Music Piracy = Old Dogs and New Tricks
This is gross. If you are not familiar with Helium, it is an online knowledge base and writer's hub that allows users to chime in with their opinions on a number of topics. I happened across the piracy topic and cant say that I am surprised by the voter's outcome. I'm not sure how our society decided that just because things are easier to share and get for free that they should be free. This will continue to perplex me. If you want to chime in and let your opinion be heard, go here and vote! The only way to solve this problem is to keep educating people.
Ok- Story time: Recently this discussion happened at my house. I will use an alias to protect the guilty party.
Sammy Steal's Alot: Hey Emily... I love that song
Emily: Yeah it is pretty cool. Randall got it off of eMusic.
Sammy Steals Alot: Oh awesome. Can you burn it for me? Or copy it onto my ipod?
Emily: Um...NO.
Sammy Steals Alot: Why Not?
Emily: Um... you DO realize how my husband makes a living don't you? You do realize that the music industry is hemorrhaging from illegal online and offline file sharing don't you?  You do realize this is how these people put food on their tables don't you??
Sammy Steals Alot: Uh... oh. Sorry.
I am pretty sure this kind of conversation happens in many families. The only difference is we don't "share" music... not even with blood relatives... and I would bet most do. Sad.
It's beginning to look a lot like (streaming) Christmas (music)
n my vast attempts to vomit Christmas cheer at every last stop including obscene amounts of Christmas lights, over-indulging at every turn and spoiling the hell out of my two infant daughters despite the fact that they will never remember this christmas, I feel it is my duty to inform you of SomaFm's all Christmas streaming music channel.
Read Moreemusic.com - Ch Ch Ch Changes
The addition of UMG brings brands such as Island Def Jam, Geffen, Interscope, Verve, Decca, Deutche Grammophon, and Motown to the table allowing emusic subscribers to purchase these with their monthly credits. In addition to bringing on this great content, it also brings on the growing pains of dealing with the largest music company in the World. Growing pains like increased pricing, changes to the entire infrastructure, and fleeing independent cornerstone labels such as Beggars Group, Domino, and Merger.
The addition of UMG has forced emusic to run from their previous points model and adopt hard pricing for Top Line, Mid Line, and Budget items. The overall affect this will have on the end-user amounts basically to the fact that their budget items will be remotely the same value as they were prior to UMG, and all others will up the ante. Less perceived value is the end result. Because of this there has been a mass exodus of subscribers over the past few weeks. I for one am going to hang on for now and see how much it changes my experience. I certainly hope at the end of the day, turning your back on your core consumer/business model in search of an iTunes-like business model doesnt come back to bite emusic in the foot. I really love(d) the old emusic.
ps: I realize that Bowie is a Columbia (Sony) Artist- emusic added some of Sony's catalog last year bringing about pricing changes then...