04/14/2008, 11:40am, EDT
Monday, April 14theMusic cracks 200m, credits DRM-free surge
Web-based music service eMusic today celebrated a milestone with its 200 millionth song download. The figure was reached approximately four and a half years after the store's November 2003 launch of its MP3-based subscription service but is touted as having been accomplished without the help of most major labels, relying chiefly on independents for its content. By comparison, Apple is known to have sold more than four billion songs since launching iTunes in April of 2003.
While a fraction the size of some larger stores, eMusic also claims to be growing at a much more accelerated rate than it has been in the past. The launch of Amazon MP3 has purportedly helped drive awareness of eMusic and is responsible for about 40 million of the company's total download statistics; since the September unveiling of its rival, eMusic has supplied roughly 7 million tracks per month.
The sales tally suggests a continued surge in sales of unprotected music, particularly for services that offer most if not all of their catalogs without DRM limits. While eMusic is one of the earliest such stores, Amazon has already reached second place among digital-only services despite higher per-song costs than eMusic and no current support for sales outside of the US. Its early success has largely been attributed to offering music from all four major labels without DRM.
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: iTunes, eMusic, Amazon MP3
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With Amazon or ITS, I look to see if they have it. If they do, and I like the price and it is not DRM, I buy it and have it in seconds. My decision with both of those is much more simple.
eMusic Basic 30 Song Downloads per month $9.99 per month eMusic Plus 50 Song Downloads per month $14.99 per month eMusic Premium 75 Song Downloads per month $19.99 per month eMusic Premium 2-Year Annual 75 Song Downloads per month for 24 months Price: $359.82
This plan is around 20¢ per song
i was grandfathered on my contract which is 90dl/mo for $191 per year which comes out to a little over 17¢ per song.
It's a great program for people (like me) who are constantly looking for new music. The problem comes when one doesn't download all the tracks allowed for a given month, as they do not roll over.
There's also something called booster packs which do not expire for 90 days.
10 Download Booster Pack 10 Song downloads for $5.99
30 Download Booster Pack 30 Song downloads for $14.99
50 Download Booster Pack 50 Song downloads for $19.99
Hope that clears things up-