In the latest milestone on the music industry death march, the private equity fund that owns digital music distributor eMusic has decided to trade in its old, loss-making "indie" fans for a fresh crop of youthful, energetic casual listeners. The editors at eMusic eagerly look forward to introducing these new arrivals to Miles Davis.

Regarding the grandfathering plans, it definitely sucks to see your downloads cut. But this isn’t out of a lack of loyalty: this is because those plans, which we have grandfathered for a few years, would now be priced at a loss. We changed what some of you spend per-track so that it was equal to what everyone else spends. Whether Sony happened or not, this was an eventuality. An eventuality that stinks, yes, but one all the same.

Paul Bonanos, for GigaOm:

It seems inevitable that consumers everywhere will eventually demand ubiquitous on-demand mobile streams, making ownership of music less popular and iTunes therefore less important.

Fortune Magazine:

Rhapsody, not iTunes, in my opinion, is the future of music.

From May:

Right before Apple finally implemented variable pricing in iTunes it wasn't hard for many to predict that it would backfire badly on the major record labels as they tried to jack up prices. So, it should come as little surprise to find out those predictions appear to be entirely accurate.

eMusic Implodes, News At 11