EMusic is shifting to a priced (rather than download-token) model: a track used to be worth one “download credit”, now it’ll be worth 49 eurocents,1 with variable pricing of course the next step.

I’ve been a member since 2005, and prices have risen several times in the interim. The nice thing is, those price hikes only affected new accounts: old accounts like mine are kept on the old pricing, even across changes like this. (In this case, they’re awarding “bonus credit” to puff my plan up to the same number of 49c downloads as I get now.)2 Which leads to the following:

More bonus than payment? Cool!

Far as I can see, that means I’ll be getting my tracks for just over 20c each, instead of 50. There’s not many times being an early adopter really pays off, but this seems to be one of them!

Notes:

  1. Why, eMusic, why 49? Why not 53? Or 47? Or (gulp) 50? [↪]
  2. Variable pricing is going to mess with this, of course. I presume they’ll stick with “a track is 49c” for plan pricing, but of course variable pricing is only going to introduce tracks above, not below, that line. [↪]