The service's subscribers have received an email informing them that music released by a number of indie labels - among them Beggars Group, Domino and Merge - will no longer be available from the end of this week (November 18).

The mail (replicated on eMusic's blog) said, "This is as heartbreaking to us as it is to you. Please know we have done everything we could to keep them from leaving."

The service began as a specialist offering in 1998, ...