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musicologist9, Jul 1 at 4:33 PM EDT   

redownloading?

eMusic's original policy was to allow re-downloads of purchased tracks, through the "Downloads" section of the "Your Profile" feature. Now, this info is posted in the FAQ's on downloading:
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"Q: I see a track that I purchased is no longer being offered as a re-download: why?

A: eMusic offers limited re-downloads, without charge, when a track or album fails to download correctly or is corrupted. You will have to re-purchase a track if you've exceeded a reasonable number of re-downloads."
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Does anybody want to explain what is meant by "a reasonable number"? This seems to be another instance (of many) in which eMusic has not been particularly forthcoming about what their policies actually mean.

I work from several computers--my home PC, my wife's PC, my laptop at work, and it was always very useful to go to emusic's website and re-download tracks I wanted to listen to if I already had them on another machine. Now it seems like that by doing this I might go over the limit for re-downloads unless emusic explains what that figure actually is. Is it based on frequency? Or is there a lifetime count begin kept on re-downloads? And what about data loss? Can someone re-download a large number of different tracks but not a single track many times?

What are anybody else's thoughts? And I wonder if eMusic will ever clarify this issue...
  Topic Outline
* RE: redownloading? posted by Steviex2Shoes on Jul 1 at 4:49 PM EDT
* RE: redownloading? posted by Benjamin, W. on Jul 1 at 5:17 PM EDT
  * RE: redownloading? posted by Steviex2Shoes on Jul 2 at 2:24 PM EDT
    * RE: redownloading? posted by AntEater on Jul 3 at 10:02 AM EDT
      * RE: redownloading? posted by Shizam on Jul 11 at 5:20 PM EDT
* RE: redownloading? posted by JossWhedon-fan on Jul 2 at 8:26 PM EDT
  * RE: redownloading? posted by snowdream on Jul 2 at 10:03 PM EDT
  Steviex2Shoes Jul 1 at 4:49 PM EDT RE: redownloading?    
in direct response to the topic by musicologist9
I was just about to email them regarding this as well. I noticed that the wording has changed from Unlimited to "reasonable". I'd like to hear from emusic on this one as well.
  Benjamin, W. Jul 1 at 5:17 PM EDT RE: redownloading?    
in direct response to the topic by musicologist9
Please clarify, emusic. I've never exceeded a "reasonable" number of re-downloads, only using them when I've had problems with the download manager or lost a file and I'm not seeing the option.

What's going on? Why didn't you bother to tell anyone about this? The lack of communication about account details is really frustrating.
  Steviex2Shoes Jul 2 at 2:24 PM EDT RE: redownloading?    
in response to the message by Benjamin, W.
Here is the email I got from emusic, but it looks like 4 times is the limit:

"Thank you for contacting eMusic Customer Support.

eMusic still permits limited re-downloads when you experience a technical problem with a track. We hope you'll honor the spirit of this benefit. You can re-download a track 4 times, after which you'll have to re-purchase. We feel that the limited re-downloads should cover all but the most extreme technical situations. If you're experiencing continued technical issues with a track or album download please reply to this email with the details about your issue.

We really appreciate your being an eMusic subscriber and look forward to providing you with the best value in music downloads.
Regards,

Kenneth - eMusic Customer Support"
  JossWhedon-fan Jul 2 at 8:26 PM EDT RE: redownloading?    
in direct response to the topic by musicologist9
I am glad I am not the only one confused by this.

My thoughts when the repricing and Sony label stuff was announced was that I would be sticking around mainly because the downloading from eMusic is so user-friendly - with the big reason why being unlimited redownloads. I liked the idea that I could delete large chunks of songs off my laptop hard-drive to make room for other data with the option to redownload anything at any time, and if I got tired of something again, I could delete/redownload, etc. It obviously was helpful with hard drive crashes, migrating files to a new computer, technical issues, etc., which you can still do with eMusic thankfully.

Unlimited redownloading helped set eMusic apart for me from the competition - You can not redownload at all with iTunes. In my experience, that meant that if something went wrong with a download, I would have to send an e-mail to Apple and wait a day or more to get the file. If you lose your files, you are screwed. You can do your best with making backups, but sometimes things just happen and your computer crashes without having made a backup of a new album.

The unlimited redownloading, most importantly, created a sense of security of always being able to get to the music I paid for always no matter how many times (minus the occasional dropped label/album) which helped me remain an eMusic member for more than 2 1/2 years.

I really do not understand why they had to make this change. Did Sony pressure them to do this? That would be horrible if that is the case because this affects what eMusic is supposed to be.

I suppose one could argue that I am not entitled to unlimited free redownloads. That's right, I'm not, and I should be grateful for even having 4 redownloads. However, as I stated, it was a feature like this that drew me to remain at eMusic for this long. This was part of the service that I was paying for, and now it is no longer part of the service. So, from my perspective, it is a big deal to lose this feature, and feel like eMusic does not care about its longtime customers anymore.
  snowdream Jul 2 at 10:03 PM EDT RE: redownloading?    
in response to the message by JossWhedon-fan
It's good they clarified it. 4x is pretty good and more than you get at itunes (zero).... try re-downloading something there. My hard drive did in fact crash and I was able to get most of my missing tracks back. However, some albums were pulled from availability in my country and so i never did get those few tracks back. Still better than itunes. I am also happy that amiest seems to allow re-downloads as well. I can see the merit of the limitation, so everyone isn't passing their whole library to all their friends for free, which would be pretty easy to do otherwise.


  AntEater Jul 3 at 10:02 AM EDT RE: redownloading?    
in response to the message by Steviex2Shoes
I hope that that limit has some time consideration. Yesterday I attempted to download an album three times before it worked. Apparently Firefox 3.5 has a problem with the current download manager (on OS X) which caused the browser to crash. The first attempt failed due to the unexpected browser crash. The second attempt confirmed that the problem was indeed the combination of the browser and download manager. The third attempt was made with Safari and was successful. Three attempts to download within ten minutes should indicate a problem, not abuse of any sort. I don't anticipate having to redownload for any other reason since I am neurotic about backups for my personal data (I'm a sysadmin) but it needs to be more than 4 downloads or have a time consideration factored in.
  Shizam Jul 11 at 5:20 PM EDT RE: redownloading?    
in response to the message by AntEater
I also felt the redownloading was what set eMusic apart (that and the relative inexpensiveness of tracks) but honestly I was always amazed that they were able to offer it. Whatever inane copyright issues aside, bandwidth isn't free. I would have liked to see a compensation for the loss of this feature but I can hope they at least stick to 4x redownloads.
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