eMusic has added some new features and I spent the morning browsing around and trying them out. In a nutshell, the new features both push and pull. They pull in content from around the web (YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia). They push out links to eMusic using social networking, blogging and recommendation sites. All new features can be found only on unique album pages, not on artist pages or new release sections of the site.

Below the track listing there is a box called "Discover" with features written by the eMusic editorial staff for the site's magazine. (Examples are "The Best Hard Rock and Metal on eMusic" and "More Alt-Punk Essentials." Each feature has its own icon with a graphic and a sample of the opening paragraph. The old layout had only text links to the features.

The "Dig deeper on the net" section of an album page pulls additional content from YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia. Also on each album page is a tool bar that has, among other functions, a "post to web" menu with links to Facebook, digg, Twitter, Technorati and about a dozen others.

The content from the web adds to the pages of some artists. Obviously the more popular the artist the more content will be available. I looked at the page for an album by The Hold Steady and watched some promotional videos and a video of the band performing on "Letterman."

For the artists with common names (the ones you have a hard time finding through a search engine) the YouTube section can have more misses than hits. On the page for October Language by the band Belong there are videos for Linkin Park's "Somewhere I Belong," Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together" and Pat Benetar's "We Belong," among others. Nomo's Ghost Rock page had Pastor Troy's "No Mo Play in GA" below a video by Nomo. And for albums like Salimata by Senegal's Tidiane Gaye, there is no content to pull from the Internet. Since eMusic has a great deal of unknown, slow-moving content from around the world, the number of blank "dig deeper" sections will be many.

eMusic wrote about the new features at the site's 17dots blog yesterday. Here's the post. Readers have left some comments on the new design and features. One complaint is the new layout's width. I agree on that one.

Overall, the additions make for an improved experience. For me, eMusic's draw is the content, price and ability to find new music that will interest me. The new features impact only the last of those three. For previewing music (via YouTube videos) and educating yourself before making a purchase, the new features are nice. eMusic's competitors should take notice.

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