eMusic rolls back the Stones: why you must own your music May 6, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Music, Technology.trackback
Tech podcasts frequently debate the best model for consuming digital music via the Web. Is it buying and downloading songs and albums, as with Amazon and iTunes? Is it a subscription model with unlimited access to an entire catalog of songs as long as you pay a monthly fee? Or is it a hybrid such as eMusic, where you pay the service a fee in exchange for a certain number of monthly downloads?
Usually these discussions end with someone saying, “Well, the perfect setup would be a subscription service where you had unlimited access to all of the music that’s out there. It would supply you with music the way the water company supplies you with water. Then there would be no need to own anything.”
The sudden removal of the Rolling Stones catalog from eMusic less than a month after it was uploaded is a great example of why that proposed model gives me the heebie jeebies as a consumer: If I don’t own my music, then someone else does. And they can turn off the tap any time they please.
Thankfully I grabbed three Stones albums before eMusic’s deal with ABKCO went pear-shaped and it had to pull the entire catalog. Once again the message from the music industry is unmistakable: fans don’t matter anymore, lawyers do.
It’s getting to the point where I can’t buy music at all anymore without feeling bad about it. Like the joy has been sucked out of the whole thing.
Feh.
These Rolling Stones boys are pretty good, though.
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