Another one bites the dust. What I’m talking about is the selling out of the only online music store where you could get relatively cheap legal music downloads from independent labels. In July emusic is locking out a good portion of the global community from buying a subscription and one can only assume that it came about because they bowed down before their overlord – the Sony BMG media cartel. Apart from now charging extra for less, the new deal is that unless you live in the right country you won’t be able to buy from emusic , although existing customers will be grandfathered onto the the new higher cost plans. Unless you live in the US, Canada or the EU you won’t be able to join this exclusive club to get music that no one else is selling.

On the one hand there is a big push against piracy which is all well and good for media cartels like Sony, but locking out half the world of potential customers could prove costly to independent labels. While they may gain some new customers from the US, Canada and Europe by having the added bonus of Sony’s catalogue amongst the mix, which by the way is restricted to songs older than 2 years, they have essentially lost customers from Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Asia, India, South America and China who now have no recourse to legally buy from independent labels. Without a legal alternative places like Bit torrent, Usenet, Rapidshare, Megaupload et al will be the first and only point of call. Of course these markets probably have a fraction of the sales and perhaps in some places no sales compared to the large consumer base in the northern hemisphere, but these countries now won’t even be given the chance to pay independent labels. There just isn’t anywhere to purchase the music from.

I can hazard a guess as to why these restrictions are in place. The media cartel has its fingers in the pie all over the globe, with exclusive deals with major corporations, so contractually restrictions need to be placed. Either that or they are just maximising profits by price gouging certain markets. So now emusic has got a new consumer base at the expense of music lovers who want to do the right thing by artists. Hopefully the independent labels will still be able to compete with the new paradigm shift emusic has developed. They possibly face losing customers who aren’t too happy being ripped off by subsidising a deal made with Sony. I for one will probably cancel my subscription purely out of protest to this amalgamation with corporate media. What attracted me to emusic in the first place was that it supported the independent labels and lesser known artists. I could support them by legally buying their music but I certainly don’t want anything to do with Sony, not only because I’ll be restricted from buying anything Sony but because Sony want to be arseholes and lock me out of their cosy deal. So I’ll invariably vote with my wallet and cancel my subscription with emusic once it’s up for renewal. Come January my options will be somewhat limited and more than likely UseNet will get a bigger work out than it presently does.