Well said. The fact is that so many of the artists (who rarely seem to mentioned their recording names or available albums when complaining like this online) don’t see the big picture. I was in a similar positions to you – I’d gone from spending £30 per week on music (I was a DJ for a few years) to virtually nothing. What I did buy was generally from second hand stores or eBay, so while I was still enjoying music, the artists saw nothing unless they happened to play live near me.

When I joined eMusic, everything changed. I now buy a minimum of 7-8 albums per month, discovering new artists and getting into new genres I’d never been into before. The reason for that is simple – the subscription model and the price. I buy so many albums because it’s cheap. I delve into new genres and artists because I would spend the same each month whether I download or not, so why not experiment?

I can sympathise with artists looking at the royalties from eMusic and concluding they’re low but I say look at the bigger picture. Sorry to hammer this point in again, but you’re not necessarily gaining money as an artist by moving away from eMusic. Try to work out how to leverage the exposure you’re getting there instead.

The other small lesson is this – at the end of the day, consumers will choose the best price for music and this is getting lower and lower. But, moving to a higher revenue service does not mean that the consumers will follow. I used to buy every release from the Global Underground label, but since their aggregator (Vital:PIAS) left eMusic, I haven’t bought a single release. Why? I’m already spending a lot of money on alternatives at the site and can’t justify buying more expensive albums. Do what you want with your music, but if you depend solely on the royalties you’re going to be screwed eventually. Leverage the new fans into something else, and you’ll profit.

With the help of Frank’s Blog I found this article that pretty much shows how much eMusic is paying out and It’s really really really close to the number they are taking in. Here is the link: http://digitalaudioinsider.blogspot.com/2007/11/increased-per-song-payouts-from-emusic.html .

this blog prog is a /b

While I’m not sure what eMusic pays to their artists, I’m a Music Studio and have been trying to find that out for years pretty much since we made it Crystal to eMusic that we demanded artists were paid (back in the day y’know 2004 or something, when they left the all you can eat model). I do know that the price model for the lowest subscription rate (no I’m not cheap just broke and only charge my artists a meager amount (read $50/song as opposed to $80 /Hour) compared to other similarly built studios) is $9.99/month for 40 songs (call it $10 flat for math) that’s $0.25/Song as opposed to $0.89 /Song the Big companies charge. (EDIT i seem to be grandfathered into the 9.99/40 so new lowest figures are $0.30/song)

so, Mr. Jeffries, you gotta figure that in with your “I can tell you that they pay the absolute LOWEST rate per song of any digital music retailer.” And as the Beautiful Amanda (OK so I don’t know she’s beautiful but still) said don’t sell your music through eMusic if the lack of pay you get outweighs the amount that musical press and advertising execs/cronies are paying to eMusic to maybe discover your songs and use them. I make the above statement only based on conjecture stemming from the fact that soooooooooooooo many eMusic artists keep popping up in television and commercial soundtracks and that many movie soundtracks for many major motion pictures end up on eMusic and made out of a piecemeal of eMusic artists.

See I told you my posts are ugly tl:dr (google it if you don’t know what it means)

MiDoJo

(Brought to you by Carl’s JR.)

There is the occasional new release I get on eMu I might have gone out and bought copy of in the old days, but actually not that many (and I still do buy new CDs). Where eMu has cut into my spending on hard copy discs is in second hand. I used to buy a couple of second hand CDs every week, at least, on eBay or in shops. Can’t think when the last time I did that was. So, from a position of the artists/labels directly getting NOTHING for the bulk of my music purchases now they do get some money.

And that doesn’t include the future spending on music, concerts, merch down the road for the literally dozens and dozens of acts I have only discovered because of this, all of whom I have evangelized to my friends and often random strangers.

By all means, don’t use eMusic if it doesn’t work for you but lashing out at a LEGAL service which targets the most serious music fans is really , well, dumb. I recall a year or so ago a jazz label pulled out and in doing so the basically called us thieves for dl’ing the music at this price. Way to alienate the people who are going to save your business and your livelihood if it can be saved.

If Phillip can direct us to his music on eMusic, he might get a few more sales out of it!

Lowest rate paid per song because they’re the lowest price per song. The question isn’t how much raw revenue you’re receiving through eMusic, but rather how many people who have downloaded your music through the site would have done so otherwise.

The fact that eMusic’s prices are so low allow people without a huge amount of spare cash to be more adventurous and thus download albums we would never have touched before. With eMusic, you may have more fans who may be more likely to buy physical goods, concert tickets, etc. Without eMusic sales you may have someone who has never heard of you and will buy nothing instead.

eMusic sales are potentially profitable incremental business to price-sensitive customers you might not reach through other channels (exactly because they’re price-sensitive and they don’t want to pay $9-10 per album). I’ve done a number of posts about this on my blog, including discussions of how labels could use release windows and other mechanisms to optimize eMusic vs. non-eMusic sales. (For example, put releases on eMusic only after you’ve made them available through the iTunes Store and Amazon for a few months.)