August 18, 2006

August 15, 2006

Instead of £10.57 per month I'll now pay £12.78, which is a discount rate eMusic are giving to those who were subscribers before the switch. They say it's the same rate as before but with 17.5 per cent VAT added. I'm told I can keep this rate as long as I keep my subscription "active and in good standing." What does 'good standing' mean?

New UK subscribers will pay £14.99 per month and new European subscribers will pay £20.99 (£14.12). The Swindleeeee!!!!! blog has a full breakdown of price increases.

Still I don't mind the price increase. Thirteen quid for 90 tracks is still phenomenally good value and as long as eMusic doesn't bring in DRM I'll remain a customer.

August 14, 2006

Prices for all Basic plans were increased 46% in the UK and 42% in the rest of Europe.

Prices for all Plus plans were increased 30% in the UK and 24% in the rest of Europe.

Prices for all Premium plans were increased 22% in the UK and 15% in the rest of Europe.

Booster pack prices increased from 42% to 62% depending on region and the type of booster back. As with the subscription plans, the highest increases occurred with the lowest-priced packs.

The costs of selling music in Europe are higher than in the US, and by launching European sites, we must adhere to national and international laws requiring VAT collection and compensate the various labels, publishers, and artists under the terms they require. As a result of this reality, we were required to make various price adjustments.

I don't see a possible reason behind this. Emusic is an online site, not a brick and mortar shop, what possible need could they have for a European base? The problems before were to do with labels, not the location of the company, surely deals with UK labels could still be sorted out from the US?

I now see pricing in pounds rather than US dollars, and the prices have gone up across the board. With a 10 track booster now costing £4.99 prices are creeping up towards the current itunes level of 79 pence per track.

The prices have in fact gone up. Till now a track cost me about 23-25 Eurocent (based on the 40-track-subscription and taking the Euro-Dollar exchange rate into account). From now on a track (new subscription) will cost about 32 Eurocent (which ist considerably more than just VAT added).

August 11, 2006

"Clem, we want you to play a drum solo on this one."

"No problem, just tell me when it should start."

"Uh, actually we want you to play a drum solo for the ENTIRE SONG."

August 10, 2006

August 07, 2006

P.S. TOWER RECORDS UPDATE: Due to their financial situation, we have discontinued our relationship with Tower Records. Read the news here: http://news.google.com/news?q=tower+records If you have links to tower.com website, you should remove them, because they are not selling any CD Baby CDs anymore. We will take the responsibility of making sure you get paid for sales that already happened, but there will be no more sales through tower.com in the future.

August 03, 2006

So what's the rub? In la la land, every CD is treated the same. All of those unwanted copies of the first Hootie and the Blowfish record are, in the eyes of la la, absolutely equal to London Calling, Innervisions, or Revolver. I suppose the theory is that one person's junk is someone else's treasure and, with enough members trading, variances in musical taste will be enough to keep things moving along. But that might be wishful thinking -- when I entered 200 discs into my la la account, I wasn't that surprised at which 72 were flagged as requested. Someone out there wants your Nick Drake discs, no one's asking for that crappy third Oasis album.

August 01, 2006

iTunes UK       $0.770        
iTunes Europe       $0.742        
iTunes Australia       $0.667        
iTunes Canada       $0.645        
iTunes US       $0.637