[Macworld]

Post your comments for eMusic comes to Canada here

[pogo97]

This sounded interesting until I went and checked it:
1) you can't look at the selection until you've registered
2) registration (for the free trial) requires a credit card
3) the subscription model doesn't really work for me
I don't "consume" music at a fixed rate, I become interested in an artist/genre/era/whatever, then I go looking for examples. Many months I'll buy nothing (I'm listening to what I already own); some months I'll buy dozens of songs. I can't see being forced to consume downloads at a fixed rate of 30 a month.

[mike457]

It's not quite as bad as all that. I followed the links at the bottom of the page and was able to see what they are offering. I listen mostly to classical, and the selection is not very impressive. For example, there are only 31 opera albums, and (if you exclude Offenbach and Gilbert and Sullivan) only one appears to be an actual performance of an opera. Baroque has only 5 albums. The other area i listen to, folk, is not all that well represented either. I, too, am not keen on the subscription model. Is there really much to be said for eMusic coming to Canada?

[Neil_Anderson]

So, if I stop being a subscriber to eMusic, I get to keep the songs I downloaded? For the Basic subscription that works out to 40¢ per song if one downloads the maximum 30 allowable.

[robertRoss]

Yes, you keep everything. I've friends who have been using this service for years and they are quite happy with it.

[Peter Cohen]

Maybe not for you, then, but for many of us, absolutely. I've been an eMusic subscriber for the better part of a year and consistently run out of song allotments from month to month. But my taste is different from yours, so there's a lot there to appeal to me.

[mrbach]

I have to say, being a classical music enthusiast, that Mp3 classical music is somewhat of an oxymoron.

It has to be the CD, or it just doesn't sound right. The classical stuff I do have on my iPod is from my own CD collection and it is ripped at a very high rate.

The thing is, why would someone take a dig at a company that specifically says it focuses on independent artists for not carrying opera? That seems a bit pretentious. I wonder what their monocle policy is?

[mike457]

Perhaps because not everyone who listens to opera favours a monocle? I use bifocals myself. My point was that there wasn't really all that much in any classical category as of yesterday, May 3; I did say "for example." I also would not have thought of Naxos, Chandos, and Harmonia Mundi as independent record producers or Luciano Pavarotti and Emma Kirkby as independent artists. In fairness, I would like to add that the number of listings in all classical categories is much higher today than it was when I looked yesterday morning. I can only assume that they are adding listings rapidly as they get set up. Opera now lists 1733 albums, many of them actually operas. Baroque has gone from 5 to 574, and folk is up enormously as well.

[BigRed]

I was surprised at the low number you posted earlier, glad to see that it has increased substantially. I have been a member of emusic for over 2 years, I think, and to date I have lost a total of 1 download. Emusic is not a perfect service, but for me, it's the best I've seen by a country mile. I have dozens and dozens of albums that I absolutely adore that I most likely would never have even heard of if not for discovering them on emusic.

[ptritch]

While I've found eMusic to be a worthwhile source for classical music, their search engine is not at all satisfactory. I've switched to using Google to scan the site for specific works or performers as in "emusic haydn symphony 44" or "emusic Barenboim" and am much happier with the results.

[BigRed]

Yep, google is a necessary accessory to emusic. I find it easiest to scan through the new releases using RSS feeds in Google Reader as well as using a google site search to find stuff.

[Peter Cohen]

I prefer to use the eMusic Remote application.