As some of you might have figured out I am a bit of a fanatic when it comes to music. There is always a pressing need to discover and hear new sounds on a daily basis and that drive has often totaled up to some insurmountable bills, like the year Management and I purchased some 200 CDs (around $3000 USD for those of you playing along at home) to feed our habit. So when I stumbled across eMusic four years ago I thought I had died an gone to heaven, particularly given that it was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mind-numbingly low price of $9.99 per month. Those days are gone but I thought I would do some quick accounting to see how the deal has fared since the great billing change over of 2003 (I currently pay $19.99 per month for 90 tracks).

To keep things easy I used the same amount of tracks for each of the services and for retail copies of CDs that works out to an average of 12 tracks per album which is just about right when looking at what I purchased over the past year.

So what’s the point of this exercise? Nothing other than my smug self-satisfaction that I am getting the best possible deal I can for my listening habits. Hell, the dollars speak for themselves: eMusic is 22% of the cost of iTunes and only some 18% of retail CDs. Now, this is the point where we could get into a discussion about distribution channels and the actual costs of producing, promoting, and retailing music but really, I don’t want to. Just look at the numbers! Those sweet, sweet numbers allow me to spend even more money on music and artist related tchotchkes.

Enough math, I’m going to listen to some music. On deck, Renaissance The Masters Series: Hernán Cattáneo Vol. 2 (Continuous Mix) and Nick Warren’s Shanghai.

* CPT - Cost Per Track
* TPY - Tracks Per Year
* CPY - Cost Per Year