Comments on: Should eMusic add streaming?

By: eMusic to offer streaming? « Frank Hecker

eMusic to offer streaming? « Frank Hecker — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:35:00 +0000

[...] to spend my (limited) downloads on them. I wrote a lengthy blog post on this topic back in October (Should eMusic offer streaming?) discussing the pros and cons of this. I doubt my post influenced (or was even read by) anyone at [...]

By: Hal Halvorsen

Hal Halvorsen — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:09:31 +0000

eMusic should simply be another option to Spotify purchases, ie addition to buying from 7digital (and other future sources) there could be a “download track on your Spotify Premium+ eMusic” quota.

Spotify and eMusic then to do the revenue sharing between them.

By: hecker

hecker — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:43:28 +0000

@TonyRz: I don’t know why eMusic doesn’t add streaming either. I too pay Napster $5/month to try out albums for possible download through eMusic, but Napster has a crappy interface and I’m always forgetting to download the 5 tracks I’m entitled to.

Regarding the licensing situation, I think the relevant distinction is between on-demand streaming, where the user selects a specific track (or album) to hear, and and Internet radio-style streaming where the user can select only a particular channel, style, or artist. I think on-demand streaming makes most sense in the context of eMusic. eMusic is already investing time and money in handling licensing arrangements for digital downloads; I don’t think it would be *that* onerous to negotiate similar arrangements for on-demand streaming. It’s no different than what other services like Napster have done.

By: TonyRz

TonyRz — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:19:08 +0000

It doesn’t quite baffle me that a company doesn’t want to get into the streaming-on-demand business, with its onerous licensing situation, but OTOH, it’s always baffled me that emusic doesn’t offer up at least streaming radio for its registered customers, built solely on tracks they have up for sale, so people can really hear what they have for sale.

They already have their own technology for establishing recommendations and “neighborhoods” based on the collected download sales data of all members.

They already have a private “Save for later” list.

Almost all of the necessary technology for a really nice experience is already in the bag. A 1-click mechanism to put a currently streaming song into their own proprietary wish/buy lists probably wouldn’t run afoul of any patents.

But still, they resist. Weird.

I personally think that emusic should seriously consider on-demand streaming for its paid customers, because, given their relatively competitive price point, they can reasonably put strong limits on the number of times any song can be streamed for free. (Three plays?? Buy it, already. It’s only 50 cents…)

But I won’t hold my breath.

I rely on $5/month to Napster to get a taste (crappy sound, IMHO) of songs I end up buying on emusic. I don’t know if I’d pony up more cash to emusic at this point for radio, but hopping around from site to site is getting tired.