iTunes / eMusic

I've been reading reviews of eMusic all morning (because I woke up early, was bored, and curious about the site). The whole reason I'm reading reviews of it is because they don't really let you go in and poke around on your own, instead offering you 25 free downloads for trying the program out or 50 free downloads for subscribing (plus the number of downloads you bought). Without being able to peruse the catalog, how was I to know if this would be something I would be interested in?

I mean, have you ever seen a CD store in a strip mall and decided to go in only to find that the ENTIRE store catered to a specific genre that you did not like? It's happened to me a couple of times and I felt pretty disappointed. Just imagine how disappointed I would feel if I had to give them my credit card even if they promised me they wouldn't use it before going in and seeing they had nothing I want.

So there's a little tip, eMusic. Open up the catalog.

But their subscription plan is what REALLY entices me. For about $12.00 you get 30 songs of your choice. They also say there are free songs every day which I think it cool because it seems to me that this would most likely be used or allowed by bands that are just starting out that you probably wouldn't be interested in/find on your own so while it's sure to be hit and miss, those hits will be unexpected.

Cnet's review of eMusic said that while it was all well and good with the prices, the program and the interface (though a little confusing to the novice they say) eMusic does not really stock mainstream music.

I don't know if this is still true because I can't look at the freaking catalog.

And I'm not a really big mainstream guy. There are some mainstream bands I like: Metallica and Fall Out Boy jump to mind immediately but most of the stuff I listen to, my neighbors would have never heard of, even if the band is pretty popular in their own right (Alkaline Trio, the Misfits, the Quakes, etc etc). So while I'm not a huge mainstream guy I DO like the ability to choose that if I want. Just because something is mainstream doesn't mean it's bad (same goes for pop music), so I'd like to peruse that as well.

Now, if iTunes were to offer a subscription-based plan for the same price I would be all over it. You have from the 1st of the month to the last day of the month to download your 30 tracks (or more because there are more expensive plans) and there will be no carry-over with unused tracks. You can't bank them.

But here's a cool little tip I thought of. You should be able to drop the songs you want into your subscription cart and not be limited in the amount of songs you can have in there. Then arrange them as you see fit and click download and it'll download the first thirty songs on the list. This way if you're out of town for months like when I go out of town, you can tell your wife that all she needs to do is click download and that's it.

Another complaint I hear about eMusic is the lack of "a la cart" option where you can buy song by song. iTunes already has that in the bag so that problem is already solved, though personally, if I could get 30 downloads for $12.00 and after that it would be $1.00 per song, I would just be patient and wait for the next month.

So somewhere between these two companies is a system that works perfectly. If iTunes offered a subscription-based service that was cheaper considering that the money would practically be guaranteed to come in every month, that would be great. It would be nice if they offered more indie stuff too. It would also be great if eMusic let you look at their catalog before giving them your card information and had more mainstream music (apparently).

But since I'm already using iTunes, I say "Come on iTunes! Let's get the music to the people at a lower price on a subscription-based service!"