Silent Passages which has also been hard to find is available on emusic as well. (not to be confused with this American singer Bob Carpenter)

What is emusic?

They call themselves the download service for the music fan who is independently minded. Funny because they used to call themselves an indie music service and while they do offer mostly indie music, they also sell music from companies such as EMI which is definitely not indie. And don.'t go thinkin' emusic is some mom and pop operation. It's owned by a hedge fund called JDS Capital. You can read about the company and the people behind it here: Bloomberg

It may be just as easy to explain what emusic is NOT. For one thing, it's not iTunes. All the downloads are MP3s which means they can be ripped into your iPod or any other file player and can also be burned onto CDs in an unlimited fashion. They also don't sell TV shows, video or apps. They do sell audio books though.

They also won't sell you just one song. They are a subscription service with a minimum of $11.99 a month. Once you give them that you can indeed download single songs from artists at a cost of .49 each.

I have an extremely sweet deal because I signed up in the early days. My arrangement was originally for 90 songs a month. I pay $23.99 U.S. a month which means I pay 27 cents U.S. a song. What makes it even better is the fact that the U.S. dollar is worth less than the Canadian dollar these days. When I signed up the exchange rates was not in my favour.

Don't expect to get the same deal. New subscribers pay 49 cents a song, which is still about half of what they charge at iTunes. In fact Emusic upped its prices and changed its pay structure and it pissed off a lot of people. Here's an article with that point of view. Have a look. All I can say is, I am still getting my sweet deal and the selection of alternative and minority taste music is still pretty darn good.

Where emusic shines is in its roots, folk and Americana selection and in its indie pop and rock selection. Jazz and blues are pretty good. It also has a lot of spoken word and obscure movie and TV soundtracks.

Is this Zombie sing-a-long crap or not? You decide.

It also has some of the crappiest music known to man. It seems that as long as you have set up some kind of record label or belong to one, they'll release your music. There is no quality control of any kind so it's always buyer beware. For example, they lump the country music in with the folk roots so you have to wade through some of the worst, most horribly cheesy country music you will ever hear. They also put out music by some pretty weird labels which offer re recordings and K-tel style collections that are either NOT the original artist or a substandard rerecording by sorta the original artist.

Sometimes it can be very entertaining to look at all the bad record covers and to listen to the horrible recordings. One other peeve of mine is, for a company that claims to be all hot and bothered about music, they make a lot of mistakes in how they present music. If you are looking for Roy Rogers the blues guy, you'll also find Roy Rogers the cowboy guy and they don't seem know or care that their music is quite different (to say the least.) Sometimes they will put records by two bands with the same name next to each other and if you're not careful you can end up with the wrong record. So, ALWAYS LISTEN BEFORE YOU CLICK THE DOWNLOAD SWITCH.

I am not a shill for emusic. I suggest you browse and check it out yourself and please grab the link above and read about why some people hate it. Also, since I started downloading music, a lot of the indie music previously only available from emusic is also available through iTunes and through other sources. And, on top of that, I love to buy CDs directly from the artists at shows to keep as much money in their pockets as possible.  

I will tell you this though, I have 90 songs a month and I've usually bought mine within three or four days of renewal and I have something like 500 titles saved.