BuyMusic.com is intentionally mimicking Apple’s iTunes Music Store’s successful advertising campaign.
“‘Yes, there is a similarity between the ads,’ BuyMusic spokeswoman Stacey Doherty said. ‘It was meant to be a compliment to Apple,'” reports Wired’s Danit Lidor.
Lidor continues, “Doherty says the point of the commercials is to entice people who own PCs, which happens to be almost everyone. ‘Music for the rest of us’ (BuyMusic.com’s slogan) means everyone who doesn’t have a Mac, which accounts for about 150 million PC users,’ she said.”
“Apple could choose to fight back, certainly. Copyright law provides protection for an expression of an idea, but not for the idea itself. However, there is ‘substantial similarity’ between the two ads that could be used ‘at least as a valuable argument’ for a copyright-infringement lawsuit, said Robyn Crowther, an intellectual property attorney at Caldwell, Leslie, Newcombe & Pettit,” Lidor reports. ‘The fair-use doctrine does provide a defense to copyright- and trademark-infringement claims,’ Crowther said. ‘The critical issue will be whether the BuyMusic.com is a parody of the Apple ads. When the second work just borrows from the first work to get attention or to avoid having to develop something new or fresh and does not make fun of the original work
Tommy Lee smashing the crap out of the exact same Gibson guitar Apple is using for the iTMS promotional stuff? Yeah… very complementary.
Funny how many companies piggy-back on Apple’s innovations, ideas, and image but in the same breath say Apple is dying.
If there are 150 Million Wintel PC’s and 27 Million Mac PC’s (7 Million OS X and 20 Million Classic) doesn’t that make Apples Market share 18%?
And Tommy’s latest CD is on ITMS…Tommy’s a Mac Guy, the gig is just a gig – no loyalty there, and why would there be? It’s HollyWeird folks…
Stingerman:
You’re doing what so many people do. You’re confusing installed USERBASE with US MARKETSHARE.
to stingerman:
no, it’s actually 15%. you compared apple’s userbase to MS’s, instead of Apple’s userbase compared to ALL computer users.
What you did: 27/150 (million) = 18%
Correct: 27/177 (million) = 15.25%
It’s all moot anyway. According to Alexa.com, an Internet traffic measuring service from Amazon.com, traffic on BuyMusic.com has been going into a steep dive ever since launch.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare;_sites=&url=buymusic.com#graph
There are many hobby sites with traffic that is better than BuyMusic.com right now – chances are, they are bleeding cash like no tomorrow. How many songs have they sold? Probably not even a 100,000, with the kind of traffic they are getting. It won’t be long before Buy.com shuts buymusic.com forever at this rate – you heard it from me first.
Paul:
Nope, sorry. You can’t claim to be the first at foretelling buymusic.com’s death. Nearly every major media publication has been telling of buymusic.com’s death since the day it began service to the public.
To others:
Buy.com and BuyMusic.com are not affiliated. They are both seperate, privately owned entities. Yes, the private owner is the same man, but they are not tied together in any way. That’d be similar to saying that Apple and Pixar are one in the same because of Steve Jobs.
Are those of you living in the US not sick to death of lawyers jumping in on everything? It’s just lawsuit, followed by lawsuit, followed by lawsuit. These ads are irrelevant. People aren’t stupid enough to fall for the shoddy Buymusic in large numbers, and to launch a lawsuit gives the impression that Apple view these jokers as competition. Apple is taking the best course of action by just sitting by and letting Buymusic dwindle to nothing. No lawyers necessary.
BuyMusic sucks and their lameness is certainly further increased by copying Apple’s ads, but right now, with no iTMS for Windows, they’re not in competition, so even if they copied Apple’s ads to try to confuse people it’s not possible to steal their customers. After iTMS for Windows comes out that’ll be a different story though.
Do you Mac users do anything but bitch??