Buy.com founder Scott Blum told USA Today’s Jefferson Graham, “‘In the computer industry, a month is a huge amount of time, and we’re going to take advantage of it.’ He says he’s prepared to sell 1 million songs a day. ‘I expect to do 200 million to 300 million downloads in the first year.'”
Blum launches BuyMusic.com today. Graham reports, “BuyMusic.com will stock 350,000 songs for as little as 79 cents each, though most sell for 99 cents or $1.19. All can be transferred to portables or burned to CDs.”
“Buy.com kicks off with a $40 million ad campaign (1,900 TV spots in the next two weeks) and the introduction today of the ‘world’s largest billboard’ – 150 feet high, 60 feet wide – in Times Square with a near-naked rocker Tommy Lee, who is the service’s spokesman,” Graham reports.
“BuyMusic’s songs are fully portable, but there’s a catch: None can be moved to Apple’s iPod, which has 50% of the digital music player market, though they do work with players from Creative Labs, Rio, Lyra and others,” Graham reports. “‘If you don’t support Windows, you cut off 97% of the market,’ Blum says. ‘The iPod is the best little product I’ve ever seen, but it’s like building the best car in the world, yet it doesn’t use everyone’s gas.’ The Windows version of iPod isn’t compatible with iTunes or BuyMusic.
Windows Media Player 9 (not available for Macintosh) is required to buy music on BuyMusic.com.
Graham reports, “Despite the flurry of action in the paid-download arena, Ted Cohen of EMI says he doesn’t think a la carte singles are the only answer to the record industry’s blues. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all thing,” he says. “ITunes is great for getting a specific song, but it’s not a Border’s-type experience for browsing. If I look up Bob Dylan, I don’t get as much information about him as I would at Rhapsody.”
“‘The reason Apple has done so well is they’ve advertised it really well,’ Cohen says. ‘None of the other services has done a good job explaining its message.’ Jupiter Media analyst Lee Black says Apple proved that people were willing to pay for what could be found free, as long as the price was right and the rules were few. ‘They unbundled it from a subscription and made it a clean process for purchasing. Apple owns the software, the operation system, and it’s a nice synergistic platform,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be harder for the PC companies. But if Buy.com can make it easy, they should be able to attract a lot of attention,'” Graham reports.
Full article here.
Related article from MacDailyNews:
“BuyMusic.com launches; founder says Steve Jobs ‘a visionary, but he’s on the wrong platform'”
“BuyMusic.com TV commericals blatant copies of Apple’s iTunes Music Store ads”
“…’The iPod is the best little product I’ve ever seen, but it’s like building the best car in the world, yet it doesn’t use everyone’s gas.’ The Windows version of iPod isn’t compatible with iTunes or BuyMusic.”
I wouldn’t call using Windows Media “Everyones Gas”, MP3 is the standard (or everyones gas) format! And of course this guy seems to forget that iPod works on both Mac and Windows, so Apple has targeted 100% of the market! Of course the Windows userbase still stands at about 85-90% while Mac has 10% and Linux 5% roughly, you still have to account for Amiga, BeOS, Solaris and etc…
“The iPod is the best little product I’ve ever seen, but it’s like building the best car in the world, yet it doesn’t use everyone’s gas”
Hmmm. He defeats his own argument with self-contradiction.
I don’t think he’s making this available to 97% of users. He’s restricting it to at least 50% of users by using a proprietary format (windows media). Probably less. How many other players can WMA as well as MP3 ? Not all I’d bet.
An iTMS was always meant to be made available for Windows after the current ‘trial’.
I hope Apple will come soon, very soon with the iTMS or Windows… to get their money and imrove Apple’s user base
DudeMac,
The world-wide Windows user base probably the 85-90% you cite, but the HOME user base – the target audience here – is far less. The vast majority of the thousands upon thousands (perhaps millions?) of cheap Wintel boxes sold for businesses of all sizes and used as servers in huge farms will never see a music download. Combine that with the general multi-media illiteracy of the average home Windows user and you are left with a much smaller slice of the market than Buy.com would like to believe.
Is Scott Blum on the Bush Administration’s budget team? His projections look VERY optimistic!
It’s nice that other companies are trying to mimic Apple and the iTMS but the thing that really PISSES ME OFF is the fact that none of these idiots can come up with an original idea of their own. Take for example the one vendor who will be calling their music store iMusic. Direct rip-off of iTunes. Now, Buy.com is showing commercials for their service which are a direct rip-off of Apples iPod and iTMS commercials. I would rather just bide my time and wait for the iTMS for Windows to debut rather than buy from these other jackasses.
This Blum f**k sounds a lot like a car salesman. I’m gonna enjoy watching him go broke, even when it’s because of M$ moving into online music stores. And I hope Apple will sue his @$$ off for ripping their iTunes commercials.
Die in a ditch Blum! >:(
I don’t think he gets it. What makes iTunes successful is the seamless connection from online purchase to the computer to the iPod. No one else has done this, and with the coming release of iTMS for Windows, Apple will do it again.
Pushing the WMA format is going to be an uphill battle, not just because of the iPod, but because WMA has not caught on as a universal music format because the quality is not there and its perceived to be another proprietary move by Microsoft.
the guy doesn’t have a clue.
“Graham reports, “Despite the flurry of action in the paid-download arena, Ted Cohen of EMI says he doesn’t think a la carte singles are the only answer to the record industry’s blues. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all thing,” he says. “ITunes is great for getting a specific song, but it’s not a Border’s-type experience for browsing. If I look up Bob Dylan, I don’t get as much information about him as I would at Rhapsody.”
It’s all about selling add on stuff folks. ultimately it comes down to whether they will they be able to “add value” to the music. I personally think that buying no frills music ala iTunes is a better alternative than being sold some convoluted marketing interface with links and click through advertising.
more than likely if I am going to buy music, I am familiar with the artist and can get all the bio and marketing information off the web. a Borders type browsing experience? give me a break.
this is the same crap that created the dot com boom. the impression that computers have created all this “opportunity” to sell us things. things and information we don’t need, probably don’t want and can get elsewhere. just as digital killed the record companies (they just don’t know it yet) so does it kill a lot of business models. the product is now just a bunch of bits. their only power in the future is what they can build into the “products” (i.e. BuyMusic) they sell us today. I say we don’t need them.
ITMS is the way it needs to be. all else is bullsh*t.
Cinque
ahHAHAHAHAHA come on guys just laugh with me. This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. it’s the most blatant rip off of iMS, everything he says refers to Apple, Apple this, Apple that.
1 million downloads per day? is this guy mad? that’s impossible especially for such a crappy service…..then he can’t even do math, he goes on to say “I expect to do 200 million to 300 million downloads in the first year.”
BuyCrap.com: The newest rip off of Apple
This really is laughable…I own an iPod, was looking forward to some competition to get prices down, but WMA? DRM? come on…1 million songs a day is really absurd.
Steve Jobs gets credit for his execution. Something that hasn’t happend a lot lately in any industry.
errr…another thing Graham is wrong about, the Windows iPod DOES work with iTunes, is this guy an idiot? has even tried this stuff? and oh yes, mp3’s are standard across the platforms, so I have no idea what he means by cutting off 97% when the iPod covers multiple platforms. Someone should sue this guy for false advertising…
Honestly said, I’ll go with whatever is first in Europe. I don’t like WMA though, but I assume that in a couple of weeks there will be a WMA to MP3 convertor.
This copycat says that the iPod isn’t compatible with his tunes. Couldn’t it also be said that his tunes aren’t compatible with the iPod. Who’s got the biggest market share here?
Garbage. It’s a website (and not a very good one at that). You are responsible for organizing your songs elsewhere (no iTunes) and you’re stuck playing them back on not-the-best players (no iPod support).
Can you spell F-A-I-L-U-R-E?
iTMS for Windows (even as vapor) blows this away.
Greedy, shameless rat bastards.
As Maranello stated, the elegance of the iTunes Music Store is that it’s IN YOUR MP3 PLAYER, which also happens to be your CD burner and your device syncronization application. It’s all right there in front of you. However, PC users have been settling for half-ass versions of what Mac users get al their life, so they may be just fine with Buymusic’s lame ripoff service.
Their TV commercials and the front page of their website layout is a direct rip off of Apple’s iTMS. Their 79 cent song and $7.95 album prices they are advertising are flat out decieving, as MOST of their songs are 99 cents, and most of their albums appear to be $13. Thier file restriction limits are extremely tight, and it seems many of their “300,000 songs” are unavailable for purchase.
Lastly, who the hell gets Tommy Lee to be their spokeperson? Yes, Criminals make GREAT spokespersons! Please PC users, continue stealing your music.
Spread the word and KEEP in mind… the number of “Windows Machines” used for actually listening to “Music” is FAR, far less than 97% of the market. If a reporter, ever says: “97% of the market” or “Windows Machine account for 97% of the music market” PLEASE do me a favor and explain… Nearly half of the PC’s in use are only used as Cash Registers, Dumb Terminals, Fancy Typewriters, (insert yours here), etc. NOT Machines that will EVER, EVER, Download Music. Pass the word on, there is an ERROR in reporting the numbers of ACTUAL machines for PERSONAL USE, compared to PC’s used in uninteresting ways for Businesses. Thank you for your support!
I went to BuyMusic.COM. It told me that I must use Windows and Internet Explorer. I can’t wait until it starts telling people what they must listen to.
I’ll keep using Firebird.
If a service would sell in the .mp4 audio format, and someone would sell an .mp4 player, we would have a cross-platform standard that could sell to anyone (unix users, etc).
“If a service would sell in the .mp4 audio format, and someone would sell an .mp4 player, we would have a cross-platform standard that could sell to anyone (unix users, etc).”
It’s called iTunes Music Store and an iPod (AAC is MP4!). Of course it’s not yet available for everyone but it will be…
Why is every Apple “competitor” so unimaginative? The layout of BuyMusic.com is a direct copy of the iTunes store.
As usual, an inferior knockoff. Like we had in the past…bad imitations of the iMac, etc.
I am really looking forward to the day (not far off now), when Apple launches ITMS for Windows. Bye Bye music.com!
It looks like burning to CD only works on WinXP except something called “Roxio CD burning”. I assume that is a DRM enabled data CD though I don’t really know. Also, each label gets to decide what you can do with tracks from that label. From the site, it appears that you won’t know what is allowed until you buy. Odd.
Scott Blum can kiss my A*s
Wow one million a day, would bet even money that he pulled that number out of his butt. Did not think that lower class life forms (read Wintel freaks) were capable of even understanding much more than food, sex sleep, music appears to be out of their reach. Cave man songs are not abundant. The sad part is that a bunch of wintel pin heads are out there yelling ya ya aren’t we great . No mater how bad the site is there will be idiots trying to the rest of us how great it is.
Don’t forget, Buy.com is privately held by Scott Blum. They report to no shareholders, so they can report whatever numbers they want. A million songs a day? Sure, what the hell! Nobody to report to anyway, so who cares if the numbers are bogus. Same thing goes for the bullshit 300,000 song claim. Yeah. Right.