Some ideas for Emusic

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Being in a different part of interwebland from the folks at Emusic, I have a couple ideas maybe they didn't think of, that could "drive use" with "early adopters" who have "discretionary income" and "time to waste."

• Free download feed. They have a daily free download you can click to from their IE toolbar. So gimme that in a feed, so I can follow it without IE. It doesn't even have to be a podcast, since I know as it is I have to be logged in and use the download manager.
  
• Preorders. Let me buy something so it's in "my downloads" before it's available to actually download. Then tell me when it's actually available.
• Subscribe to a release. In fact, let me register my simple interest in an artist or album, and just tell me when it's available without having bought it. (When is the new Ted Leo/Of Montreal/Softlightes out, again?)
• Snarf my ratings. I don't want to have to tell you, too, what I thought of that album I just bought (or that album you carry that I already got from iTunes or on CD). You should be able to pull my ratings from iTunes (with a plugin, or just run some script from the download manager) or, heaven forfend, Vox. If you really want to own my rating data (like Netflix does my movie rating data), you need to solicit it actively, then send it to the other services on my behalf. (Not that Netflix shares it out, but they do solicit it, and that way you can show you're hipper than they are.)
  

The main theme of these suggestions seems to be don't make me work. Emusic, I want you to push the content I'm interested in to me, rather than making me go to your site and get it. I'm much more likely to buy (or get distracted for a few hours trying to find something to buy) if you interrupt my routine to offer me something shiny. On the other hand, if you don't want to push me into rating an album, I want you to pull my ratings from me automatically without my intervention.

But personalized push is an uncommon usage pattern still. You, Emusic, already push me in email, but only along with the groups of your customers who are interested in the broad genres you've identified. You realize there are particular styles in those genres, but you don't seem to target me to any of those. (I haven't bought a thing in half the styles of Alternative/Punk, yet I get the whole Alternative/Punk update. Just sayin'.) These suggestions even go a step beyond that, letting me personally customize my interaction with you.

Keeping all that subscription data and sending all that custom content is sure to be expensive, but I sure know it would drive me to the site more. (At which point I would think of a few more even more expensive things to suggest...)