Hi everyone! Just a quick word on a couple of upcoming features at eMusic. Tomorrow, we will begin unveiling the 100 Best Albums Ever on the US site (in the UK, Europe and Canada, these will be Top 50 lists, also beginning tomorrow). The results will be posted bit by bit, with the winners not [...]

As we prepare for our quintessential American birthday celebration and Independents Day, the worldwide celebration of independent music, I wanted to take a moment to share some important milestones here at eMusic.
First, eMusic is celebrating our tenth birthday this year. Ten years of leading the industry in selling unencumbered MP3s. Ten years of focusing on [...]

On Tuesday, eMusic released a beta version of the download manager, a slick new incarnation that automatically syncs your music to any player, among a few other bells and whistles. Best of all? It has an incredibly small footprint, and won’t hog your machine. Instead, it largely runs in the background, and seamlessly gets you [...]

Hearing “What You Won’t Do For Love” on the overhead speakers in the deli across the street today absolutely made my morning. Then finding out that we have a significant chunk, if not all, of Bobby Caldwell’s entire discography made my week. And THEN finding these youtube clips pretty much made my whole [...]

A few days ago, one of our users, burnboy, started a thread on our message boards about Brooklyn bands, and some thoughts/questions he has about them, whether there’s a scene, etc. Since a lot of us 17 Dots writers and readers hail from/spend a lot of time in Brooklyn, I thought this might be a [...]

When we decided to launch audiobooks last year, we immediately began brainstorming how to make them more “eMusic,” if you will. Discovery, independence, prestige — these are the qualities that we prize on the music side. How could we maintain those same characteristics with books as well? One name kept coming up: McSweeney’s, the incomparably [...]

This morning I read with some surprise in USA Today that Amazon is “No. 2 in digital [music] sales since opening nearly six months ago.” Amazon’s entry into this market last year was an important milestone in the continuing irrelevance of DRM and the overly restrictive and anti-consumer policies that the music industry has foolishly [...]

They’re back! They’re demonic! My Teenage Stride follow up their 2007 sleeper hit Ears Like Golden Bats with five new songs, only on eMusic. More info below the cut.

Earlier today I hopped on the phone for a half-hour conversation with Stephen Malkmus, former frontman for Pavement. Malkmus has long been an idol of mine (peep this list for the full, horrifying truth), but I honestly couldn’t think of any music-related questions I wanted to ask him. What is there to say? Dude is [...]

Photo by Julie Dermansky
So this is of interest to probably no one, but I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how the community has responded to eMusic Selects so far, and in particular the user comments on the High Places and Breathe Owl Breathe albums. To date, the Breathe Owl Breathe album has ten user [...]

Over the past few years, eMusic has arguably become the most important retailer for independent music in the world. We sell more indie records than just about anyone, and we have a solid track record of breaking new artists: think Yeasayer and Burial, to cite two recent examples. We delight in the prospect of not [...]

I have a somewhat troubling soft spot for the young, scruffy UK indie guitar bands that are sprouting up three-a-day on Myspace these days. The blueprint tends to be: “Take Me Out” indie-disco drumbeat, trebly guitars and bangs for days. There will usually be a few fun dancealong singles, Erol Alkan will book [...]

Okay, Daniel, you win. Above is a 10-minute video (incredibly well edited, btw) of Tinariwen performing live at Other Music here in NYC. It is, to put it mildly, pretty damned good.
Elsewhere, I updated that best-selling albums of the year hub with the final tally, and the list expanded to 100 titles. A few things [...]

Today, eMusic hit a modest, but significant, milestone: our sorta-kinda-maybe official 10th anniversary! Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
The company now known as eMusic was founded by Gene Hoffman and Bob Kohn on January 8, 1998 and originally named GoodNoise Corporation. In October 1998, GoodNoise acquired eMusic.com…
So maybe the October date has more relevance (or [...]

iTunes recently posted their year-end lists for their best-selling titles, as well as their editorial picks. While we will have to wait until next week to look at eMusic’s editorial choices, we thought it might be fun to do a title-by-title comparison of the best-sellers between the two services, with edges being handled out to [...]

So iTunes today posted their year-end lists for their best-selling titles, as well as their editorial picks. While we will have to wait until next week to look at eMusic’s editorial choices, we thought it might be fun to do a title-by-title comparison of the best-sellers between the two services, with edges being handled out [...]

Joe (left) and Todd (right) get their party on
Last and final warning to everyone: tonight is the long-awaited and much-ballyhooed (in my cubicle) 17 Dots Baby Shower, to which you are all cordially invited to attend. Details are pasted below. Can’t wait to meet everyone!
SAY WHAT: 17 Dots Baby Shower
SAY WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 29, 7pm [...]

Hello hello hello. Hope everyone’s holidays were swell. We are indeed back in business here today, with a new arrivals post coming in a little bit (so much good stuff came in!). But first I wanted to updated everyone on this Thursday’s 17 Dots meet-up. Here are the details:
SAY WHAT: 17 Dots Baby Shower
SAY WHEN: [...]

So the list of the best-selling (US) titles on eMusic I previously mentioned is now live. You can take a look here. Hopefully next week we’ll be able to dig in and take a closer look at your reactions, as well as how some particular titles place. (PS: UK and EU versions will be [...]

On Tuesday, eMusic unveiled two big additions to the site: audiobooks and the new download manager, eMusic Remote. Unfortunately, some problems with the 1.0 release of eMusic Remote have caused headaches for some iTunes and Mac users. We apologize for this, and our first priority right now is a patch to enable eMusic Remote and [...]