e -music Affordable MP3's

e-music is a subscription based mp3 service that I recently signed up for. I had concerns and questions going into a subscription service. Do I have to take the same amount of music a month? Can I skip a month with out being penalized? Can I quit any time I want without penalty? On e-music you can quit any time you want. Upgrade your account to the highest level one month and then to the lowest or not at all the following month. Then start back up again.

A bit from their home page:
"eMusic was originally launched as a CD retailer in September 1995 by Creative Fulfillment, Inc. under the name eMusic. In 1998, it was acquired by Goodnoise, and in 2000, launched the world's first digital music subscription service...The groundbreaking digital music retailer was one of the first to sell DRM-free music in the popular MP3 format beginning in 1998 and became the first service to sell audiobooks in MP3 in 2007. MP3 is the only DRM-free digital format that offers all the functions of physical music products such as the CD and is compatible with all digital audio devices, including the iPod and Zune...eMusic caters to music lovers in the underserved 25-54 demographic. Its vast catalogue comprises more than 6 million tracks from over 60,000 record labels that span every conceivable music genre including rock, jazz, comedy, hip-hop, blues, classical, country, folk, children's music, electronic, world, reggae and more. The label roster includes well-known independents such as Concord Music Group, Koch, Naxos, Beggars Group, Saddle Creek, Warp, Domino, Barsuk and Merge. Recently, eMusic added the back catalogue of Sony Music Entertainment labels such as Arista, Columbia, Epic, Jive, LaFace, Legacy Recordings and RCA."

PLANS / COST

For signing up the first time you get 50 bonus tracks. You also get 50 bonus tracks when you sign a friend up. Your friend has to have an official invite for you to get the 50 credits. So if anyone reading this is really interested and wants to give it a try, send me an email and I'll send you an invite. Then once you are signed up you can get a friend to join and get 50 bonus tracks too. The cost per track is a pittance compared to i-tunes or Amazon or Lala. On my $11.99/month plan for 24 tracks that comes out to .50/track. I will be upgrading to the $20.79 next month and get 50 tracks, that's .42/track. Here's a chart of the plans:

	eMusic Lite	12 (every 30 days)	$6.49	$0.54
	eMusic Basic my current plan	24 (every 30 days)	$11.99	$0.50
	eMusic Plus Recommended	35 (every 30 days)	$15.89	$0.45
	eMusic Premium	50 (every 30 days)	$20.79	$0.42
	eMusic Connoisseur	75 (every 30 days)	$30.99	$0.41

SELECTION

They are known for their indie selection but have almost everything that I have looked up. The collection grows daily and the interface works smoothly. You can make friends and lists that other users can see. You can also can save the album or track for later. Before you join you can go on e-music and search their collection to see if they have what you want . (The search there is case sensitive, don't use all lower case letters). I have a lala player with some of my e-music album purchases to the right of this post.

You can buy a few tracks or the whole album. Some albums of more than 10 tracks give you a few tracks for free if you purchase the whole album at once. Also if you buy just a few tracks off an album, your account remembers what tracks you need to complete the purchase.