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eMusic users are usually in their 20's to 50's, who mostly purchase downloads of albums as opposed to individual songs, and utilize the site's hundreds of original articles and reviews each month. As of March 2011, eMusic has more than 12 million tracks up from 9 million tracks in September 2010. New subscribers can take out a 7 day trial before taking a full subscription. The trial account turns into a billable subscription account after seven days. Refunds are possible under certain circumstances by contacting eMusic customer support. Subscriptions allow users to download a number of tracks per 30-day period.

eMusic currently offers a number of Membership plans, including Basic, Plus, Premium and Fan in exchange for a monthly fee. Every 30 days the download limit is reset (regardless of how many songs were downloaded). eMusic also offers "booster packs" to subscribers, which expire after 90 days rather than after a month, and are consumed when subscribers download tracks beyond their monthly allotments. Earlier business models prior to Dimensional Associates' ownership supported an "all-you-can-eat" download subscription. For a monthly fee, customers were able to download as many tracks as they wished from the service.

eMusic was one of the first sites to sell music in the MP3 format, beginning in 1998. It differs from other well-known music download services (such as the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3) in that it is a download-to-own subscription service. However, in 2011 eMusic took its first, limited step into streaming in an effort to help users discover unfamiliar tracks and artists more easily.

In 2006, eMusic added two European versions of its online store: 'eMusic UK' and 'eMusic Europe'. Current subscribers to the global site that were within the European Union had their membership transferred to the appropriate European store. eMusic UK and eMusic Europe have higher prices compared to their North American counterpart, partially due to the extra sales taxes which these stores are now subject to. However, the changeover also included access to labels previously unavailable to non-European customers, notably London-based Domino Records and artists such as The White Stripes and Mogwai. It is also notable that the European version of the store is for customers within the European Union, not customers within Europe.

eMusic's early growth may have been due to its early support of the MP3 format, lack of digital rights management (DRM) encoding and low prices; all concepts advocated by the Open Music Model. Devin Leonard of CNN attributes the real reason for eMusic's growth is this: it was the only online music store aside from iTunes that sold tracks that could be played on an iPod. In 2009, a pricing increase in Emusic's business model enabled Sony to provide some of its catalogue. Tracks from the Sony catalogue over two years old were then made available to eMusic customers. Prior to July 2009, eMusic mainly sold music from independent labels.

eMusic shares the revenue with artists who have submitted music via digital distribution service providers such as: CD Baby, TuneCore, Nimbit, State 51 and EmuBands. eMusic has not had significant growth in subscribers - maintaining over 400,000 subscribers since 2007.

eMusic was the first digital retailer to sell DRM-free downloadable audiobooks in the MP3 format beginning in 2007. Audible.com, its largest competitor, offers audiobooks with digital rights management in the .aa format.

eMusic launched a Canadian version of its store in 2008.