Over at the Guardian, music retailer eMusic has weighed in on those rumors about Apple bundling iPods with free iTunes access. It would be "anti-competitive behavio(u)r by a monopolist," the Guardian quotes David Pakman, eMusic's CEO.

The plan, which not a lot of people seem to believe is entirely real, would be to sell iPods and iPhones with a set "free music" premium charge that would allow unrestricted access to music over the lifetime of the device. The likely cost would be about $100/device, working out to about $5/month over 18 months. This plan would make music labels "dangerously dependent" (again, according to the Guardian article) on Apple.

I'm not sure I follow Pakman's reasoning. The Universal Total Music idea has been around for a while and was originally proposed for non-Apple platforms. If Total Music does pan out for the iPod/iPhone, it seems that it would be Universal Music (or a reasonable music industry facsimile) being anticompetitive not Apple.

Thanks, Sebastian Clarke.

I don't know about you, but I just can't get enough iPhone related news! The latest company trying to hitch their wagon to the iPhone star is eMusic. eMusic, you might know, is an online purveyor of digital music downloads (they are the second biggest, right behind iTunes) but the cool thing about eMusic is that they sell MP3s sans DRM. Their whole catalog is DRM free, which means they have a smaller catalog than iTunes but you can play it on any device you own (and even some you don't).

They are trying to make news by offering Steve Jobs a free lifetime eMusic subscription as a thanks for DRMless music in iTunes (though I have a feeling Steve gets his music from iTunes). They are offering 35 free songs for the 'iPhone.' I won't point out that this is eMusic's standard free trail membership offer, since that would make me something of a wet blanket.

I have used eMusic before, and I suggest you check it out. I mean, free music is free music, right?

eMusic announced today that its subscriber base has now topped 300,000 users. This makes it the second largest online music service after iTunes according to this Sys-Con report. The eMusic catalog contains 2.5 million tracks from over 13,000 labels which are distributed in MP3 format without DRM. eMusic specializes in independent labels, providing many artists and tracks not available on iTunes.

eMusic uses a subscription model that allows you to download a fixed number of tracks each month, starting at $9.99 per month. This is different from, say, the Zune Marketplace model that allows you to rent unlimited tracks for $15/month. You own all the eMusic tracks you download and they do not stop working after your subscription expires. If you can swing the money each month, the eMusic selections nicely complement the iTunes catalog.

Wired has a good article up about the various digital music vendors: Urge, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic and iTunes. They compare and rate the services. In the end, they chose iTunes as their editor's pick, pointing out that although iTunes has no subscription plan at this time, its combination of easy-to-use shopping plus the huge catalog of music, TV and video makes iTunes the most compelling digital vendor. At the bottom of the pack was Napster with its three-device playback restrictions and limited device compatibility. eMusic won on pricing (about $0.25 apiece, if you buy all the tracks you're allowed) and their DRM-free tunes.

eMusic, a seemingly small-time digital music service that sells DRM-free MP3s of independent artists, has quietly overtaken other big name rivals such as RealNetworks, Yahoo! and even Napster for the #2 spot in digital music sales. The company attributes its success largely in part to the iPod's widespread popularity and the fact that MP3s play just fine on it, but also says "the consumer confusion over interoperable formats gives us a great advantage". In other words: the tower of babel that is the digital download industry has opened the door for a service that speaks everyone's language to snag the second largest piece of the pie. While not everyone is happy with 2nd place, eMusic seems to be enjoying their 11% of the industry, right after the iTMS at 67%, but way ahead of Real Rhapsody with 4%, Napster - 4% and MSN Music - 3% (data according to NPD Group).

[via iLounge]