eMusic Doesn’t Understand Meaning of Unlimited

Broadband Reports has an article on how eMusic has gotten confused about the definition of “unlimited”. Many users (like my brother) signed up for the promise of “unlimited high quality MP3’s for as low as $9.99 per month”.

Just last week, eMusic cut off my brother for what they called “unusually excessive downloading”. Even though eMusic encourages customers to use their automated download system, my brother was informed that he could not use “any automated system for the selection or downloading of files”.

He thinks that the habit leading to him being cut off was that he found it easier to download music that he thinks he might like, listen to the music from his hard drive at a convenient time, and then delete it if he doesn’t like it. As a result, he downloaded a lot of music that he didn’t necessarily keep. Of course, eMusic still had to provide all that bandwidth, but no one forced them to advertise “unlimited” access, either.

While my brother liked eMusic and the wide range of music they offered, he said that their quality control was not particularly good. He said a lot of albums he downloaded had poorly encoded tracks where the music had short stutters. Also, the automated downloader sometimes cut off songs before the download was complete. He then had to email eMusic with details on the problematic tracks and wait a couple days for their response, which was usually that he should check back in 6 to 8 weeks to see if they had fixed the problem.