News

eMusic Loses Three Crucial Indies

7:36 p.m. · November 17, 2010 · by Hilary Beck

You can't get ahead in business without causing a few rifts. eMusic learned that the hard way; as the online music store prepares to add 250,000 tracks from Universal Music Group, its largest ever catalog addition, they also announced the loss of key independent labels.

It seems that the trouble was the failure to negotiate deals that satisfied both large companies like UMG and the small indies that had long supported the retailer. eMusic sent an email to all subscribers yesterday, telling them they have until Nov. 18 to buy music from Domino, Merge, and Beggars Group, which includes such crucial labels as 4AD and Matador.

This is as heartbreaking to us as it is to you. Please know we have done everything we could to keep them from leaving. Forging deals with our label partners can be pretty complex. As many of you know, labels have come and gone over the years, and we hope to see these labels back soon. You can add your voice here to help us bring them back. For more info, see our FAQs.

Gone will be some of indie rock's biggest names and selllers: Spoon, Arcade Fire, Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, the XX, and Vampire Weekend, to name only a few.

In a press release, Beggars Group expressed that, while they are sorry about the departure, "[a]s eMusic has brought major labels on board, they have changed the terms on which they deal with labels in certain ways, some of which we have found impossible to accept, in our own interests, those of our artists, and ultimately those of their fans.

"We have loved eMusic, and the support it has given to our music, but it was the dedicated home for independent music and is, in our view, not that anymore."

Long story short, ouch. Even longtime users are predicting the store's demise; amid angry emoticons and a lot of dissent on eMusic's forum, one user says "the labels who made eMusic's footprint as large as it is are getting hosed and they know it. [I] can't see how you can turn your back, but really--at this point we're looking at this as 'you made your bed...'"