Introduced in 1998, Emusic.com is a subscription music downloading site that charges $10 a month for 30 downloads. Currently, it boasts some 250,000 subscribers, which makes it the largest subscription-based online music store in the world. What sets emusic.com apart from other sites like Napster in Rhapsody, is that its music files are in the MP3 format, making them fully compatible with all digital music players, and free from digital rights management software restrictions such as expiration dates, or copying or CD burning limitations. While applauded by many, the lack of digital rights management (DRM) encoding and low price model have dissuaded the Big Four record labels from signing on and as a consequence the service specializes in underground artists and non-mainstream music genres, including indie rock, pop, jazz, electronica, new age, underground rap, traditional music, classical music, and experimental music, all on independent labels. eMusic does have a lot of music: 2 million+ tracks from 9000+ labels.

Proponents of emusic.com say the service’s pricing is extremely attractive compared to what is offered on iTunes. For instance, a typical 10-track album is $3 instead of $10. You can also get 75 tracks for about $20 per month (27 cents per track). If you pre-pay for a year you get a discount so the price per track will be about 21 cents per track. Those enamored of emusic.com also point out that a lot of the music available on iTunes is also available on their favorite service, so people are out there just using iTunes are paying $1 per track (or being forced to buy the whole album) for the exact same songs, because they don't know about eMusic. Further in September 2007, emusic also added an audiobooks section with over 1000 DRM-free audio books in standard MP3 format available for an additional fee of $9.99 (for one book/month) or $19.99 (for two books/month). Under your regular music subscription, though, they have many spoken word CDs, as well as standup comedy from great comedians like Chris Rock and George Carlin.

On the downside, emusic.com critics have complained that the site is difficult to navigate and that it is difficult to find the music you are looking for, primarily because the artists’ full catalogs are not available. The price may be cheaper than sites like iTunes, but the selection is considerably less enticing unless you go for obscure bands. Further, customer service is conducted exclusively by email as there are no phone numbers on the site and it takes several weeks for them to respond to an inquiry. All in all, as long as your expectations are kept in check, emusic.com is a valuable addition to the music downloading world.