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[WolfWalker]

Dear EMusic Subscriber,

I'd like to offer a personal apology for some of our recent communication with you and other EMusic customers. Over the past several weeks, we have implemented some new tools in an effort to identify subscribers that are using EMusic in ways it was not intended. It's important for us to do this to ensure the long-term viability of EMusic -- so we can continue to offer our service to you and the rest of our 70,000 loyal subscribers.

Many EMusic subscribers recently received a letter outlining unusual activity in their accounts. After personally reading through every email sent to us in response, it's clear to me that we need to rethink our approach. While we need to identify customers who are not using the service as intended, we do not want to do this at the expense of passionate EMusic users.

I want to be as clear as possible about what we consider abusive activity and how we will manage this going forward. Although EMusic is an  "unlimited" service, there have to be some restrictions on this policy.

EMusic is similar to a buffet advertised as  "all you can eat." For the restaurant to be successful, it has to have reasonable limitations that apply to people that stay too long, eat more than their fair share -- or waste food. The service is indeed unlimited for the vast majority of the restaurant's customers whose actions never draw attention.  The restaurant reserves the right to deny service to any customer.

EMusic was designed to be an interactive service for personal use and enjoyment. Our intent is to allow our subscribers unlimited access to an amount of music that they can reasonably use. We did not design the service for people who want to download music simply to collect it or to fill up their hard drives. This would be not be responsible for us as a business or provide incentive for our label partners to make their music available.

Obviously, the definition of "reasonable" varies by user and many of the responses I have read are simply requesting some definition. Based on our current analysis of typical subscriber behavior, we believe that downloading more than 2,000 tracks in a 30-day period is not reasonable for personal use. Using a 12-track album as the average, this represents more than 165 albums and over 10,000 minutes of music. Less than 1% our subscribers ever approach these levels.

If, for any reason, you do not find this explanation satisfactory, please use the following link: http://help.emusic.com/cu/index.cgi to cancel your
account. We'll immediately end your subscription - even if you are still in your commitment period - and provide you a refund for the current month.

Again, I apologize for any inconvenience or frustration we may have caused. I can assure you that our team is extremely passionate about continuing to provide you with the best MP3 subscription service possible.

Best regards,
Steve Grady
General Manager, EMusic.com



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[zevele10]

I have only one thing to say :
Maximu 2000  songs a month for $10 is the kind of deal  i find VERY fair and I LOVE it.
Will stay at Emusic next february at the end of my second year

[Jazzwolf]

Zev,

I have to agree with you. That is more than fair, I'm glad they are rethinking their policy. I would really hate for them to go out of business

[ms264556]

You guys obviously live in the US!

I joined back in July after I saw a number of artists that I liked (Pavement, Belle & Sebastian etc) had several CDs available.

• First I see that most of the new music going up was marked as North America only.
  
• Then I noticed that the Belle & Sebastian albums I'd downloaded were now marked as US only and I couldn't redownload them anymore.
  
• Next I got 'the email' accusing me of being a cheat (I grab a couple of hundred songs ever week to listen to while I work, which is not unreasonable).
  
• Now I notice that all of the Pavement albums are marked as US only.

If music is prone to being yanked away from you without notice then of course you're going to download absolutely anything you might like to listen to one day!
If emusic want to be a USA only website they should just come out and admit it!

[zevele10]

here is the story .Matador is the only one label who has  "for Us only ' and 'songs for all' at the same.
From the first minute they put Belle & Paveent ,it was 'US only '.
One day they messed around and all Matador was 'for all'.
I did dowloaded  all the  matador catalogue when i saw it.
After few days ,they fixed it

[Charlemagne 8]

However you feel about Emusic - like it or hate it - it is still VERY unfair for non-US subscribers to have to pay the same rate as US subscribers for less selection. This policy only adds to the "Ugly American" perception of us.
They should have an "Only available outside the US" section and see what happens, then.

CVIII

[ms264556]

I'll buy your Belle & Sebastian explanation, but that doesn't explain Pavement or Pizzicato Five or Nightmares on Wax etc etc etc... all of which I've grabbed quite a few times over a period of months, and were ALWAYS for all regions.

It seems that emusic's owner has pulled foreign access to every track they have any control over.

I was quite happy to pay $10 a month so I could easily play mediocre quality mp3s of my favourite CDs at work.

I'll go back to using Kazaa Lite to do this now and save my $10.

(not that the promised cancellation has been actioned yet - my other major beef with emusic is their non-existent support department, which seems to consist of an autoreply bot and not much else).