eMusic is an online music store that operates by subscription. It is headquartered in New York City and owned by Dimensional Associates, LLC. As of September 2008 eMusic has over 400,000 subscribers.

eMusic differs from other well-known subscription music services (such as Napster and Rhapsody) in that the files available for download 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 lauded by the general public, the lack of digital rights management (DRM) encoding and low price model have made the service unappealing to the Big Four record labels, leading it to specialize in underground artists and non-mainstream music genres, including indie rock, pop, jazz, electronica, new age, underground rap, traditional music, classical music, hardcore punk, and experimental music, all on independent labels.

Files

Due to the contentious nature of DRM encoding utilized by competing download services, eMusic has won praise for not including any in their own files, despite the fact that it has cost them contracts with the major record labels. They have openly stated that this is a business move that has greatly aided the site's popularity. As Apple does not currently license FairPlay--the DRM format compatible with their popular iPod player, used in files downloaded from their iTunes Music Store--doing away with such protections is the only means for a competing company to offer iPod-compatible downloads. EMusic stores a record of user purchases on its internal servers, but does not place any purchaser information inside the tracks that are sold.Fact: date=January 2008

The record labels working with eMusic don't worry about file sharing of their music because eMusic users tend to be older, and less likely to engage in file sharing. The type of college students who tend to participate in file-sharing either couldn't or wouldn't pay for music online, so eMusic is more targeted at avid music fans. Gene Rumsey, general manager of Concord Music Group, says eMusic fans are not the typical college-age file sharers. They are more rabid fans who he believes are less likely to engage in online song swapping. Serious music fans would also appreciate that musicians are actually paid for every download.

The eMusic service uses the LAME mp3 encoder to produce variable bit rate MP3 files. Analysis on the files show that the preset used is alt-preset-standard, a high quality VBR preset. The Emusic site, most likely in error, states they encode with an average bitrate of 192 kbit/s.

Status

EMusic had 4,500,000 tracks available for download and sold over 100,000,000 tracks as of December 2006. New subscribers receive 25 free downloads over a period of 14 days. The trial account turns into a billable subscription account immediately after registering for a trial. Refunds are possible under certain circumstances by contacting eMusic customer support. Subscriptions allow users to download a number of tracks per 30-day period. As of September 2008 a basic package allows for 30 downloads, with Plus,Premium and Connoisseur subscriptions offering more downloads per month at higher prices and lower price per download. Every 30 days the download limit is reset (regardless of how many songs were downloaded). EMusic also offers "booster packs" to subscribers, which expire after 90 days rather than after a month, and are consumed when subscribers download tracks beyond their monthly allotments. Earlier business models supported an "all-you-can-eat" downloading pattern. For a monthly fee, customers were able to download as many tracks as they wished from the service. As the old emusic messageboard once documentedFact: date=March 2008, eMusic regularly disciplined customers--including canceling their contracts--who downloaded more tracks than eMusic thought reasonable within the "all-you-can-eat" framework.