> With the recent discussion of russian bootleg sites and eMusic, and with
> eMusic's shift away from their unlimited download policy, I would like
> to repeat a question I've asked before.  I know we have musicians and
> label-chiefs on this list who distribute via eMusic. How do the royalty
> rates from eMusic stack up? Before it was on an ASCAP, distribute based
> on popularity mode, but I'd hope with the new model that it's more based
> on actual "sales."

Generally speaking, income per song download is going to be less (sometimes
significantly so) for sales through subscription services than a la carte
services. However, when I was at SXSW in March I had more than one label
person tell me that their second highest income source from digital
distribution after iTunes was EMusic. Also, so far, places like EMusic have
had the opportunity to expose their captive audience to editorial picks that
significantly increased downloads for artists that would not have received
the attention otherwise. These editorial picks were free of any advertising
dollars or commercial consideration on the label's part.

> Is legitimate downloading becoming a recognizable, or even significant,
> source of royalty income for artists?

In my experience, yes for some artists. Not quit your day job significant
but "hey, that's a nice 4 figure check I wasn't expecting" significant. I'm
sure larger labels with more widely known artists have bigger stories to
tell in that regard.

Michael