My current eMusic plan, which I purchased for $143.90, provides me with 50 tracks a month for a year. If I use all 600 downloads, I’ll have paid 24 cents per track. What a great deal! Unfortunately, when my subscription expires, if I want to remain a member, I’ll have to choose from an erratic set of recently adopted plan options:
Why the increase? Apparently, eMusic has joined the circle jerk: eMusic will offer Sony’s back catalog for download beginning in July, an addition that will include “nearly 200,000 tracks.”:
So, before I have to make a decision, let’s do the math. eMusic claims that its current catalog contains over 5 million tracks:
To continue receiving 50 downloads each month, I’ll be charged a monthly fee equaling $249.48 a year, a $105.58 price increase relative to my current plan. If I grant eMusic its claim that its catalog currently contains 5 million tracks, 200,000 of 5 million is 4%. This means that my current plan’s value has increased by 73% with an addition to eMusic’s catalog that increases its size by less than 4%.
If I never plan to download any of these 200,000 new tracks, should I be forced to share their cost? I guess Sony would argue that I’m paying for access to its catalog. It’s a poor argument but an old argument: Although I might never listen to a specific recording, I have purchased the permission to listen it.
To balance the scales between users like myself and the iTunes generation, instead of selling “downloads,” eMusic should sell “tokens.” Hot tracks could cost three tokens while cold and forgotten tracks could cost one or two tokens. This would enable eMusic to profit when cold tracks become hot and when hot tracks become cold. In fact, when applied properly, the flexibility offered by a token system would allow eMusic to implement “sale” prices in order to create an interest in lesser-known and over-played musicians.
If I do renew, I’ll choose the 35 monthly tracks for $171.99 option. What will make it or break it for me in November is the attention that eMusic pays to its site after the price increase. I’d like to be able to “download all” tracks that I’ve added to a list instead of wasting time loading each album page and clicking each track. And, frankly, eMusic’s search engine is an afront to every god man has ever created. Speaking of which, BitTorrent has a great search engine…
