I’ve been a user of eMusic for almost a full year now. Overall, I’ve found it to be a really great service. It’s cheap (I pay something like thirty cents a track), DRM-free MP3 files (192 kbps, variable) and a wide selection of music. However, I’m starting to get really pissed at some things they do (or fail to do).

At times it seems like almost nothing is properly categorized. I understand that in many cases, you can’t really pin down a bands style, but eMusic doesn’t even try. I download a lot of Metal, specifically Black Metal, Doom Metal and its varied sub-genres. I don’t expect eMusic to get that specific, but I find that almost all of this music is classified under “Rock”, which can be argued as somewhat insulting, but they have a Metal category, it’s just not listed there. I find nearly everything I download is categorized incorrectly. I’ll find Death Metal under “Jazz”—shit like that. It makes finding new music you might like a daunting and at times completely retarded experience. To make it more ass-backwards, there has been a number of times where I’ve found bands I like under incorrectly spelled names (rendering it unlikely anyone will easily find them, ever). Tracks are misspelled. Some songs are missing from the album and records from artists who may share the same name are often incorrectly lumped with each other (for example, an album by a Norwegian Jazz ensemble lumped in as being put out by a Suicidal Black Metal group).

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