Now that it’s several days after the Emusic sale announcement, their servers have been jammed, and getting any mp3s downloaded has been a challenge. Just like me, it appears that current Emusic subscribers are busy hoarding all the mp3s they can before the new limits kick in. Of course, that also clogs the Emusic bandwidth…
But I also wonder if Emusic hasn’t throttled things back, too. At this point, they have no incentive to provide good service to the bulk of downloading subscribers who are going to quit before the Nov. 8 deadline anyway.
There has been a dearth of real information about the Emusic sale, and even less about the holdings company, Dimensional Associates, that bought Emusic. Luckily, mediageek readers have left some enlightening comments.
jadeleary informs us that
“Dimensional Associates’ other holdings include The Orchard…”
Great. The Orchard is the company that sold music to BuyMusic.com without artist consent. It was all over web news a few months back. Bodes real well for the future…
Indeed, I found that Mac News Network reported on the BuyMusic situation back in July, quoting an artist who saw her music sold on BuyMusic without permission:
” I did a search for one of my old CD’s that will be going onto iTunes and It turns out my CD was there on BuyMusic.com. … BuyMusic.com (which I will refer to as BM) got their “vast” music library of 300,000 plus songs from a company called the Orchard. The Orchard is a distribution company that has consistently shafted artists by not paying them for CD’s sold nor returning unsold CD’s or canceling contracts. So, without the express consent of what is likely all of the Orchards catalog, BM has put it up for sale at the bargain price of $.79 a song. … what they don’t tell you is that it comes from musicians/bands that were not asked for permission, and who will likely not see a penny of any sale made through BM. By their very own site policy they are committing copyright infringement.
If I were one of the independent labels currently distributed on Emusic, this bit of information would give me some cause for concern.
Another commenter named crofti says he worked for Vivendi Universal for three years before getting laid off. He notes that
“EMusic, GetMusic, Rollingstone.com, MP3.com and MP4.com are all owned by Vivendi Universal and located in San Diego, CA. [They’re] all going down and being sold off, they have been for over a year now. Has nothing to do with the merger of NBC and VU. VU has been trying to sell those things off for a long time now, nobody wants them.”
Well, at least Dimensional Associates wants Emusic, but the question still remains: Why? And what will they do with it?
Oh, and I have to note that my recent posts about the Emusic situation and Rush Limbaugh’s drug problem have brought in an usually high amount of traffic to the ‘geek, mostly from search engines. (gotta love how Google gives rank to link-rich sites, like blogs).
So, howdy to new mediageek readers, and I hope y’all come back now, ya hear?
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