“Last week Buy.com tried to take a bite out of Apple’s successful iTunes Music Store by rolling out a low-priced song-download service said to be simple and reliable,” reports Jefferson Graham for USA Today. “But in an example of the technological trickiness involved in offering users the freedom they desire while giving music labels the protections they demand, early customers have found they can’t transfer the tunes they buy on BuyMusic.com to digital portables.”
Graham reports, “The Mac-only iTunes has won raves for ease of use, both in burning CDs and transferring songs to Apple’s iPod players. But BuyMusic’s tracks have started out as unplayable, even on portables lent to the press in a promotional blitz.”
“BuyMusic.com’s tech support staff was of little help when contacted Thursday. An e-mail response read: ”We are unable to provide technical assistance after you have downloaded the music… to your primary computer. In addition, we are unable to credit you back for failed or damaged copies once you have successfully downloaded the music.,” Graham reports. “Apple has sold 6.5 million songs since April; BuyMusic won’t release figures, but ‘it’s not millions,’ [Buy.com’s CEO Scott] Blum says.”
Full article here.
Bwahahahahaha! Serves ’em right!
Found in the article: “The problem: Unlike MP3 music tracks plucked from the Net from pirate sites such as Kazaa, music on BuyMusic is encoded in Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format.”
MSW Media Audio encoding? Any wonder there’s a problem? Expect this sucker to go tits-up more than a Times Square prostitute.
that is funny
Wow, cool scam!
Pay for downloads that don’t play and NO REFUNDS! I wish I would have thought of that!!
Even IF they get this repaired, BuyMusic.com will be synonymous with unreliability and the world’s worst customer service policy!
Downloaded 4 songs from BuyMusic.com over the weekend. No problems. Also received an email stating that if there were any problems with downloads to portable players, to download again, as the problem had been fixed.
You can stop beating your chests now, mac snobs.
Also, get your story straight McDailyNews.
“Downloaded 4 songs from BuyMusic.com over the weekend. You can stop beating your chests now, mac snobs.”
Thank God, I’m so relieved. Since *you* downloaded *four* songs successfully, it must be OK! Please e-mail this amazing information to BuyMusic.com right away so they can ignore all those other people who are confused and still think there’s a problem.
Have a nice day!
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“Even IF they get this repaired, BuyMusic.com will be synonymous with unreliability and the world’s worst customer service policy!”
Um, how is that any different than the current and long-time reputation of their parent company – Buy.com?
PS: grego, MDN didn’t report the story… USA Today did. Follow the link, cluebag.
Hey buddy, let me know if you can get your songs on to an mp3 player or burn them to a CD. And oh yeah, let me know if works on the iPod. tanks!
No 3% here ladies and gentlemen, the iPod accounts for at least 50% of the portable mp3 market…*gasp*….=P
While Buymusic blows, Buy.com has delivered low prices and great service for quite a number of years now.
‘ “Last week Buy.com tried to take a bite out of Apple’s successful iTunes Music Store by rolling out a low-priced song-download service said to be simple and reliable…” ‘
I’m glad to hear that the service sucks even worse than we’d thought, but I just have to say that, currently, Buymusic.com is NOT in competition with iTMS. The services are not available to the same people, so, currently they are unable to compete. When iTMS for Windows comes out that will change, but for now, even if the service was worth the bandwidth it eats, it couldn’t “take a bite out of Apple’s successful iTunes Music Store.”
Yawn. They fixed it. Big deal.
And stop the lies. The iPod might account for 50 percent of the “hard drive-based portable audio player market,” but it’s only 12 percent of the wider portable digital audio player market.
Sounds like buymusic.com is a Verisign owned company
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Well, at least when I tried this weekend the service ‘is no iTunes’.
The DLs did work, but it’s certainly no competitor other then being on a different platform. To say it’s a rush job is being kind, and the ads are _just_ a touch misleading.
They also need to get in touch with the people at Google, the search function is ‘lacking’.
“PS: grego, MDN didn’t report the story… USA Today did. Follow the link, cluebag.”
Sorry Atomic Bomb, didn’t realize your news site here is recycled. Didn’t mean to crash your pity party…really. Google News has a nice little link to this site/story, so they might want to start checking their sources. USA Today for technical news…..made my day. =)
MacDailyNews Discussion Board: “If you are a bitter Mac user, then you are in the right place.” “Come…let us help you with your feelings of inferiority….we care”.
“If you are a bitter Mac user, then you are in the right place.”
If you’re *not* a Mac user, what the hell are you doing on a Mac news site in the first place? Could it be…envy? I sure as hell don’t run around checking all the Windows news sites. I couldn’t give a flying f**k what’s happening in Windows-land. I left all those nightmares behind when I switched, and don’t care to be reminded of them.
If anybody should be having a pity party, it’s *us* for *you*. Have fun with BuyMusic.com…Windows users deserve a service of its caliber, and since they’re so used to Windows crashes and problems, probably won’t even realize it sucks.
like I wrote mac snob….might want to actually read AND understand:
“Google News has a nice little link to this site/story…”
I mistakenly thought this was a news site. But lucky me, I stumbled upon a bunch of bitter Mcusers with a complex.
Please stop the making up of excuses for the shabbiness of Windows solutions and the mediocrity that is BuyMusic or I shall be forced to break out the word “lemming” again!!
grego,
No “recycled” news here. Just consolidated links and commentary. If you read the first sentence of the article, though, you would have seen “… reports Jefferson Graham for USA Today…” Check it out, you don’t even have to link!
As to your comment about tech news on USA Today, how is this tech news. The article talks about a music purchasing (well, technically music leasing) service. Nothing tech about that.
Facts: BuyMusic.,com is a website, not an application. I(t’s not integrated perfectly with the OS, app, and player hardware (iPod). It resembles iTMS the way an alley cat resembles a lion. Wintel Sufferers will always have a worse experience and believe it to be “the same as on a Mac,’ until they actually try a Mac for more than 5 minutes.
MacDailyNews is great because it provides a place to find out Mac and Apple-related news, gives the links, and lets us freely comment. Even if they didn’t have SteveJack’s excellent opinion archive and notable original stories of their own, MDN would be the place to be for Mac users and those interested in the Mac. I find more value here than almost anyplace else – it’s catered to me: a Mac user. And the feedback section often turns up valuable info I can’t find easily elsewhere.
“I mistakenly thought this was a news site. But lucky me, I stumbled upon a bunch of bitter Mcusers with a complex.”
Oh, poor baby. Did you get your feelings hurt? Gee, I’m sorry. Of course, if you’d gone to a Ford site and said something to the effect of “Ford sux, Chevy Roolz!” I’m sure you’d have gotten a completely different reception that you got here. But *we* have a complex. Right…
actually mac snob, I wasn’t referring to your crap…I was referring to all the BuyMusic trashing and the false pride exemplified when I first entered the site….but if it makes you feel good…
you hurt my feelings 🙁
actually, it’s been humorous to get you so emotional/territorial…thanks for the laughs
Everyone ignore ‘grego’, he is merely attempting to draw out an arguement.
Buymusic is a joke, it suits Windows perfectly!
Hi everybody!
Mr. Grego is doing us a favor. So stop being so mean to him.
He’s here to tell us that we’re all MacLosers, and that our computers are mere computer-wannabees.
He’s going to explain how we should all get in the herd he’s in and get a ‘real business computer’, because it has more games than those toy MACs.
He’s going to impress us with stories how his ‘real PC’ doesn’t crash, so all those folks that have a ‘realPC’ and say they have numerous crashes – are liars.
He’s going to serve up the ‘Apple stole from Xerox’ MeadowPie, without EVER doing a minute of actual research behind that bit of HISTORY.
He’ll talk about all the choices that he has, yet he aches for the Mac choice to disappear. Don’t understand this thinking? Only other MacHaters do.
There’s nothing that can be learned by these types. He’s right, we’re wrong. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All us MacOlytes have heard it all a thousand times before.