Preface
This article has been spawned from a thread on the Ars boards about the EMusic service, and more so from the feedback I have been hearing about the not-so unlimited “unlimited” service. Being a person that hates virtually everything RIAA stood for, I found myself at an awkward position of defending the service, owned by Vivendi, a RIAA partner.

The service
For $9.95 a month, EMusic allows you to gain unlimited access to their music library. For its 70,000 registered users and the plethora of potential consumers that want to pay a reasonable price for downloadable music, this is a godsend.

The negative of this all-you-can-eat buffet is it brought out some consumers to essentially rape and pillage the service. A prime example of this is on a C|Net review of the EMusic service, there is a person that loaded 200 CDs in their basket in one night.

EMusic was essentially stuck with either keeping the service literally unlimited, or enacting a more conservative interpretation of the word unlimited. EMusic decided to implement that latter, and doing so is allowing the service to still be profitable.

Read the fine print
eMusic has now set a barrier on the total amount of songs you can download in a month, but according to their TOS, never specifically set a number of total downloads before it would solicit a letter to it’s customers to curtail usage. Their wording is as followed:

Because the Service is designed for personal sampling and use, you are not allowed to use any automated system for the selection or downloading of files. EMusic reserves the right to immediately and permanently terminate your access to the Service if EMusic believes that you are violating such limitation.

You agree that EMusic, in its sole discretion, may terminate your ID, password, account (or any part thereof) or use of the Service for any reason, including, without limitation, if EMusic believes that you have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the Agreement. EMusic may also in its sole discretion and at any time discontinue providing the Service, or any part thereof, with or without notice. You agree that any termination of your access to the Service under any provision of this Agreement may be effected without prior notice, and acknowledge and agree that EMusic may immediately deactivate or delete your account and/or bar any further access to the Service. Further, you agree that EMusic shall not be liable to you or any third-party for any termination of your access to the Service.

So with this new position of the word “unlimited”, EMusic starts to send letters and cut off some subscribers that they believe are abusing the system. Immediately, some outraged consumers start to cry foul for their continued use of the word “unlimited” in their advertising.

Legal use of the word “unlimited”
Their use of the word unlimited is not this huge conspiracy against consumers. Legally, it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet at your local restaurant. Sure, you can help yourself to three, four, five, or six plates of food, but there is this unspoken rule of enough is enough. And in the spirit of our society of turning everything into a lawsuit, many people tried, and failed to sue the restaurant establishment if their trough got cut off.

From a personal standpoint, I can apply that to an ISP that I worked at. We offered “unlimited” internet access for a very good price, but once enacted we noticed that we had a few users that were consistently on 24/7/365. We would bump them off just to see if they came back on, and sure enough their auto-dialer established that they did. After further research into their accounts, we determined that these customers we essentially wasting our limited amount of dial-in lines. So we sent them warning letters, and when they did not comply to be more sensible in their usage, we cut them off. For a mom and pop ISP, this was critical to allow for a good ratio of users/available dial-up connections. There was a legal challenge and it was ruled that we were in our rights, and we were not falsely advertising “unlimited” access. There have been other challenges to larger ISPs like Earthlink and AOL, all of which were thrown out of court, or ruled in favor of the company.

So what are the limits?
When EMusic began to send out letters and cut off some users, it provoked a response that was inevitable, but somewhat irresponsible. Since back in the days of Napster, many consumers wanted a service that had a catalog available online, offered high quality mp3s, and offered it at a reasonable price. EMusic addresses all these issues, but yet the complaints mounted, such as the following:

I’ve seen alot of responses here suggesting other ways Emusic could change their business or how I should not have expected them to deliver. All I have to say is that if they change their service to either A) limit the number of downloads per month or B) throttle my bandwidth so downloads are slower, then they have LOST a customer. As it stands right now, they’re going to have to work damn hard to get me to renew after my 3 months are up. I can get mp3s from a wide range of sources, most of which are free. So how do they want it? Keep going with a model that will work in the digital age (low per month cost, unlimited downloads) or no revenue at all. Don’t give me they can’t make this work BS. The demand is there, the music companies just lack the will to succeed.
- Arsian Banzai51

Unlimited = without limits. IT’s SIMPLE FUCKING ENGLISH.
Anyone who uses “unlimited” and does not mean “unlimited” should be sued for false advertising.
- Arsian Alpha

So what is their definition of “unlimited”? Many people began to ask what these acceptable limits were of downloads, and On 11/21/2002 a fellow Arsian mhaseltine received this letter from EMusic defining their new limits:

Dear EMusic Subscriber,
I’d like to offer a personal apology for some of our recent communication with you and other EMusic customers. Over the past several weeks, we have implemented some new tools in an effort to identify subscribers that are using EMusic in ways it was not intended. It’s important for us to do this to ensure the long-term viability of EMusic — so we can continue to offer our service to you and the rest of our 70,000 loyal subscribers.

Many EMusic subscribers recently received a letter outlining unusual activity in their accounts. After personally reading through every email sent to us in response, it’s clear to me that we need to rethink our approach. While we need to identify customers who are not using the service as intended, we do not want to do this at the expense of passionate EMusic users.

I want to be as clear as possible about what we consider abusive activity and how we will manage this going forward. Although EMusic is an “unlimited” service, there have to be some restrictions on this policy.

EMusic is similar to a buffet advertised as “all you can eat.” For the restaurant to be successful, it has to have reasonable limitations that apply to people that stay too long, eat more than their fair share — or waste food. The service is indeed unlimited for the vast majority of the restaurant’s customers whose actions never draw attention. The restaurant reserves the right to deny service to any customer.
EMusic was designed to be an interactive service for personal use and enjoyment. Our intent is to allow our subscribers unlimited access to an amount of music that they can reasonably use. We did not design the service for people who want to download music simply to collect it or to fill up their hard drives. This would be not be responsible for us as a business or provide incentive for our label partners to make their music available.

Obviously, the definition of “reasonable” varies by user and many of the responses I have read are simply requesting some definition. Based on our current analysis of typical subscriber behavior, we believe that downloading more than 2,000 tracks in a 30-day period is not reasonable for personal use. Using a 12-track album as the average, this represents more than 165 albums and over 10,000 minutes of music. Less than 1% our subscribers ever approach these levels.

If, for any reason, you do not find this explanation satisfactory, please use the following link: http://help.emusic.com/cu/index.cgi to cancel your
account. We’ll immediately end your subscription - even if you are still in your commitment period - and provide you a refund for the current month.
Again, I apologize for any inconvenience or frustration we may have caused. I can assure you that our team is extremely passionate about continuing to provide you with the best MP3 subscription service possible.

Best regards,
Steve Grady
General Manager, EMusic.com

So now they define that if you go over 2000 songs in a month, they feel that you are abusing the system, and will be warned and then if you don’t comply, cut off.

2000 songs, a good value
Their 2000 song cutoff per month is more than an adequate supply of music for any customer. This is a good breakdown of the value you get

• At a 16 CD track average, you get 125 CDs a month
• Equates to $1900+ if bought at a regular store
• $0.005 per track if you downloaded 2000 songs in a month, even at 1000 songs it’s a penny a song
• For a Giganews equivalent account, you would be charged $15.95 for a 8GB account or $22.95 for a 12GB account
• ~1500 CDs in an entire year

Personally, I use Giganews (I told you I hate RIAA), and I am extremely lucky to grab an average of 3 new albums a day. EMusic’s service allows for a little more than 4 full length CDs a day, and an average of $0.005 a track. My personal collection is only 10,000 songs, and much of that was ripped from my personal collection. If you collect over 2000 songs a month, you are almost for certain just filling HD space for the hell of it, or literally only listening to a song once, and virtually never again. If you really like music, why not download the 2000 song limit the first month, and then another 2000 next month and so on?

Conclusion
So clearly if you are not into the blockbuster albums (i.e.: Brittany), and feel EMusic has a wide selection for your musical tastes, the service is for you. I still don’t know if I will buy into EMusic because it’s Vivendi. I want to know what is in their catalog and determine if it is worth it for me.

This entire service still doesn’t address my other issues with RIAA, like artist treatment, distribution channel monopoly, and their attempt to categorize everyone as a pirate. But this service I would say should appeal to most users looking for an alternative to getting music “legally”.

Pros:

• Gain access to a library available 24/7
• All songs are at least 128k mp3
• All music is mp3 format, so it’s not tethered or DRM’ed
• The first “legal” service
• Music available on demand
• Excellent value

Cons:

• RIAA service (owned by Vivendi)
• “Unlimited” marketing is not truly unlimited