Question about emusic.com

[caliluv]

Occasionally I will download some Motown and other rare and hard to find music from this site. For the past month I've noticed that a lot of selections that were listed are no longer available especially Motown. Is there a story of why most of this music is not available anymore?

[Nothing But Soul]

On 09/26/2014, emusic.com sent a message its subscribers. Included in this message was the following: "eMusic is renewing its commitment to independent music and to promoting its musicians, bands and labels. As a result, beginning today, we will be exiting the mainstream music business and offering exclusively independent music. Further, in the coming weeks and months, it is our aim to build upon our existing library and provide you with the most extensive catalog of independent music in the world."

Although, emusic had been offering downloads from the majors [[Sony, Warner, Universal [[who owns the classic Motown catalog), EMI, etc.) since 2009, they have now dropped all of what they call "mainstream" music. I've been an emusic subscriber for a number of years, but I won't be after this month.

[caliluv]

Thanks. That pretty much does it for me as well.

[imnokid]

my last month as well.

[Guy]

I wrote eMusic to complain about this ridiculous shift and I was given a nearly $30 credit. So after I run through that I will probably be out, too. Thank goodness I was able to download a bunch of Blinky tracks before it deleted those Motown collections.

[Ryon6]

Guy, how many Blinky tracks did you download? Are they the same ones that are available now via Complete Motown Singles or the Cellarful cds?

[alanh]

I've been with eMusic in the UK for many years where we've never had the 'majors' so the change hasn't affected us. However I agree that eMusic is a strange company that has never really made a big noise in the download market and also doesn't seem to work as smoothly as the other big operators. But there's more than Motown to be found [[at least in the UK) including Stax, Hi, the Demon label releases etc, plus recently some Solar & All Platinum that come through the independent distributors.

[Guy]

Guy, how many Blinky tracks did you download? Are they the same ones that are available now via Complete Motown Singles or the Cellarful cds?

Ryon 6 - I got 6 tracks total "Wouldn't Change The Man He Is" [[live & studio), "For Your Precious Love", "Money", "The Hunter Gets Captured By the game", "This Time Last Summer" -- and yes, they are all from the Motown compilation CDs.