55

There are only 55 songs left in my “listened once” play list, comprised mainly of Cave-In’s Creative Eclipses EP and Thrice’s Alchemy Index vol. 3 + 4, both of which I acquired a couple weeks ago at Cheapo Discs on Lamar blvd. The other big contributors to the remaining list are The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which I got at Waterloo Records (also on Lamar) on Labor Day weekend and Connor Oberst’s Outer South, which I got from my Dad back in July.

Technically speaking I’ve already listened to the Connor Oberst CD twice, once when my Dad was driving me back from Bradley International Airport in Hartford on a visit to the folks in Connecticut this past July and once on the iPod after I ripped it. iTunes doesn’t know about that first listen though and to be honest, it wasn’t a “good” listen so I can’t really fake count it and thus it gets what is technically a third obligatory listen.

Obligatory is an unfortunate term to use with Oberst, but the fact of the matter is that between Bright Eyes’ Cassadega in 2007, the first self-titled album with the Mystic River Valley band in 2008, Outer South in 2009 and his Monsters of Folk project, I think the man is spreading himself a little thin. It’s not that the music is bad – I can recall a few gems from Cassadega and the Connor Oberst album at least – it’s just that it’s no Lifted or I’m Wide Awake it’s Morning. Not that I expect to be constantly blown away by an artist, it’s just when I find my enthusiasm waning and see someone come out with 4 albums in 3 years, I wonder if that energy had been spent on just one stellar Bright Eyes album, would I have been more impressed. I suppose it’s the ages old criticism though, the kind levied at bands whenever they released double albums. Why make 2 albums full of so-called filler when you can give us 1 album full of hits. Sometimes art makes demands and you just can’t say no.

Listen Twice

Back earlier in the summer I made a post about eMusic selling out and at the time considered quitting the service entirely as some sort of a boycott. Like any hardcore addict however, I was not able to simply discard my paraphernalia and be done with the whole scene. While the changes eMusic made this past summer were almost entirely deplorable (album-purchase-only tracks and full-download-only albums being prime among them) the service remains an excellent source of indie downloads. The main reason I had initially considered a boycott was that my downloads were reduced from 65 a month to 37 for my $15 subscription. This was a change in pricing structure that seems obviously made to appease eMusic’s latest catalogue addition (Sony) who like all major labels are reluctant to sell their music for less than a certain amount even though it really doesn’t mean less money for them.  Since the change was made however it seems that eMusic has been going out of their way to fix the PR problem they created, especially for long time users such as myself with “grandfathered” subscription plans that gave us more downloads at our price point than newer users and who because of this fact obviously lost out on more monthly downloads than others. What eMusic has been doing is giving us ways to get more free downloads. It started in August/September when they gave users with older accounts 50 free downloads. The catch (like the monthly downloads) is that these downloads had to be used before the beginning of my next subscription period, ie. within a month. The next bonus was to give 10 free downloads for rating 10 albums, a virtual freebie. One would think that I couldn’t argue against such a wealth of music downloads, but it would seem that I can.

Over the last year specifically I’ve decided to adopt a more regimented listening procedure for new music. I have two iTunes playlists that aid me in this task. The first is my “never listened ‘09″ list, which contains anything I added to iTunes this year that I have not listened to yet. The second list is “listened once ‘09″, which contains tracks downloaded this year that have only been listened to once so far. The idea of these lists is to ensure that I listen to everything at least twice. To most this might seem like unnecessary organization, but the fact is that when I started monitoring what I had downloaded but failed to listen to at all (let alone twice) late last year, I came up with a surprising amount. The simple fact of the matter is that I acquire an enormous amount of new music every year.

Now let me make a quick aside here and say that I realize that in this age of digital downloads it is not uncommon for most people to acquire a ton of music at once, but in my experience the average person tends to download (or acquire from friends) a number of tracks that they never plan to listen to. This often manifests itself when Person A looks at Person B’s iPod and sees a bunch of tracks that they don’t have by an artist that they are marginally aware of. Rather than pick and choose (because they don’t know the name of the song or songs they like to begin with) they transfer all the tracks to their own iPod and have all of a sudden have acquired several hundred new songs 90% of which they will never nor have the intention of ever listening to.

I’m a music lover, I acquire music in order to listen to it and due to the fact that I only acquire music legally (that is to say I pay money for it) I have more of an incentive to give it a listen, thus the two playlist system I mentioned above. At this point in 2009 I have acquired 1236 new tracks. Over the last month I’ve probably acquired somewhere in the neighborhood 160 new tracks between my 87 (37 + 50 bonus) eMusic tracks in September and the purchase of several CD’s. My “listened once” play list has about 180 tracks in it at the moment, with some tracks going back as far as this past July. I’d say that only half of that 180 are tracks from this past month.

Anyway, the problem I’m running into is that my two playlist system was designed to alert me to un-listened or under-listened tracks and force me to give them a spin. The problem is that the more tracks that pile up, the less likely I am to give them a quality listen and the more likely I am to just play them without really getting what I’m hearing. This of course leads me to my point. Reducing my monthly downloads from 65 to 37 was almost a godsend, giving me less to listen to and more to spend quality time with. And now that I live near two decent record stores and have access to physical media of catalogues not available on eMusic, there’s even more music to discover and I always prefer physical media to digital. If eMusic insists to giving me free downloads though then I’m going to have to use them and the problem that arrises is that I’m not downloading quality music, I’m downloading things on a whim, which works out sometimes, but more often than not winds up flat. The result is that I’ve listened to a lot of mediocre music lately and I almost want to quit eMusic in order to reduce my music intake to only what I can find physically, thus focussing my listening (ideally) on music I’m going to like more often than not. Ultimately I wish that eMusic had a per download pricing plan with the same low per track pricing as their monthly subscriptions, because there’s going to be stuff I’ll only be able to find on eMusic and I don’t want to miss out on it. The question I guess is whether the frequency of good finds on eMusic is worth the glut of mediocre picks I force myself to make in order to satisfy my subscription purchase?

eMusic Sells Out

I used to be proud to be an eMusic member, but starting July 18th that’s not going to be possible anymore.

Back in 2004, my friend Scott turned me onto something called eMusic, a service that would allow me to download 65 tracks for only $15 a month. Now you have to realize that this is back when the iPod was only a year old and before everyone and their grandmother had cell phones capable of holding multiple gigs of music. Back then the only places you were going to get MP3’s were iTunes for .99 a song or illegitimately. The only other options were the places that would let you stream but not own. EMusic not only provided DRM free downloads, but focused on independent artists. Needless to say, this place was ahead of it’s time.

A couple years after that, eMusic changed it’s pricing plan so that $15 only bought 50 tracks a month, but members with existing plans (including mine) did not change and for $15 I still got my 65 tracks. As if I didn’t have enough reason already (eMusic having introduced me to dozens of bands whose music I would never have found otherwise) this made me want to champion eMusic even more and until now I’ve always told people of all listening habits that this is simply the best place to get music for a decent price.

I can understand why many tracks on iTunes sell for .99 because the fact of the matter is that so much popular music isn’t worth buying an entire album. Given a model where artists produce 2-3 good songs out of every 12 and a public that only consumes what they’ve already heard or what someone else has told them to buy, selling single tracks at a cost designed to make up for lagging album sales makes sense. It isn’t the same with many independent artists and the people who listen to them however. We’re overwhelmingly a group of people who care about albums, as we’re accustomed to seeking out good music and not just consuming what we’re told is “cool” by the RIAA, MTV, and others who would see the soul sucked out of music in pursuit of dollar signs and not artistic expression.

EMusic made a deal with Sony recently to offer downloads of their back catalogue of songs older than 2 years. One can only assume that the deal has a hefty price tag or that Sony won’t stand for it’s tracks to be offered at the lower price offered by eMusic because starting in July the number of tracks being offered per month for existing plans (including grandfathered plans like my own) will be dropping, effectively passing on the price of courting Sony to every single member of eMusic. The biggest slap in the face however comes to peope like myself whose grandfathered 65 track plans will be cut nearly in half to only 35 tracks a month for $15.

EMusic is attempting to sell this change as a boon to everyone, a win-win situation that allows eMusic not only to increase it’s own revenue, but provide a larger catalogue to it’s users. While I can’t argue with eMusic wanting to make more money and increase it’s catalogue, I take issue with the manner in which it manifests itself. The question to ask is whether eMusic’s existing members really want Sony’s back catalogue? There’s no doubt that eMusic stands to make more money even knowing that they will likely lose existing subscribers over this deal, but where’s the loyalty to those of us who have been dedicated downloaders for over 5 years? Where before eMusic was a company and a site that I could feel confident in supporting, they have now resorted to the same empty tactics of greed that seem to drive all capitalistic pursuits. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me, but for a company that has done so much to bring independent music to the ears of so many people – music that is nearly impossible to track down in a physical form in so many locations throughout the country – to make a decision so obviously based on satisfying the masses and the status quo is disappointing to say the least.

I used to go to eMusic to take a chance on things that were new as well as download artists that were difficult to find in my area. With the halving of my monthly downloads I don’t know that it makes sense to continue my subscription, but above the cost is the principal. I’d gladly pay more money for more independent music, but Sony and their major label ilk are part of a dying system doing everything in their power to wring money from consumers without providing anything more of value. For eMusic to support this is contrary to what I believed the spirit of such a site was and while the sad truth is that this deal is likely irreversible, I don’t have to see my money go to support it. When my subscription to eMusic goes to renew in July, I have to recourse but to cancel. It may not be convenient, but given the choice I’d rather support independent music directly instead.