Some interesting news over at eMusic

Among the roster of music experts hired by eMusic are former Rolling Stone writer and author Michael Azerrad, former New York Times music critic Ann Powers and Justin Davidson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of classical music.

The critics will write album reviews, columns, and communicate with subscribers on a message board.

Users will also be able to discuss or swap song recommendations with other subscribers through the message boards and other online community features.

I forsook eMusic a while back when they started limiting the number of downloads. It wasn't that I wanted that many songs, but rather I downloaded very unevenly, 100 songs one month and then none the next two. I tended to download everything that appealed to me and then delete what I didn't like. While they haven't reversed that policy (and probably can't for financial reasons), they've done the next best thing, which is put more emphasis on information about the artists so users can more accurately determine what they want. Might save them on bandwidth, too. Unfortunately, it won't save them this former customer.