Sleep Spent

A few months ago, Matt Nathanson released At the Point, a live album. I bought it on eMusic, but due to their lack of rollover song downloads, I had only 13 downloads left. (There are 17 tracks on the album.) So I bought 13 of the 17 tracks. When I got 40 more DLs in my account the next week, I was shocked to find that the album had been removed. I e-mailed them about it and their response was, “tough luck.” I was a bit miffed.

I checked back about a month later, and whaddaya know, the album was back! So I downloaded the last four songs. But when I looked in my Downloads list, I saw only that I had purchased the last four tracks, not the original 13. “Odd,” I thought.

I purchased most of the songs from Matt Nathanson’s “At The Point” a few months ago. Then the album was removed. Then it was added back, but with (I think) a new album ID. But the songs I purchased from the old album don’t show up as available for download on the new album, only the four songs I finally ended up buying when the album was added back.

Can you please add the rest of the songs from this album to my list of purchased songs?

Thank you,
-Nick

I waited a week and got no response, so I e-mailed them again today to give them a nudge. I promptly received the following reply:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting eMusic Customer Support.

I apologize for our delay in response.

Unfortunately, this album was removed from the site and then readded, so it is technically a different album.

Once you have selected a track from eMusic, you are allowed to re-download it as many times as you like without losing download credits provided that the album is still available through eMusic and your account is active.

Since the album is a new album , you will be charged for redownloading.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.

Regards,

Lenny
eMusic Customer Support Team

[Emphasis added.]

This response absolutely blew me away. I had fun composing a reponse, which I think ably walked the line between incredulity and contempt:

> I apologize for our delay in response.

Thanks for getting back to me right away after I followed up!

> Unfortunately, this album was removed from the site and then readded,
so it is technically a different album.

That is an absolutely ludicrous statement.

By this logic, you at eMusic could, from time to time, simply remove
albums and add them back, thereby negating downloads of that album and
forcing people to re-purchase the MP3s if they download them again, for
whatever reason.

The MP3s for the album that you’re selling now may not be identical to
the ones you took down (I’m unsure why this might be, but I’ll give you
the benefit of the doubt), but that doesn’t change the fact that the
album you had up originally and the album you have up now are identical.
They have the same bar code. Amazon and AMG list only one album by this
artist with this title; there is no other ‘At The Point’. All of your
data is the same, too. To say that “it is technically a different album”
is insulting.

This is a technical glitch completely under the control of eMusic. It’s
a problem with your software that when you re-added it, the “new” album
had a different ID number thus orphaning everyone who bought the songs
to begin with. I refuse to be held responsible for such a glitch.

I’m really having trouble believing I even need to justify my position
on this matter. This is the sort of thing you should have anticipated
and made arrangements for ahead of time.

If you, for whatever reason, cannot live up to your promise that “You
can re-download any track without losing credits,”1 then you need to
credit my account with the songs you took away from me. (There were 13
of them.)

I look forward to your equally-prompt response to this e-mail.

Thank you,
-Nick

So we’ll see what happens.

I like eMusic’s selection, but their support seems to be hit-or-miss. This particular example really seems like a no-brainer to me. I really am amazed I’ve had to spend this much time on it. If this were iTMS… well, I wouldn’t have been able to download the songs again. But if I had been able to, they’d have already gotten it straightened out and I wouldn’t have had to wonder why the songs weren’t appearing in my Downloads list in the first place.

This is especially frustrating because fixing this would require one line of SQL! This should just be part of the process if they remove and then re-add an album.