John
I love EMusic. It offers a cheaper alternative to iTunes with a catalogue that isn’t clogged with Lady Gaga and the like. EMusic is the thinking man’s digital music store. It features an ever-growing catalogue of 90s electronica re-issues, The Arcade Fire and a whole heap of more obscure releases. Just last night I bought the new Apparat DJ-Kicks compilation. Next month will see EMusic expand in a big way as it absorbs the Universal Music catalogue (probably because Universal owns EMusic). So, I thought it’d be awesome to share my love for EMusic with the readers of DAR…
…but in suggesting to a mate that he should sign-up (US$20 per month for any 50 songs of his choosing), I quickly learned that EMusic has ceased accepting new membership registrations from Australia. If you live anywhere outside of the U.S., Canada or Europe, you’re out of luck. A quick Google search revealed that this policy had been in place for some time now and had been invisible to me because existing Australian accounts remain active (but “Grandfathered”).
Spotify isn’t available in Australia, neither is Napster or Pandora. Now EMusic has joined the ranks of awesome, LEGAL digital music services that remain beyond the grasp of this part of the world. It’s hard not to feel excluded from the all-singing, all-dancing digital music economy with such “wisdom” at play from The Music Business (TM). It’s high time I took a longer, harder look at the abundance of FREE music available in the iTunes podcast store.
