Story of eMusic

eMusic is a digital entertainment retailer focused on serving customers aged 25 and older. The service offers a vast selection of independent music and audio books in a universally compatible file format at great value. eMusic is the world's largest retailer of independent music and the world's second-largest digital music retailer overall, with more than 5 million tracks from over 40,000 independent labels and nearly 6,500 titles from top audio books and their publishers.

A subscription-based service that allows consumers to own, not rent, their entertainment, eMusic was one of the first digital music services to sell music in the popular MP3 format beginning in 1998. It became the first service to sell audiobooks in MP3 in 2007. (MP3 is the only digital format that is compatible with all digital audio devices, including the iPod® and Zune ®.) eMusic targets and successfully direct-markets to consumers who are sophisticated, tech-savvy and knowledge-hungry, dramatically expanding the sale of catalogue widely known as "the long tail." Since Dimensional Associates acquired eMusic in 2003, the company has more than tripled its subscriber base and sold more than 200 million music downloads.

Dimensional Associates is the operating company that manages private equity investments made by JDS Capital. The groundbreaking digital music retailer was originally founded as GoodNoise in 1998 by entrepreneurs Gene Hoffman and Bob Kohn and was the first company to sell online music in the MP3 format.

eMusic caters to music and book lovers of all types in the underserved 25-54 demographic. It does so by cultivating a vast catalogue from the world's top independent labels and audio books publisher that spans every conceivable musical and literary genre, by offering unrivaled discovery tools, and by providing tracks in a high-quality MP3 format (192 Kbps VBR for music and 64 Kbps for books) with no DRM (digital rights management). It all adds up to a pro-consumer experience that gives subscribers the ultimate in flexibility and ample opportunities to discover new, exciting music and books.

The MP3 format allows consumers to play tracks on any device, burn CDs and make as many copies as they like for personal use.

Unlike so much of today's commercial Top 40, independent music is simply about great music. Top independent artists include familiar names such as Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Bob Marley and Creedence Clearwater Revival, legendary mavericks such as the Pixies, Lucinda Williams and Black Flag, and breaking new artists like Spoon, the New Pornographers and Ying Yang Twins.

eMusic has deep relationships with the world's most innovative independent record labels, enabling it to offer cutting-edge music to its subscribers on or before release date. eMusic's label roster includes top sellers like Concord Music Group, Koch, Naxos and Beggars Group, and other well-known independents such as Touch and Go, Merge, Sun, Cooking Vinyl, Fantasy, Bloodshot, Blood and Fire, TVT, Nettwerk, Thrill Jockey, Fat Possum, Razor & Tie, Six Degrees, SST, Smithsonian Folkways, Stones Throw and more.

To satisfy eMusic's intellectual customer, the website's newly launched audio books catalogue includes nearly 5,000 titles spanning top-selling fiction and non-fiction, biography/memoir, mystery, history, business, politics, science language instruction, self-help, and children's books. Among them are notable books narrated by well-known voices such as: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, read by Ralph Fiennes; Shakespeare's Hamlet, read by Sir John Gielgud; Henry James' A Portrait of A Lady, read by Elizabeth McGovern; Nicola Kraus's The Nanny Diaries, read by Julia Roberts; and Barack Obama reading his own books, Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope. eMusic has cultivated relationships with major publishers such as Blackstone Books, Hachette, Naxos, Penguin, Simon and Schuster and Random House, with more to come.

To learn more about audio books and eMusic visit emusic.com