Emusic Beta

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  • greg said:
    I've had a reply from emusic. Yes UK prices have gone up from 42p per track to 49p per track which means my grandfathered plan reduces from 100 tracks per month to 85 tracks. Probably reflects the worsening exchange rate post the Brexit vote!
    Greg - so eMusic told you that you'll get fewer tracks? My interpretation of a grandfathered plan is the same terms as previous so the bonus credit should increase to maintain your 100 tracks for the same outlay.

    Maybe eMusic can confirm on here what's happening?

    The new label search seems to be working well & the duplicates created by the combination of label/distributor on the old site appear to have gone (albeit there's a Mute and Mute/BMG division)

    Would like to know if labels Staalplaat & Soleilmoon will be making a return too
  • I meant from the beta. Thanks, @trunkler, it's probably a problem with large files then.
  • Update: the fix must have been made, it's downloading now.
  • greg said:
    I've had a reply from emusic. Yes UK prices have gone up from 42p per track to 49p per track which means my grandfathered plan reduces from 100 tracks per month to 85 tracks. Probably reflects the worsening exchange rate post the Brexit vote!
    If my Grandfathered plan goes down from 200 to 170 they may find I use Bandcamp more. Greg are you by any chance paying £19.99 for 100 tracks? I pay £39.99 for 200. Feel free not to answer of course.
    Regardez 
    Dave H
  • That might be a deal breaker for me if the prices go up, at present I am still on the old site and lots of music is not available to me. I have just started another month and it will be wait and see if I stay, it means that albums that were £4.20 will  be £4.90 which is a fair rise in prices and that will mean I will have to be more selective in what I purchase.
  • edited April 2017
    Yes I am paying £19.99 for 100 tracks. Their response was:

    The increase in track prices is unrelated to subscription prices. There will be no change to subscription prices to reflect the increase in track prices. Subscriptions are offered on a basis of how much credit you receive. The idea that your subscription is for 100 tracks a month is an estimation. Your Connoisseur Monthly subscription still offers you £42 of usable subscription credit per month, just as they did previously.

    It means their estimation for 100 tracks is actually 85.7! It is still cheap of course. It means in actually cash I will be paying 23.5p per track instead of 20p per track. Where I am losing out is that the old site still has the old prices. My 25 track bonus for being part of the pilot is quickly being eaten up, because the boosters I bought prior to conversion are also worth less. I just wish they had been upfront about it. Given my subscription is referred to as Connoisseur 100 on the new site, it is a bit of a misnomer.

  • greg said:
    Yes I am paying £19.99 for 100 tracks. Their response was:

    The increase in track prices is unrelated to subscription prices. There will be no change to subscription prices to reflect the increase in track prices. Subscriptions are offered on a basis of how much credit you receive. The idea that your subscription is for 100 tracks a month is an estimation. Your Connoisseur Monthly subscription still offers you £42 of usable subscription credit per month, just as they did previously.

    It means their estimation for 100 tracks is actually 85.7! It is still cheap of course. It means in actually cash I will be paying 23.5p per track instead of 20p per track. Where I am losing out is that the old site still has the old prices. My 25 track bonus for being part of the pilot is quickly being eaten up, because the boosters I bought prior to conversion are also worth less. I just wish they had been upfront about it. Given my subscription is referred to as Connoisseur 100 on the new site, it is a bit of a misnomer.

    Well that was disingenuous of them wasn't it? Having had a fair few problems with the old site I decided not to take them up on the Beta offer. I've just added a booster to this month's download onslaught but I'm going to be very careful when I get migrated over. I'm wondering what sort of announcement email we'll get and how much warning we (the none trial customers) will get? Perfectly willing to give them a month or two on the new site just to see how it all shakes out but I don't see me buying any more £50 booster packs until I know which way the wind is blowing.
  • edited April 2017
    I must admit that I have been thinking about my emusic membership for a while, as many on these boards will know. I decided I would give the new site a go to see if it is any better than previously. A 16% price increase, which is what it actually works out at, might just be enough to sway me, particularly as I feel that i am being penalised for being in the beta pilot sample, but it still is cheaper than elsewhere.
  • edited April 2017
    greg said:
     A 16% price increase, which is what it actually works out at, might just be enough to sway me, particularly as I feel that i am being penalised for being in the beta pilot sample, but it still is cheaper than elsewhere.
    I see prices vary from 0,49 to 0,89 per track.
    but there's absolutely no consistency, even within the same label

    some albums are much cheaper, like this one:
    https://beta.emusic.com/album/433083 (0,99 for 5 tracks)

    Some labels have album only for 10 min.+,  some doesn't, others again is cheaper track by track.

    The upside for someone like me is that "many tracks albums" are at reasonable prices.

    - So I couldn't put a percentage on one or the other way, it will depend on my purchases


  • edited April 2017
    That's very interesting BN. When I click on your link I get the UK pricing model of 49p per track, so the example you give is £2.45 for me. Every track on all albums I have looked at is still 49p. Earlier today I was looking at a 25 track double album which worked out at just over £12, far more than on Amazon. Maybe in Europe you are moving to the USA pricing model? (But we are still part of the EU for nearly two more years!) 

    Maybe someone who has access to the emusic message board could question this?? I can still read it but can't take part in discussions as I no longer have a log-in for the old emusic.
  • edited April 2017
    I'm not on Beta, so I'm not logged in and see the prices in $
    - things could change when or if there will be a € version.

    An example of a 0,89 per track album: (3,99 for the album)
    https://beta.emusic.com/album/3740015

    And an example of a 29 track  album for 4,99
    https://beta.emusic.com/album/7874

    ETA: but apparently Emusic knows that I'm located in Europe, Ninja Tune shows zero albums:
    https://beta.emusic.com/label/865
    - and 619 if you are in the US

    Hmmmmm ? . . . . . .

    - It would be interesting what you see @greg
  • edited April 2017
    Prices are as follows BN:

    An example of a 0,89 per track album: (3,99 for the album)
    https://beta.emusic.com/album/3740015 £2.45
    And an example of a 29 track  album for 4,99
    https://beta.emusic.com/album/7874 £14.21
    ETA: but apparently Emusic knows that I'm located in Europe, Ninja Tune shows zero albums:
    https://beta.emusic.com/label/865 632 albums!!
    - and 619 if you are in the US

    No consistency there....

  • edited April 2017
    Oh ! thanks . . .
    The £14.21 is somewhat disapointing .  :/

    ETA: A  9,5 hours   95 tracks album for 3,99
    https://beta.emusic.com/album/3523574
    - Too good to be true.


  • Ninja Tune (UK anyway) has been updated - looks like the label is live there.

    Also, this update form the Facebook page: 

    We pushed out a fix for the missing prices in the US catalog (other countries will be rolled out soon). Most albums that were showing 'Album Unavailable' should now have a price and therefore be purchasable (is that even a word?!)

    There are still some outliers without pricing so not quite 100% there yet.

    Thanks for you patience, help and support.


  • So in the UK is there really an alternative with comparable prices? Here in the US we lost track-count pricing years ago, so it has been clear for a very long time that the amount of credit you get will buy varying numbers of tracks. And you do have to comparison shop these days - there are albums that are more expensive on emusic than elsewhere. But I still find that even at the higher end of the latest prices they are still a good $2 per album cheaper than Amazon, $2.50 cheaper than Google Play, $4 cheaper than 7digital. And at the lower end (some albums have become cheaper on the beta) they are half price.
  • The answer to my query re the reduction in tracks was:

    " though your plan price and any bonus has not changed, track pricing can be subject to change - though we hope not in an irresponsible manner as to upset our core value of providing a fair price to members and less than competitors. We've also added the included services of cross-device cloud access and free storage, which we hope is providing an increased value of end to end service."

    The value added for the ability to stream from the cloud is rather moot as I'm unlikely to do so via phone and listening at home is done from a server that stores the music locally.
    Funnily enough I added a slightly sarcastic comment relating to the cloud storage to my reply - "assuming my content ever makes it across..." - and within minutes My Music started populating. Coincidence?

    Have noticed a few errors in my collection - some where tags are wrong, some albums that I haven't bought (sadly these bring up errors if I try to play/download), and lots missing (these seem to coincide with labels that are currently missing eg Muslimgauze on Soleilmoon/Staalplaat)


  • ETA: A  9,5 hours   95 tracks album for 3,99
    https://beta.emusic.com/album/3523574
    - Too good to be true.

    Indeed, now £46.65!

    I don't object too much to the price per track going up, it is after all still a good deal, but I do think in this supposedly new open world of emusic, it should not have been left to those in the beta trial to find out by chance. I would not have taken part in the trial if I had known that was going to happen as we are being penalised for trying it out.

  • Did you not have the chance in the UK to try out the beta before your old account got closed down? That's what happened here.
  • When you done communicate a price rise of nearly 20%, you really are asking for trouble. I have asked the question again from the message board but i expect radio silence from E Music as always. I know that Matt from E Music looks in every now and again, maybe he can enlighten those in the Uk on what is happening. I could not take part in the Beta tests a s I work for a major online company and it is in my contract that any work either voluntary of otherwise for an online retailer is a no no . It seems that they old labels may be coming back at a price to us in the UK, a bit of a slap to us whom have put up with a lousy site, a lack of choice and a fairly lousy customer service. Love to know what what they thinking of 
  • Agree with concerns about increased prices (also here in the US).  Some things are cheaper and the good news is that everything is ripped at 320.  So we got that going for us!
  • GP - yes we did have a choice and I opted in. My point is that we were not told that by opting into the beta we would have a price increase compared with those who stayed with the old site. Emusic is still very good value, but it would have been good to have been told in advance about the increase.
  • @greg, what I meant was, at the US site the earlier stage of the beta made it possible to see what the prices would be while we played with the beta. So when we opted to have our accounts transferred we had had a basis for foreseeing the implications. It sounds as if it worked differently over there.
  • The earlier stage of the beta only had US prices - so we all saw prices in $ at that stage.
  • There seems to be a similar price jump here - to 0.59 from 0.49 per track, and an upper album price of 7.99 (from 6.99, which was up from 5.99)
  • Yes, as PaulR says the initial beta was only priced in $ and on a different basis, so that album prices did not relate on a one for one basis to track prices, which is what we have. So it gave no indication of how prices would be outside the USA. I don't really mind them charging more, just the way they have introduced it without warning for those in the beta trial. I was actually expecting us to move to the same system as the US has and I'm surprised that they haven't done that with us
  • greg said:
    . I was actually expecting us to move to the same system as the US has and I'm surprised that they haven't done that with us
    Yeah - I half expected that too. My package has increased from 20p to ~23.5p per track once the bonus is added, so it's still better value than elsewhere. It means that albums with few tracks are great value but box sets are pricier than buying on cd. Luckily I mainly buy electronic stuff which tends to err towards fewer but longer tracks per album. I'm not sure I'd have got Brian Eno's 'Reflection' anywhere else for a single credit :)

    If the UK gets US-style album pricing then I'll consider my subscription.

    I think the fact that we weren't informed of the pricing changes beforehand is the main gripe.
  • I think the fact that we weren't informed of the pricing changes beforehand is the main gripe.
    Agreed Dark_Magus!!
  • @greg, that makes sense. Yes, they should have made that clear.
  • Has anyone else downloaded from the Beta site. So far all my purchases have gone into My Music on the site. I've just started downloading, but it is taking for ever, and they are downloading as Zip files, which then need converting. The whole process is taking about 10 minutes per album. Am I doing something wrong?
  • Hi greg - I just redownloaded a 6 track album (81 MB) that I recently purchased and it took 2.5 minutes which feels a little pokey, but not that bad.  Purchasing an album a track at a time to save money vs. the higher album price does seem inconvenient and time consuming though.  eMusic said they are going to fix that issue.
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