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I use the eMusic.com service, it's a good price, the site works very well, and the music selection has a lot of rare items. For the most part, I really enjoy what eMusic is doing. Not only do I promote them on ArtistServer (through an affiliate program), but you can even hear me telling others about the service. It's great, I pay a small fee, and each month, I'm allowed to download "X" amount of songs from their site. Ah, and there's no DRM on the files. You tend to forget about such things when they aren't a part of your lifestyle.

While eMusic rates high in my mind, there's an issues that comes up each month that serves as a powerful thorn. I'll share this with you because I see this as a lesson in customer service. Before I start, I'll have to add that I'm definately not you 'average' user, and that while eMusic is indeed well established, it's still important for them to have 'sneezers' out in the field. For those unfamiliar with the term, a sneezer could be compared to a 'passionate football fan.' A sneezer will sell for you, do your marketing, connect you to micro networks you'd never be able to touch, and they can be powerful alies. But, as you can imagine, doing a sneezer wrong isn't good, it could even be volatile these days.

Each member's account at eMusic has it's own "Anniversay date" - which is when your allowed downloads will refresh. This date is based on when you sign up.

Ok - no problem there.

Today is the date my account is to refresh, October 24, 2005. I just logged into their site, and I see today's date listed, yet, my allowed downloads has not refreshed yet. Why? Because 'today' has either not happened yet because of the location of the server, or, the date also includes a time which may not have passed, or possibly some reason due to when they process their charges. I just logged into my bank account, and I don't see a charge from eMusic yet, so it would appear that my account has not been refreshed because the transaction hasn't happened. This is just a guess, though, as there is no information on the eMusic site which explains when your account refreshes.

Here is the only bit of information they provide about your account refreshing:

Q: When will my downloads refresh?
A: Your billing cycle will refresh every thirty days. This means that your downloads may refresh on a different day of the month each month. You can find out when your downloads will refresh by going to the Your Account page and checking the Download Summary area.

I found this issue two months ago, and sent an email to them using their support form. I explained basically what I just wrote above, that it was unclear as to when an account would refresh, and that if it was associated to a time, that they should share that with the users so we can know what to expect.

No reply.

This is an important issue, because a part of what eMusic is selling, is the experience. If you have a product or a service, then you are in the "Experience Business." Anyone can see that eMusic failed in terms of customer support, but what we need to focus on here, is how much of a role the experience plays in Web commerce and that something as simple as a lack of clarity in how things work can easily destroy the whole experience and loose a customer. Even worse, you could frustrate a sneezer and cause negative marketing waves to ripple about the blogosphere.

After a few months of belonging to a service like eMusic, you begin to see shopping for music as a different thing. It's not going out to buy your favorite music any longer, it's more like one of those 'sweepstake shopping sprees' where you get to run around the store and fill your cart like a maniac. When the date comes closer, you start to visit the site, you check out what is new on the site, add a few albums to your 'save for later' list, it's all a part of the experience.

Then, the day arrives... it's time to go wild - it's going to be an evening of all new music! So, you hit the site, sign in, then BAM, there it is at the top of the site...

So you click on the zero... and yes, there it is, today's date:

Current subscription: eMusic Plus Upgrade
Your downloads will refresh on Oct 24, 2005

It's now been more than two months since I sent them a support question and gave them feedback on their site. I still haven't heard back from them.

Will I keep using their service? Yes, for a few months more or until it seems that I'm no longer finding good music there. I'm sure they can fix this issue - it's not driving me away, and it's certainly something I can deal with. What's amusing, is that I'm traditionally not much of a consumer, yet I feel like I was sucked into this one... I was feeling the 'experience' that they were selling to me, and I was in turn selling it to other people. That's perfect from a marketing perspective, what more could you want than your customers replicating your marketing efforts? Unfortunately for them, the signal was broken, I snapped out of it, and now I'm only paying for the music.

I'll have to watch out though, the connections have been made, they're still fresh. I could sign into their site one day and BAM! They could start selling me that experience once again.

You might be thinking... "hey, couldn't they just cut this 'experience' out, bring costs down even more and cut a bigger profit?" Most likely, no. It's cheaper to keep selling to your current customers than it is to buy new customers. Plus, word-of-mouth or 'buzz' marketing is becoming a more powerful tool as we all become more connected to each other and disconnected from the TV. Investing your marketing dollars into a better experience for your users could possibly be the best thing you could do right now. Your marketing team may not like their budget going this direction, but the thing to do here, is make them a part of the experience too. I also suggest getting outside perspectives, especially new and seasoned users, which you can then use to find some of your power users who often turn into your sneezers.