The following is what I wrote at the end of the “why did you cancel your account?” survey at emusic:
I’ve been with emusic for a long, long time, and frankly I think things got worse as you succeeded in getting deals with major record labels. Prices kept going up, and the new pricing structure is frustrating. Necessary for getting the big labels, but then I discovered that I don’t much like the music the big labels are putting out. And when ’80’s arena rock bands show up in the ‘alternative’ section, you know that keyword pollution is starting to cause real problems.
So it has become harder to find actual good music (editorials are a huge help, so keep that up), and more expensive to experiment. I can’t take the risks I used to; downloading an album by a band I didn’t know is much more costly these days. So I’m not making as many happy discoveries as I did years ago.
emusic may still be the best online music service, but at this point the commitment to spend a set amount each month is just not justified.
Still, thanks for all the great tunes I’ve downloaded over the last decade-plus of membership.
