It seems the existing contract between EMusic and Metal Blade Records has terminated and was not renewed (I don't know the specifics).

As a current Emusic subscriber, I find this extremely sad, since Metal Blade was one of the records with some of the best bands out there you could get from Emusic (Fates Warning, Falconer, Kings X, Paradise Lost and so on). Sad, sad, sad!

Not only is this sad because we won't be able to download new releases coming from Metal Blade, but also because it means that all existing downloads are gone as well, which kinda breaks one of the original promises that emusic had, which is that you could redownload at any time without extra cost (extremely useful if you happened to loose the drive you had your music on).

While I can totally understand that it might not be EMusic faults here, I also think they could've handled it a little better. They didn't post a notice of any kind that the record was leaving emusic at all, the only indication was that records and tracks just started dissapearing! The least they could've done was post a notice of some sort or send out an email to people that had downloaded songs from the label to alert them of the situation.

The saddest part of it all, is that it probably means I won't be able to support the artists that Metal Blade traded in EMusic any more, since finding their albums where I live is almost impossible, and, to be honest, I just can't afford buying them online as I could with emusic :(. This does make my existing subscription to EMusic much less useful than it used to be :(


Tomas Restrepo

Software developer located in Colombia.