emusic.com bills itself as a music download subscription service with more than "6 million" songs available for legal download. The songs on the site are available in MP3 format and will work "on any MP3 player." Subscription plans begin at $11.99 per month for 24 downloads. The site's home page even features a quote from Rolling Stone magazine, claiming that the service is iTunes' "cheaper, cooler cousin."

Comparing emusic to iTunes, though, is like comparing apples to spaceships. In short, emusic is a low-rate service with practically no music available by any major recording artist. To make matters worse, the company conducts its business in such a clandestine way that users find themselves out of their hard-earned cash before they even realize they've made a mistake.

Let's address the selection first. As stated, emusic offers practically no material by any major artists. Searches for Led Zeppelin, U2, The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Duran Duran, Lil Wayne, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Madonna and hundreds of others turn up the standard emusic return page that states: "We apologize but we don't have albums by [insert artist here] at this time. Why? It’s probably because we don’t have a deal in place yet that allows us to make their music available at the great price eMusic members expect and love." But major artists aren't the only thing that emusic is lacking. The site bills itself as a venue for independent labels as well, but a search for lower-end and even middle-of-the road acts turns up no results. Are you a fan of 30 Seconds to Mars? Breaking Benjamin? Silversun Pickups? Muse? Cracker? Well guess what — bands like these also "don’t have a deal in place" with emusic yet.

From the site's selection, let's move on to the bonus downloads you get when you sign up for a paid membership. What the site's owners fail to tell you is that any bonus downloads that a user may accrue don't count as "paid download credits" — even if they came as part of a paid subscription. Do a search for Billy Joel — one of the few major artists that the site actually has available — and you'll see that any downloads from Joel must come from paid credits only (a designation you won't see until after you've signed up). Thus, any bonus credits you receive are essentially worthless unless you're downloading something really obscure.

Oh, that's another thing. Like to download singles? Chances are good that you're out of luck. Do a search for Bruce Springsteen's album Born to Run. Whoops! Looks like you can't download the title track without downloading the whole album — which costs 12 download credits. The same is true for Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did it Again" or Pink's "Get The Party Started."

Now you've signed up for emusic and discovered that the site has nothing to offer. You can't find anything to use your download credits on, let alone even wasting them on music that you're only lukewarm about. Too bad the site fails to mention that emusic is non-refundable. Where do the site's owners tell you about this? Certainly not in the FAQs, which I read intimately both before and after I signed up. Ah, it's in the Term of Use, which is a minuscule link at the bottom of the sign-up page.

Calls to emusic's customer service are almost as worthless as the site's Terms of Service link. Call operators will place you on hold for long periods of time, and "supervisors" are both uncooperative and inflexible.

So, are you ready to try emusic, iTunes' "cheaper, cooler cousin" with more than "6 million" songs to choose from? Take a tip from me and don't waste your money on these scamers.

Thanks for reading. If you found this guide useful, please vote "yes" at the bottom of this page. Happy listening!