“A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services,” Alex Veiga reports for Associated Press. “Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.’s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs.”
Windows Media Player 9 (not available for Macintosh) is required to buy music on BuyMusic.com.
“BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store since its launch April 28. BuyMusic founder Scott Blum called Apple CEO Steve Jobs ‘a visionary, but he’s on the wrong platform.’ While Apple users constitute about 3 percent of the personal computer market, BuyMusic is targeting the 97 percent of people with PCs.”
“BuyMusic is charging 70 cents for individual song downloads — 9 cents lower than MusicNow, which previously had the lowest per song price. It’s also undercutting competitors’ price for a full album download at $7.95. The iTunes’ service charges $9.99 for most full albums. BuyMusic downloads are in Microsoft’s Windows Media format,” Veiga reports.
“Still, BuyMusic suffers from some of the same licensing drawbacks that the other PC-based digital music retailers have. Jobs secured uniform licensing deals from all the record companies that allow all iTunes songs to be burned onto CD an unlimited amount of times, save for a restriction for making multiple CDs with the exact song lists. All songs on iTunes can also be transferred to up to three different computers and to the iPod, a portable digital music player. Blum was not able to obtain uniform licensing rights from the record labels and artists. As a result, different songs on BuyMusic have different restrictions for how often, if at all, they may be burned onto CDs or copied to other PCs or portable music devices,” Veiga reports.
Full article here.
Related articles from MacDailyNews:
“BuyMusic.com not compatible with Apple iPod; founder expects to sell 1 million songs per day”
“BuyMusic.com TV commericals blatant copies of Apple’s iTunes Music Store ads”
Wrong platform? Humbug! Wait ’till BuyMusic goes belly-up!
Individual songs start at .79 not .70. The BuyMusic.com site looks alot like iTunes!
Well that’s a load of cr*p then isn’t it.
When will the record companies learn that when we buy some music, be it on an album, or from a website, we want to be able to copy it as many times as we like onto any media we like.
When you buy a record you aren’t stopped from recording it onto tape as many times as you like, and that record will last for years and years, so what’s the big deal with an mp3 ?
If I like the sound of one mp3, downloaded for free, I will go out and buy the CD, and make my own mp3’s from it. if I could buy mp3’s from Apple Europe I would buy them…Thus saving me the trouble of having to go out and buy CD’s.
I don’t care how I buy my music, as long as I have the freedom to do with it what I choose.
The billions of billions of dollars/pounds the music industry harps on about it losing because of pirates is just managment bullsh*t.
If they want to sell more records and make more money they should stop stiffing us all by charging so much for an album. If they halved the price of an album I bet sales would leap 100’s of percent.
end of rant
Those F****** at BuyMusic not only copied the looks but even copied the Apple Commercials. How low can you go…
Well, the songs should be cheaper. After all, they are in the arcane, useless Windows Media format. This thing will bomb, bomb, bomb. “300,000 songs”? Yeah, if you want Tommy Lee’s solo crap. What a waste of cyberspace.
Buy.com? Die.com!
Apple’s iTunes Music Store has nothing to worry about. Songs in a poorer quality with strange and inconsistent limitations is no bargain at any price.
Although I did find a .79 song, most are .99 or more. Obscure indie songs are cheaper
Man, that’s the best laugh I’ve had in months! They spent $40 million on this concept? BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
I think it’s safe to say that Apple has nothing to worry about.
HA! What a freaking over-hyped JOKE! On BuyMusic, the Coldplay CD is $13.59, yet comes with many restrictions, like 1 download, 3 transfers and 3 burns. For $9.99 at the ITMS, you get FAR fewer restrictions and a better media format. For $13.59, I could go to my nearby Indie CD store and buy the freaking CD, how is this any kind of DEAL?
I also find it funny that I wasn’t able to use Mozilla Firebird to view the site, getting a “In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com’s offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.” message when connecting.
Oh sure, they have Radiohead, and the ITMS doesn’t, but with all the WM format restrictions, I don’t see that as an advantage over the ITMS.
Looking over the prices, I see FAR more CDs for a good deal MORE than Apple’s $9.99 and most tracks priced at $.99.
None of this surprises me of course. Rock on Apple.
Wow. Lots of clueless responses here. That’s a shame because your comments may very well come back to haunt you.
So I downloaded a single song from Buymusic.com. The quality is excellent. The limitations are a non-worry. The compatibility is much better than that offered by Apple. In other words, Apple DOES have something to worry about, as it’s also compatible with the 97 percent of the PC users out there, not the 1 percent (or less) who have OS X.
I like iTunes better. But BuyMusic.com already has more music, cheaper prices, better quality, better compatibility, and a much, much wider audience.
Time for a wake-up call, Aryugaetu and Nuclear Kid. The party is over.
Uhhh, Paul, WMA is hardly a standard format, on top of that, the songs don’t work with the iPod which is the LEADING PORTABLE music player…I don’t know about you, but the whole point of digital is portability. BuyMusic is shooting itself in the foot by not allowing it to work with the iPod. Get a clue…
Everyone knows that PC users are a bunch of cheap ass mo-fos that don’t want to pay for anything that they an STEAL for free!
LOL!
You Wintel idiots are the ones who need to get a clue!
What’s that colour at buymusic.com called? Puke-Green?
Christ, you couldn’t pay me to buy music in WMA. On a delusional whim about 2 years ago, I decided to save space on my windows tower by converting my collection to WMA. Sure, its smaller, but it now sounds like hell and I can’t play any of the songs on my macs. Great, just great…
If buy.com doesn’t sell in MP3 format, or something equivalent, people just aren’t going to buy it. Apple got away with the change to AAC because they could claim better quality and they could throw around the Dolby name. What is buy.com going to do, claim that MS makes good audio? haha.
I (and I’m sure Jobs) welcome this attempt to compete with Apple. Once a few Windoids download and pay for these songs, I’m sure the first few weeks will have great sales. But after that, it’s going to sink in what you can and cannot do with the DRM files. Let every Windows user get burned by this experience, and they will gladly accept iTMS when it does debut on their platform.
Yeah, and another thing… I just tried to browse the site from my WinXP computer using my Mozilla-based browser. Love the message that popped up..
“Thank you for visiting BuyMusic.com.
In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com’s offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.
Download Internet Explorer Here.”
Talk about MS beating buy.com down with a stick… they won’t let buy.com use any products from any other company. WMA, MS DRM, IE, etc. Is this an effort by buy.com or is MS just using buy.com to promote their products?
obvious problems with this plan:
Windows media files. Gee, I just bought this Mp3 player. What’s the point here …
Limitations in burning to cd … great, so I buy this music, I can’t put it on my Mp3 player, how am I supposed to listen to it anywhere but on my computer? I can’t even burn to cd and listen in the car …
79 cents … great price point, but is that discount equivalent to the discount I get by losing the above … I don’t think so.
I’d pay 10 cents for this service … maybe on a good day. Most likely I won’t buy anything.
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.
Well imagine my surprise. Paul Thurrott piping up about this. I can’t believe it! </sarcasm>
Thurrott said:
“So I downloaded a single song from Buymusic.com. The quality is excellent. The limitations are a non-worry.”
Funny since I remember when iTunes was originally announced you were over at the MacCentral boards talking smack about it because the quality of AAC was inferior, and that you were restricted in how you could use the tracks. AAC is much better than WMF which can’t even play on the iPod, and who knows what the restrictions will be for any particular song? At some point will you realize that you are a FUD spreading hypocrite, who has a reality distortion field to rival any in Cupertino? If Apple is so insignificant, why do you spend so much time writing about them.
This is too funny. I almost fell out of my chair when i saw the web site it is sooo bad. OMG they even copied the Apple Commercials. This CEO of their comes off as a bad used care salesman. Absolutely no class whatsoever. Steve is leagues above this piece of crap, not to mention the fact that these WMA files has SERVER restrictions. I did my own research
Audioslaves new album it $12.96 the restrictions are download 5, transfers to a portable player 5 and burns on a CD 5. WTF is THAT?!!?!? Holy rusted metal batman! You mean I can only transfer it to a player just 5 times and never again? And I can only use the tracks in 5 CD. What if I want to make a custom mix CD for a party? I can only do it for 4 parties and one CD for myself for my ENTIRE LIFE in until I DIE?! HELL NO. The same album is $11.99 on iTunes with none of the draconian restrictions. iTunes Rocks and will CRUSH the little copycat bug into dust. 30 days from now I predict that Buymusic.com will NOT be releasing music download data at all. They will never even come close.
Scary,
Personally i think this is scary. I think this will successed. I agree with you guys that this is crap and a bad copy of iTMS, but the site does not advertise that the music will not work with IPod, it does not advertise the different restrictions and inferior format, and the site is targeted for people who use Windows and IE.
And those “97%” out there using M$ just aren’t generally to computer literate and will buy this, because they don’t know all the things they can’t do with it.
And when their wma downloads won’t work with the Ipod they well curse themselves for buying an apple product, because it is not compatible, instead of actually targeting their wrath at leasemusic.com for using a non standard inferior format.
I think this is bad, because as everything else windows it successed on the basis of ignorance and deception.
I have to agree with Chomper. WMA is NOT “ISO/IEC certified” in otherwords it’s not a standard. WMA is very PROPRIETARY! ISO/IEC 13818 is the standards number for AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) just like IEEE-1394 is the standards number for Apple’s FireWire. I dont see WMA anywhere on that “standards” list. Oh yeah, MPEG-4 (ISO/IEC 14496) that Apple’s Quicktime is derived from is a standard. Gee, it makes Apple look less proprietary. Paul Thurrott, I believe that ignorance is bliss and you are living it. Look it up yourself: http://www.ieee.org/ , http://www.iso.org/
Well, there sure are a lot of Mac users preaching to the choir. Problem is, until iTunes works for WIN users, you’re still saying the same thing…the 3% of PC users that you are find it silly to offer WMA files, which will work on 97% of the PCs out there. hmmm. And, how is iTunes NOT a proprietary platform? It ONLY works on Macs, and OS-X at that. Don’t get me wrong, iTunes is GREAT, and I love my OS-X Ti-Book, but really people, it ONLY works for us. Congrats for someone who is marketing to the masses. And BTW, WMA play just fine on my Archos Jukebox, which is cross-platform. I do wish I had an iPod, but they didn’t exist when I bought this
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> and it still sounds great (no, I don’t load any WMA files on it. Everything is 192+ MP3)
My worry is that your average soccer mom in middle america with an eMachine will try this service, find out it stinks, and won’t try to use any other online music service (e.g. iTMS when it comes out on the pc later this year). You know the kind of person I’m talking about, the same person who thinks all computers are the same and thus can’t justify the extra money for a mac and who had considered getting a Lindows machine.