eMusic cuts monthly downloads by 25%

I’ve been a big fan of eMusic since I signed up with them early this year. They offer indie label music in mp3 format, totally unencumbered by DRM, on a monthly subscription basis; at their current base prices, you get 40 downloads per month for US$10. I’ve recommended them often as alternatives to iTunes and other music stores.

Yesterday I found out that they’ll be reducing the alloted downloads per month for new subscribers by 25%; so $US10 will now purchase only 30 downloads each month. This effectively bumps up the per track price from $0.25 to $0.33. This is still much lower than the per track price offered for most online music services, but I think it will end up making eMusic a less compelling offering than it is at the moment. There’s some belief by users that they’ve done this in order to appease one or more of the major-minor labels like sub pop so that they would make their catalogue available, but I’d take that with a grain of salt. On the plus side though, you can still sign up for eMusic anytime before November 21st at the current download levels and retain them throughout the life of your subscription.

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