eMusic tops 300k users, now 2nd to iTunes

eMusic is awesome. At $9.99/month, I only need to download one album each month for it to pay for itself. I usually find one (or two)album each month that I would buy anyway, and the rest of my downloads are things that I've heard are good or interesting--this is how I 'discovered' The Hold Steady who are now one of my favorite bands.

#22 - absolutely! The best thing about emusic is the fact that you have to actively look for new music to download. And with loads of filtering options and user reviews, it's a piece of cake. I've only been a member of emusic for the past three months and didn't intend staying on past the trial period, but I'm hooked. An excellent service that have already made more out of me than iTunes has in the past three years.

"but how do you find it amid thousands of bands you've never heard of?"

...but that's half the fun! :)

eMusic is good in many ways, but it's a pain in the ass to use, forcing you to use a new e-mail account with EVERY card you buy. And that web interface! It also is very hard to find new music. But I love the DRM free music and Indie-ness of it.

There's definitely music to be found on eMusic! I've not only discovered some new artists that I now love by having cheaper per-song access - I've also gotten a number of almost mainstream alternative albums (like the great new Arcade Fire 'Neon Bible') from eMusic for less than half of what it would cost at iTMS. Not to mention that the downloads have always been DRM-free high quality MP3's (take a cue here please Apple - that premium cost for what eMusic already offers is lame).

Ahh, #17, they are citing number of downloads. Clever, as by definition, every subscriber to the site "buys" 25 downloads at least...

wait a second... Emusic is the 2nd highest with 300K? Wikipedia cites that both Napster and Real's Rhapsody have over 550K users each. Are they just saying they are the "biggest service that sells downloads as part of a subscription?" er... cause they are the only one!

Also, Emusic does have a limited selection of mostly outside the mainstream music (with lots of gems, true) but to me, it's biggest asset is it's community of listeners who write thoughtful reviews & playlists. I *wish* iTunes had a good user community like that.

Lastly, pretty clever business model to make people pre-pay for downloads they might not even use.

I absolutely love emusic. I can usually blow through my 90 downloads a month in a day or two. My 'Save for Later' list continues to grow at a pace faster than I will ever be able to download.

A lot of what I have found on emusic I've just taken a gamble on. My iTunes smart playlist that groups all my emusic purchases together (everything gets the Grouping "emusic") is my most played playlist. Bands I had never heard of before clicking around on emusic are now some of my favorites that I couldn't imagine being without.

People, take a chance...there is a ton of good music out there that you aren't going to see on American Idol or hear on the radio. Even if you don't try emusic, do yourself a favor and listen to something you've never heard of before. Live a little.

"how about trying some of the music suggestion services like Pandora, iLike, Last.fm, etc. etc."

Agreed. Another fantastic way I've found to discover new music is to search music-related blogs. And the best way to do this is to download and use Peel, a tasty app that alows you to browse music blogs with an iTunes-like interface. New songs are added all the time by blog authors, and if you heare one you particularly like, more often than not it's available to download.

For those who have trouble finding new stuff to try, how about trying some of the music suggestion services like Pandora, iLike, Last.fm, etc. etc.