EMusic.com has decided to go the way of a subscription service by offering unlimited downloads for a monthly fee ranging from $10-$20. Does it really matter though?

The beleaguered digital audio site will continue to offer individually sold tracks as well as the new subscription service, which it rolled out earlier today. In all, there is about 125,000 available songs in the cataglog that are downloadable through this service. EMusic will share the revenue generated from this service with both the record companies and music publishers from whom they have licensed this music.

There are currently 3 plans offered, which fall under "yearly," "quarterly," and "monthly" option. The "yearly" option equates to $10 a month whereas the "monthly" option is the more expensive $20 a month. The price is not all that bad, considering, but one has to wonder if people will actually use this service seeing as the catalog is not the largest around. A quick search for artists like Madonna, Moby, Metallica, Aerosmith, Backstreet Boys and DMX turned up virtually no music. Seeing as the majority of MP3 listeners are the younger generation, why would EMusic not offer many of the songs that the top consumers would want to hear?

EMusic is a troubled company looking for ways to make it in this complicated world of digital audio. They just recently laid off 20% of their work force in June and reported a loss for the 3rd quarter of the fiscal year. While they hope to obtain licenses to distribute more popular recordings, it probably will not come in time.

There is no reason to bother with a subscription service like that of what EMusic offers. With services like Napster, Scour Exchange and a host of other file sharing communities, which offer better service for FREE, why bother wasting $20/mo on a service that does not even offer music that most people want to listen to?

Our very own Angelo Sotira, media mogul and digital music extraordinaire, has this to say in response to the subscription service offered by EMusic, "None of it matters until it's in your car, in your living room, and on your cell phone. Until then no one's paying for anything and no one can do anything about it. In the meantime, why care?" He has some very valid points there, though it will be interesting to see what develops from here on out with EMusic.